Census

Integration into a completely new community which functions with its own set of established rules has proved difficult. To ease the process, our superiors gave us specific instructions to conduct interviews of as many people as possible in the community. The purpose of this is two-fold: 1) to get to know the people and community more intimately, and 2) to see what they want and get some ideas for projects. An intimidating prospect, but doable once the motivation is found.

Once started, my project became almost academic in nature. I walked from house to house for about 2 hours each day, speaking with at least one person per household, jotting down notes in my brown Moleskine notebook.

To put some figures on my experience - I walked past 22 cows and 54 pigs. I encountered 4 people too drunk to answer my questions and 3 women unable to communicate due to the Kichwa language barrier. I was bit by 1 dog (through my Carhartt work pants). I quickly learned to walk with an intimidation stick. The interview process took me 2 1/2 weeks.

The questions went as follows:

1) How many people live in this household?
2) How many years does each person have?
3) By what means do you earn money?
4) What do you have planted right now?
5) How do you dispose of trash? Burn or throw in the river?
6) Are you part of any community groups?
7) What is your house made of? Packed earth or concrete blocks?
8) Do you own a television? B&W or Color?
9) Do you use chemicals on your crops?
10) If you could raise your standard of living, what would you require?

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Please excuse the lack of figures, I tried many formats and my Excel graphs will not work on the blog.
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Population: 418
Average number per household: 6
Number of families: 27
Average number per family: 15.5
Number of interviews conducted: 69


-Trash Disposal-

Burn: 59 households
Throw in the river: 15 households


-Use of Chemicals-

Yes: 21
Sometimes: 18
No: 29


-Employment-

Agriculture: 50 households
Construction: 4
Store Owner: 3
Flower Plantations: 6
Misc: 17


-Television-

B&W: 26
Color: 30
None: 15


-Raise standard of living?-

Sewage system. As of now, there is no public sewage system in my village. They have running water and toilets, but the waste goes either into wells or into the drainages. The larger scale solution would be to install a public sewage system, but that is far outside of my control. I can however, teach them to make composting toilets. Two birds with one stone. No more sewage problem and copious organic compost.