Community

Welcome sign to the village Luis hanging laundry The word "community" gets used a lot in the U.S. Probably a better word would be "population" or "group" since we usually are usually referring to a specific set of people.  El Lagartillo (the village where the school Hijos del Maíz is set - see link) is a real community. Not only do the residents live in a given place , but there is a real dialogue that happens by which the people meet, discuss, and make decisions about how to live their common life. Yesterday I managed to go to two committee meetings.The committee of water was meeting to install a new water pump and discuss and learn about the system so as to maintain and take care of it. During the dry season (sometimes called "summer" although it runs from November to May), water is often in short supply in mountainous regions of Central America. Although there is a well, there is no system of bringing the water to where the houses  are. Hence, the project which has been in the works for several years. It is a partnership of El Lagartillo, the regional government, and the government of Spain., The idea is fairly simple: use solar panels to power an electric pump to move the water from the well to a cistern close to where people live. So the installation guy (and his cadre of 2 German engineering students) was talking for about 3 hours to members of the water committee about solar panels, pumps, and maintenance of the equipment, I asked one of the women of the committee to show me notes and was quite impressed at the notes she took. At the end of the meeting they created 3 work crews to do the installation today. Last night I went to the committee of health. Prior to coming, I had offered to bring some health equipment with me and they (the committee) requested via e-mail for a nebulizer and blood pressure cuff. These I found on Craig's list. The meeting last night was to check out the equipment, learn how to use it, and more importantly, decide how it should be stored and made available for everyone. Right now, I am writing this entry from a hillside using the Clear network, using the modem owned and used in common by El Lagartillo. I am quite impressed at the community of El Lagartillo, and feel like they have shown me what community means.