“Tu propia herida se cura con llanto, tu propia herida se cura con canto” – Neruda

16 January
The morning is filtered, scattered light. Fast rising white, climbing the hills, pushing through doorways, masking faces, filling our lungs, exhaled. Colliding, propagating seeds carried by the wind onto flat concrete. Time crawls, is metered by walnuts being hammered on the floor upstairs, then drags to a halt as a blaze of rain floods the town with silence. I return to my four green walls, a grey window and a scratched wooden door, an iron chair wrapped in wicker, a cold mattress, a crowded desk, a guitar and a stereo, photos and birthday cards, and a falling ceiling. Why do I drink coffee to wake up when all I need is sleep? 300 days. All that I had written about after visiting home—sensing that I was coming across as a naïve idealist or stray hippie, looking at my time left here as a reformative sentence—is exactly what I fear seeing in myself, not what everyone else saw. My own motives for being here are deceiving me. A week ago I gave serious thought to a third year, but now it doesn’t seem worth it or something I can mentally realize.

I’m overwhelmed and out of breath. I try to sit but can’t, it’s too early. I grab my umbrella and break the stillness outside. The storm has passed and the afternoon is becoming unusually dry. The moon must be changing. I walk up the algae covered stairs of the municipality and give a pass around the plaza, empty save Chalaco’s one homeless woman, standing underneath the church awning. She speaks rarely, accepts whatever she is offered, carries herself and the clothes she wears only—a green sweater, a grey poncho, a long skirt with a flower print, car-tire sandals and a Native-American themed hat featuring a stern wolf in the center of pending feathers. Is it really just the weather? Just don’t stop, don’t hide from the rain, stay busy, take on those projects that Chelsea is leaving behind, become isolated and out of touch with America, read old newspapers, learn what it’s really like to live here, keep talking, keep working.

29 January
Today was a win for the home team. Over the past couple of months there have been rumblings of a separatist movement in my community of Chimulque, ever since plans were manifested to install 30 water connections for families that before relied mostly on the outdoor tap of some abandoned home, irrigation canals, or a murky puddle in the middle of a cow pasture. A good portion of these houses were built after the existing water system was constructed, and for some time have referred to themselves as belonging to a sector of Chimulque called, “Valle Hermoso” (something like “Pleasant Valley”). The project was more though—the construction of an additional reservoir, rehabilitations on all the pressure break tanks, and improvements to the existing springbox (a cement box that captures groundwater that had run into a layer of impermeable soil and started moving horizontally through a more porous medium until springing forth from the mountainside). Also, seeing as how the water resources in Chimulque were already scarce before these new connections and how the kindly donated funds of friends and family exceeded what I need for the bathrooms project, I was able to complement this water system project with the construction of a brand new springbox to add more flow to the system.

At the time that the existing system was built the families of Valle Hermoso weren’t around to help with the community labor, and so a forma agreement was made to have each beneficiary pay $75 to hook up to the system, the same amount anyone has to pay for a new connection. This money was used to buy the small piece of land where the new springbox was built, while the municipality contributed cement and rebar for the springbox construction. The whole thing made a wonderful tale of collaboration and development.

The project went well enough, with only a minimal number of finishing touched left undone, and we arrived at the moment to agree on the terms of the management, operation and maintenance of the renovated system. Sounds straightforward, but I could see that it wouldn’t be so easy. Butthurt about some ancient gossip or bothered about having to pay to connect to the system, like little boys that were criticized or harshly teased in the treehouse and then dedicated themselves entirely toward haughty independence from their big-shot, no-good, so-called friends, two of the guys in Valle Hermoso deviously rallied nearly the entire sector behind a secret meeting to form a second water committee to manage everything new about the water system—the first step, they hoped, towards forming an entirely separate community. When of these actors, Javier, notified me of these plans I strongly discouraged him against it, citing textbook cases in the district where two committees were made for the same water system and everything fell into disrepair as neither committee fulfilled their responsibilities and more conflicts set in. Water fights get ugly real fast, and purposely creating divisions is asking for trouble. Aside from this, Valle Hermoso has no legal right to be making these decisions outside of a general assembly. So I says to the guy, “Look, listen to me, whatever issues you want to bring up at a general assembly the rest of the community will hear out. We gotta figure this out with everyone present. Discourse is the solution. I’m gonna go around and let everyone know that this Sunday, instead of having that BS meeting at your house, we’re all going to meet in the casa comunal.”

So I plan out this big agenda for the meeting, ask my socio from the health center to help out, put an announcement on the radio, bake cookies, buy streamers…but on Sunday morning when I arrive at the casa comunal in Chimulque sure enough those jodidos (rough translation—“fuckers”) had already begun their exclusive meeting up in Valle Hermoso and were getting ready to sign some invalid acta! Thankfully my doctor buddy Hermerigildo was there to tell em what’s up, cuz even with him it took a good half hour to finally get them to suspend their unlawful gathering and come down to the casa comunal to reunite with the rest of the gente.

From then on it was a never ending calamity of bickering, finger-pointing, misdirected passive aggression, repetitious distractions and peripheral debates, advances and regressions, pleas and concessions. Twice I quoted Abe Lincoln’s “house divided” line and at one point I said something akin to what that mom on The Simpsons would say: “But what about the children?! Won’t someone think of the children?!” Finally we broke through the storm and into calm seas, agreeing on one solo committee with two system operators, each having very defined responsibilities. We even managed to get through the rest of the agenda and they got a special lesson on the importance of household water disinfection. I’m not gonna lie, afterwards I felt pretty proud of myself and my doctor buddy. Maybe if I hadn’t been there to call this emergency meeting, and if Meri hadn’t been there to try to bring people together, try not to cause divisions, down the road things wouldn’t be so good for either side, not to mention the children. Let’s just hope the peace is lasting.