Local Rowan student spends spring break helping town in El Salvador

April 15, 2008

It was definitely warm weather and pleasant scenery where Joanna Reyes, a 22-year-old senior studying elementary education and Spanish at Rowan University, spent her spring break. However, luxury took on another form on this trip. Reyes' bed was a two-inch-thick foam mat, her bathroom was a hole in the ground, and the shower-a cold, polluted river.

The Sayreville native had all of her comforts in knowing she was part of a group that spent its free time reaching out to help a town that has no clean, potable drinking water and suffers from illnesses associated with consuming the polluted river water.

From March 14 through March 22, Reyes and six other members of the Rowan chapter of Engineers Without BordersTM spent their time assessing La Ceiba-a town that is home to 463 people in El Salvador, Central America.

EWB-USATM is a non-profit organization committed to designing and implementing engineering projects in developing communities around the world. Such projects include renewable energy, clean water supplies and sustainable enterprise development. The organization's volunteers also include individuals with backgrounds in business, journalism, health and education, according to the organization.

The town currently relies on a polluted river and shallow, hand-dug wells as its main source of water. The exhausting labor of gathering water for daily use takes many hours, and water is scarce in the four-month-long dry season each year.

The town's dilemma became apparent to Rowan EWBTM when a Peace Corps volunteer reached out to the members. In May 2007, several Rowan EWB members traveled to La Ceiba for the initial assessment, which consisted of land surveying, water quality testing, and interacting with community members to understand their needs.

Through this trip, members of EWBTM learned that because the townsfolk ingest the unsanitary water, as many as 34 children have died, and much of the town population has suffered intestinal and digestive illnesses.

"What really struck me was that the people in the town were happy with their lives. I did not hear one person complain about how they don't have a faucet or can't take a shower. This is the life they know. They focus on their families, and that's what is most important to them," Reyes said.

Reyes used her Spanish-speaking skills to help her team communicate with the townsfolk. She worked with two other EWB Spanish-speakers to help educate the town about water sanitation, traveling house to house to illustrate how to purify the water supply. Reyes also helped to translate questions the engineers needed answered by the community.

"This trip made me realize how much we take for granted in the U.S. To take a shower the townsfolk have to fill a bucket with well water and basically wet themselves down. The water they do have available to drink, when it is not scarce, has to be boiled to purify it of life-threatening diseases. The experience truly made me appreciate all the things we have on a daily basis," Reyes said.

Reyes considers the trip a life-changing experience.

"I make it a point now to think about our luxuries in the U.S. We really need to be less (greedy) and start to give back to the world as much as we take from it," she said.

Rowan's EWBTM chapter currently is working on another project with a community in Senegal, West Africa, in an effort to provide it with clean drinking water. The group hopes to travel to this village in the summer. Past Rowan EWBTM projects have included developing a potable-water distribution system in the Honduran community of Mataderos and installing a water distribution system in Pateung, Thailand.

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