The second and third week of the trip flew by
as our days were jam packed with work. We would get up everyday at 6 to make
breakfast at 6:30 so that we could arrive on-site at 8 am. We would have a
meeting with the contractor and labor to go over goals for the day and work on
site until 5 pm (we would do half days on Saturdays and generally take Sundays
off). We would eat dinner right after until 6:30 pm. After that would usually
spend an hour or two typing up our field daily reports as well as make any
important revisions to our plans that happened frequently due to site
conditions. We would usually be completely done with work around 8 or 9 pm. A
couple of nights we had to work later due to the necessity of making further
design changes.
The second and third week of the trip flew by
as our days were jam packed with work. We would get up everyday at 6 to make
breakfast at 6:30 so that we could arrive on-site at 8 am. We would have a
meeting with the contractor and labor to go over goals for the day and work on
site until 5 pm (we would do half days on Saturdays and generally take Sundays
off). We would eat dinner right after until 6:30 pm. After that would usually
spend an hour or two typing up our field daily reports as well as make any
important revisions to our plans that happened frequently due to site
conditions. We would usually be completely done with work around 8 or 9 pm. A
couple of nights we had to work later due to the necessity of making further
design changes.
The project was running just about as smoothly
as it could be. The only problems we were running into were due to site
conditions that we couldn’t have expected. We had to change the design of our
sedimentation chamber and valve chamber on our spring catchments because we
couldn’t excavate anymore into the side of the ravine. We had to expand part of
our first spring catchment because a community member identified another spring
that we could connect to the major catchment. While these did include delays to
our project schedule I had made sure we had plenty of slack when scheduling out
the project during the school year and it was luckily just enough to accommodate
our design changes.
For two days during the project we learned how
hard the community members were working hauling the material down the ravine.
We didn’t have enough workers to move down all of the sand/aggregate mix and
cement so we decided to pitch in and carry buckets down. Now what looked like a
cakewalk for the community members who could do this all day left our team
taking a well-deserved lunch time nap and making it one more hour after. I
cannot really describe how hard the community members would work, and there
would be old men in their 60s working right alongside men in their 20s and 30s.
It was quite motivating to see how hard these community members would work for
this project that would benefit them all.
We would spend our Sundays sightseeing. Now
where we were staying in Peru is in the beautiful sierras and we were in a
gorgeous valley with mountains all around us. I spent my free time going on a
couple of local hikes but as a group we visited the city of Cajamarca which
holds a deep historical significance in Peru. It holds famous archaeological
sites like Cumbe Mayo which displays the ancient Incans ability to engineer
water distribution systems as well as being the site where the spanish
conquistadors landed and held atahualpa (Incan Emperor) captive.
Construction of the second spring catchment
A view of Cajamarca
A mural that we created at the local school
with the help of the school children
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