A few photos...

Phewf! My legs are tired!

In the last four and a half weeks I’ve been busy, busy, busy, visiting and interviewing 118 houses in San Jose. That’s every house San Jose Centro, Guanacaste and El Horno. If have you been to San Jose or have read much of this blog, you’ll know that represents a veritable mountain of hiking, like ten hours “on the road” every day… and it’s been great!

I could spin a few yarns about all the amazing people I’ve met or all the frustrations and successes of conducting research that I have encountered, but in the interest of time (mine and yours), this entry will just be a few pictures. Consider a journey of self-portraits. Once I get back stateside, with this preliminary phase of my research behind me, I promise more words!


A tranquil Sunday afternoon on my porch, making the map of the community so that I can find all these houses again the next time. Note my new sombrero... pretty handsome!


This is the face that says "eek, I´ve been lost for an hour now in the midday sun and I would really like to find my trail again!" Note the shirt soaked with sweat. This was on the way to map a new water project that we are considering funding.


Every night you´ll find me here, in the mini-lab in my bedroom running tests on the water from each house I visitted that day. My room smells like bacteria/poop from all the stuff that grows in the water tests. Yuck... both for me and also for the people that have to drink the water.


A few kids enjoying the gringo show. This was when I was checking in on the water project in Portillon... which is now completely done!!!


After a day of seeing only houses made from sticks and mud, this is the biggest smile I could muster in front of this home to 7. I was waiting for the owner, who was down below in the field.


In my kitchen taking a big bite of the "dough" for my birthday tomales. We spent 8 hours making 110 of them, and boy were they delicious!! We shared them with everyone after church.


A sign! ... there must have been a gringo here! Maybe I'll buy one of these filters so that I can have this clean water I've been hearing about....

And last but no least, be sure to check out our newest addition to the this website "Gifts of Health: The San Jose Partners Alternative Gift Shop." The site is an avenue to donate one of our interventions in the name of someone, and in turn receive a gift card you can give them. Take a look! http://www.sanjosepartners.org/whatyoucando/page27/page27.html

Love to all,

mateo

PS. If anyone is interested, here is the abstract of my research proposal:

"Multiple studies have demonstrated that various point-of-use water treatment methods can reduce diarrheal disease burden in resource-poor communities. The health benefits of such interventions are greater in trials in which a higher percentage of households properly utilize the water treatment method. Despite this reality, there remains a paucity of research comparing the relative ability of different implementation schemes to affect compliance and disease reduction. With this theoretical basis in mind, this study proposes to pilot a household water treatment intervention in the community of San Jose, Honduras, in order to 1) test its ability to reduce diarrheal incidence, and 2) determine if an implementation protocol with community health worker follow-up yields better compliance and outcomes compared to an implementation program with no follow-up. 100 households will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: intervention, intervention plus follow-up, or control, in which participants will continue with their customary water handling practices. A pre-intervention survey will assess baseline household characteristics, water access, source, treatment and handling, hygiene practices, sanitation facilities and diarrheal prevalence. Interviews at three months and six months will assess compliance, satisfaction, and diarrheal prevalence. Water from the point of consumption will be sampled at each visit to verify microbiological efficacy. Ultimately, the results of this study will provide valuable information about how to best implement further water treatment interventions, both in San Jose and elsewhere."