Imagine a main line breaks around the block in the middle of the night. You're without water, but you don't even know it because you're sound asleep. Meanwhile, a crew works feveriously with flood lights to restore water. You wake up, shower, enjoy your morning cup of coffee unknowingly. Easy enough.
We don't really think about where our water comes from and the many people employed to make sure water always comes out of the tap. You pay your bill every month and that's about the only time we really think about water.
Cut to an indigenous community in Panama. Camera zooms from above into a ranchito where a few men gather to discuss the upcoming work day, how much money is in the account, and when the next collection will be.
That group of men is what keeps water coming out of the tap for the people of Calante. They are why the aqueduct is a success story under a backdrop of so many failed development projects.
Merely dropping in a water system is not enough. It could be the most tricked out aqueduct on the block, with the most thoughtful engineering. That aqueduct could still fail. It happens. And when it does, you need a community ready to respond. That takes training, or capacity building. You train a team to be able to fix the system and manage funds from within the community so that long after the NGO or Peace Corps or local government aid leaves, that community is equipped to fully operate and maintain their water system.
Truthfully, I think I prefer committee work to actually building and designing aqueducts. The process is slow. Training adults with an equivalent education to about second grade back in the States takes time. But during that time, I get to have conversations about geography and what type of animals live in the US. While teaching community members how to fill out receipts, I get to explain why I'm here and that I have a brother back home. While we discuss the process of maintaining a water system I get to learn about what's important to these people. We talk about what I would see if I climbed over that ridge while we create a notebook for managing funds.
That's committee work. That's building capacity. And at the end of the day, I feel more hopeful about both the future of the water system and that of humanity.
