Now that I have started a blog, I wanted to highlight one of my ventures this summer: traveling to El Salvador. Last year as a freshman, I joined Duke Engineers for International Development, an engineering service group. I had done many service trips in high school to Ecuador, Nicaragua and Guyana, but this time I would be able to design the actual project. So, because of my experience with the Spanish language I decided to join the El Salvador team to construct a water tank and filtration system.
Our team of 7 students left for San José Villanueva right after finals in May for six weeks. We were working with a local volunteer organization, Epilogos, who donated tools and countless hours of help to us. After a few days of planning, the project was underway in a nearby town, La Estancia. This town was very small and impoverished, and though many of them had some electricity, they still did not have access to clean running water. This problem was especially prevalent during the dry season (our winter). So, over the six weeks we were there, we constructed a 12-foot diameter tank to store water during the dry season. Additionally, we installed a sedimentation tank filtration system, which piped water from a stream a few hundred feet away, cleaned it, and filled up the tank.
During our time in El Salvador, we got to experience a culture not many people get to see. The country, we found out, has very little tourism anymore. During the Salvadorian Civil War in the 1980s, much of the wildlife and forests of the country were wiped out, leaving a deforested and struggling country. Today, the country experiences a very high murder rate due to gang-related violence. But even through this hardship, a culture shined through. On the weekends, when we were not working, we got to swim in a crater lake, explore waterfalls, surf, and eat the national dish of El Salvador, Pupusas.
My time in El Salvador was amazing, meeting interesting locals, trying a hidden culture, and applying my engineering knowledge abroad. But after I returned, I only had a short week home before moving onto the next part of my summer, research at Duke.