Bayardo Arce - Chinandega Nicaragua - October 2011

I am going to put up a few posts of some the of the past projects that I have been on.  

My first experience with Engineering Ministries International (eMi) was to the community of Bayardo Arce, on the out skirts of Chinandega, Nicaragua.

The project in Bayardo Arce was to design a sewer collection system for a community of approximately 600 residents.  Food for the Hungry has a relationship with this community where they are working on transforming communities by educating the young, providing basic health care and supporting local Pastors as they reach out to the communities.  

We were tasked with completing a topographic survey of the community and to layout a sewer collection system.

Here are a few pictures of our trip.

The collection system that we designed would drain to this manhole, where it will connect with the municipal system.  We were kind of surprised to find pretty normal looking manholes.  However, the lids of these manholes had not been lifted in years, and I will refrain from publishing pictures of the inside of the manholes.....

Here is a typical street in Bayardo Arce.  The water that is running in the street is "gray water".  Generally, gray water is water that has been used for body washing, clothes washing, dish washing, etc.  In this community, that water runs in the street and becomes a incubator for various insects and diseases.

Each home had a pipe similar to this one where all the water that is used in the home just dumps out on the street.  This was about the nicest setup that we saw in Bayardo Arce.  They even had a sidewalk and some shrubs!

Here is a picture of a trench that was dug to try to control the waste water.  The white PVC pipe is the drinking water that is circulating through the community.  As you can see, the pipe is running through the waste water.  In many places, the drinking water pipe is joined with duct tape.  Which indicates two things.  There is VERY low pressure in the drinking water pipe, AND there is contamination.

Much of our survey was completed using this total station.  Which brings up the funny memories of trying to get equipment like this through customs.  On each trip I have been on, going through customs in countries like Nicaragua is always an adventure.  Here you have a few gringos (and engineers at that) trying to explain in very broken Spanish just what a total station is to a customs officer who speaks very broken English!  Makes for laughs at the end of the day.



Here are two of the friends I made in Bayardo Arce.  As I am sure you can tell from the picture, they had quite the personalities....

 Here I am with three of the Nicaraguan staff for Food for the Hungry.  They stuck with us each day making sure that we didn't get ourselves into too much trouble.  I really appreciated how committed Food for the Hungry was to using local staff to build relationships with the communities where they worked.