¡Viva, Azacualpa!
Clean water is flowing in Azacualpa Centro!
We just returned from Honduras where we were joined by over 1,000 people in Azacualpa Centro to cut-the-ribbon on their new water system. The full-day celebration was planned by the community and filled with original songs, skits, speeches, and poetry conveying gratitude, happiness, humor and stories to be passed down to the next generations of how their project came to be. We feel enormously privileged to be invited to take part in these ceremonies.
The joy of clean water was shared in a poem by student Orbelina Lopez Turcios during the inauguration celebration.
The Girl Water Drop
The girl water drop likes to travel.
And never gets tired of jumping around.
She goes to the sky
and goes down to the sea.
Goes up to the clouds
from the bottom of the sea.
She can’t be trusted
if she comes from the river.
She will come to my house
or go to the sea.
Sometimes I feel her in my glass and I drink her when I am thirsty.
What joy!
As with all of the projects we support in Honduras, this system was literally built on the backs of the people of Azacualpa Centro, under the guidance of our experienced Honduran colleagues. There are no trucks to carry 300-pound steel pipes or 100-pound bags of cement, no backhoes to dig trenches. Working together over the past year, the community dug 10 miles of pipeline trench and constructed a 50,000-gallon water storage tank. Every single family now has a toilet, a shower, and a kitchen faucet for washing hands, dishes, and laundry.
The Azacualpa Centro project has special significance for our 300 youth club members across the country who last year supported Carry5 walks to fund the entire system, and to our 2019 Global Fellows who traveled to Honduras to carry water with the women and children of the community.
Our Water Tour group and our 2020 Global Fellows bolstered chants of ¡Viva, Azacualpa! (long live Azacualpa!) as they began their new lives as a community with piped, clean water.
We pass on the gratitude of the community members to all Water1st donors for making this project possible.
“This is a historic afternoon that we’ve been dreaming about since the trees surrounding us were seedlings.” Felipe Castillo, community leader
