UV Water Purification

So its UV water purification day with my kiddies out in aldea Pecajba

basically

clean empty bottles + water + sun + 24 hours = more creative ways to reuse plastic bottles and clean drinking water.

poco a poco we're cleaning up the environment and improving rural health

Photos to follow!

UPDATE:

So I woke up Thursday morning feeling pretty shitty. I'd had a tough time falling asleep the night before and Chris and I have both been sick for the last few days. I hit the snooze button once but the second time my alarm went off Chris yelled at me to get out of bed and go to work, so on three hours of sleep I hauled my tired self the 20 minutes to the center of town and got on a micro to the school (thank goodness this is my one school that is off the main highway so its easy to get to).

I showed up at school and several of my second grade boys saw me and came running out of their classroom to open the gate for me. Their smiles definitely turned my morning around (although they probably could benefit from some serious flossing...) The school principal and I headed the purification project and with the hard work of the other four teachers and the enthusiasm of the children we were able to wash and fill over fifty bottles of water and place them on the tin roof to purify in the sun over the weekend. The students will now have enough water to drink during the week and Fridays are our new water purification day. After school we held a meeting with the parents in the community to explain to them the UV purification project as a way of educating them on better health practices as well as including them in the Healthy Schools project. They loved the idea and got a huge kick out of hearing me attempt to explain everything in Q'eqchi. Lots of smiles and lots of laughing.

Thanks to the dedication of these teachers and the support of the families in the community the students of Pecajba will have clean drinking water all year. Hands down my best day as a Peace Corps volunteer.