Mizque!

We started our technical trip about 4 hours away, in the Cochabamba valley, in the city of Mizque. There are 2 Peace Corps volunteers in Mizque and we had a great time getting to know them and working in their community. In Mizque we stayed at a nice hostel and started each morning there cooking breakfast. It was a really big treat, and a lot of fun to be able to eat things like banana pancakes and breakfast burritos. After breakfast we would load into our 4 Landcruizers and drive through the beautiful mountains and valleys of Mizque. Our work site was a boarding school outside of a small town called Tin Tin. Most of the kids from the boarding school were home for vacation but the few that were there helped us with our projects. In this area the primary language spoken is Quechua, and we felt privileged to hear this ancient language. Although Quechua is the preferred language, most also spoke Spanish, so we were able to communicate. We worked at the boarding school for 4 days and built a Ferro cement rainwater catchment tank and a gray water garden system. All of our work was done by hand, without using any kind of machinery, this meant a lot of cement mixing, sand sifting, rebar tying, digging… The rainwater tank was made from cement and molded using chicken wire and wood. The water is caught from the roof of a nearby building and then flows into the closed tank. Without any light, the bacterium in the water dies, and then is ready for use for things such as showering, cooking, etc.

I really enjoyed working on the gray water system. We made a simple plumbing system from the leftover, used water in the kitchen (from cooking, cleaning…) and piped this water underground and outside to an area that we had cleared for a garden. We made holes in the pipes in the garden area and surrounded them with a filtration system of gravel and rocks. The kids at the boarding school were going to follow-up the project by planting vegetables and flowers in the garden.

10,000 L Rainwater Tank A bus that runs on train tracks!
Mizque Women
Mizque Man