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ALONSO'S STORY
Most afternoons during the early summer, Alonso Ochoa weeds his fields, getting rid of the green plants that impede the growth of his frijoles, or bean plants. This weeding work is not done with a machine; rather, Ochoa weeds with a machete, a long sword-like knife. He walks backwards down a hill while bent at the waist, reaching down to catch the weeds and yank them out of the ground with his knife. His baseball cap is the only thing that offers protection from the hot sun.
Alonso’s farm is a thirty minute walk from his house. Because most families live near the church and school in the community center here in Santa Rosa Dudu, their farms can be quite far away from their homes. Alonso arrives here around 6am every morning and leaves by 4pm when it starts to get dark. Alonso, like many fathers in Waslala, works extremely hard to provide the income his wife and children need to survive. Watching him work, it’s hard to comprehend how hard Waslalans need to earn a few dollars per day.
Two years ago, Alonso gladly took on an opportunity to achieve better opportunities for his family – he volunteered to build a gravity-fed water system in Santa Rosa Dudu. With the support of Water for Waslala’s field manager Denis Taleno, a group of men in Santa Rosa constructed the system from start to finish and worked together to achieve success. Alonso says he did not know anything about construction beforehand, but this was a great experience for him because he was able to learn.
Near Alonso’s house runs the main river of Waslala. Flowing from the town center, it gradually picks up all refuse resulting from animal and human waste, garbage remnants, and washing buses in the river. By the time it gets to Santa Rosa, it is completely opaque with mud particles. This is the river from which Alonso and his family used to drink and bathe.
Now, Alonso says, his wife collects water from the tapstand right outside their house. This water has no waste in it and is free of the waterborne parasites that used to infect his children’s digestive systems, keeping them out of school. Alonso lists the benefits the tapstand has brought his family: less sickness, less time spent gathering water, and more time spent in school.
Alonso’s sense of community runs deep. Not only does he want every member of his village to have access to clean water, but he wants other Waslalan communities to have this access as well. He is willing to do whatever he can to help WfW achieve its goal of enabling this dream to come to fruition.
“Yes, I have my water,” Alonso says. “But that is not all I think about. I have to think about others as well, and help them get water if they don’t have it.”
