Installation (Round 1)

After two attempts...all the equiptment is installed. It took a great effort from no less than 5 people and two days but here we are claiminng success. Cheers eh?
Getting to the river is half the battle..

This is the river upstream and downstream from where we put the stilling well. If I may draw your attention to the icy rain in pictures...always nice to work in.

This is Ecouvany and me working on the stilling well...he is the one who dove right into the work, burly Indigenous guy from Oyacachi. He and Oswaldo (in the yellow gators) are guardaparques in the Parque Nacional Cayambe Coca and my life savors! Wonderful people who always have time to chat.

And when all was said and done it was pretty damn hard to tell where the 1000Euro piece of equiptment was....despite the WHITE PVC stilling well....

Later we finished the process by installing the raingauge at Mulipungu. Here I am digging like a maniac. In reality Euovany did just as much or more digging than me. Oyacachi has taught me to not judge based on size. Considering everyone is smaller than me but much tougher and capable of more physical labor. These people leave at 4 am to milk cows then carry the portaleches to the queserias and then leave again with machete in hand to work in the fields in communal work groups called Mingas. Trust me, it's humbling, even for a dura Irish girl.

Then at the end of the week its the same routine again...back to Quito for internet and meetings with the folks at EMAAP-Q and a shower dios le pagi, thank god. In case I haven't mentioned it we dont have hot water in Oyacachi...or a bathroom in the house where I live. But currently my crush, the handsome carpenter is constructing one.

Anyway Quito....I went to a meeting in the North of Quito a few days back and I saw this graffiti basically just after listening to EMAAP-Q people complain about the "difficult, backward" people in the pueblos they take water from. I find it kind of funny that the talk of EMAAP-Q reflects corporate strategizing but then when you leave the high rise office with the planes flying by the bay windows...and you walk the streets...even of upperclass North Quito... you will see grafitti like this...

The translation is "water matters more than gold" or "water serves more than gold"
It's true eh? You can't drink gold. You can't irrigate with gold.
Anyway I really like these pictures of the mountains, the tile roofs, the signs, the young men and the dog. This is how it is. I hope that everyone who reads this has the chance to travel and leave only good things wherever they go.