SSC October 2017 Newsletter

Reflections from the Well Over the next few months we will be sharing reflections from the scholarship recipients who took part in the SSC/Weathermatic trip to El Salvador to dig community wells. I couldn’t see anything, and by this point I was finally out of dry patches of clothes to wipe my safety glasses on. Looking down through the opening between the bottom edge of the glasses and my cheeks, I could only see dark, glistening mud. When the spray of sludge and dust started again, from the drill hitting the rock over fifty meters beneath my feet, I instinctively raised my arm to cover my face. It didn’t really change much. I still couldn’t see anything. I pushed down on the lever, bringing down the air hammer, and the spray stopped. I turned to pass off my lever-pulling duties to Caroline while trying to come up with a strategy to clear my glasses. I remember thinking how I would just rinse them under the faucet. No big deal. Except there wasn’t a faucet in the entire village of Puento Viejo. The well we were drilling, the source of the thick layer of mud covering me, was the start of change. Clean, available water. Suddenly, a finger came out of the smog. A man of the village smudged away the mud from my glasses like a windshield wiper. He led me away from the noise of the drill. The language barrier between us made it easier for him to pluck the glasses from my face and begin washing them in a bucket of water he’d brought up from the small reservoirs near the river, rather than try to communicate over the ear plugs, mud, and constant drilling noise. When I went back to drilling, I was still covered in mud, but my glasses were shiny clean. The rest of the afternoon was like that. Villagers would help those of us drilling clean off and get around while covered in mud. Every time I couldn’t see, the same man would clean off my glasses and send me back to work. Every time I could see, I saw this entirely different world from the one I am used to. No running water, no car at every house, no air conditioning or trash cans or sewage. It was a new world. Aimee Bourey from Texas A&M University: