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CRISTIAN'S STORY
Cristian Reyes is in the fifth grade. Watching her play the classic recess game "Cat and Mouse", it’s easy to see that she is a confident leader – giving instructions to the rest of her classmates, leading them in a chant, and volunteering to be the first “mouse.” During a break from the game, she and a few other children walk over to a nearby tapstand to take a drink of cool, clear water.
“The kids would be absent from class for a good while, before we had water,” says Cristian’s teacher, Joaquín. “Some of them would bring water from home, but if not, they would either have to stay thirsty all day or walk to the stream.” The stream he speaks of is about five minutes away – not, by any means, in the school’s “backyard.”
In late 2008, WfW built a gravity-fed system in San Benito to bring clean water from a natural spring to both the school and Cristian’s house. When asked what she thinks of the change, Cristian hesitates a little. “The water tastes a lot better now,” she says with a grin.
The kids at Cristian’s school now have access to two tapstands at the school, so they no longer have to take ten minutes out to get a drink during the schoolday. Those like Cristian, who also have a tapstand at home, have more time to do their homework because household chores take less time. Water retrieval, which used to represent a big chunk of Cristian’s household responsibilities, is no longer an effort with a tapstand in the backyard.
Cristian, like many children, used to make multiple journeys to an inconveniently-located stream throughout the course of a day. Once, in the morning, to bathe before school. Once or twice, during the school day, to drink water. Again after school to help their parents to bring water back to the house.
After dark, fetching water would become more difficult and dangerous, so children would wait until morning for fresh water. The time required to walk to the stream seemed too great to expend just for washing hands, so kids would often just use the latrine near the schoolhouse and not bother to walk all the way to the stream afterwards.
All of these inconveniences add up to wasted time, not to mention the health disadvantages that come from drinking contaminated water and not practicing correct hygiene. Time is important in these communities – because of the lack of electricity, once the sun goes down there is no opportunity to do homework or anything else, so families just go to bed.
Now, Cristian has more time to work on her homework, and she can do a lot of things at home that she wasn’t able to before. “The river that we used before was dirty,” she said. “It’s better that the water is clean – now we can take baths and drink water, and also wash clothes, here at home.”
Her mother, Irma, speaks proudly of her daughter’s drive as she watches Cristian studying at their home. “She’s not like the other kids, no,” she says, smiling and shaking her head. “She does everything at school, all of the extracurriculars like dancing and sports too.” It’s easy to imagine Cristian as the typical overachiever in a middle school here in the U.S. – the captain of the sports team, going to after-school dance classes and getting straight A’s at the same time.
Irma thinks that Cristian has the ability to go far in life. As is typical of most parents in villages as remote as San Benito, Irma hesitates to voice any hopes that seem unrealistic. She does reveal, however, her dreams for Cristian’s future education: “She’ll be able to go to high school. Maybe, she will even go to college – get a degree in something.”
“She is very smart,” Irma adds with a smile.
