Amy Schroeder-Riggio, B3′s executive director, and board members Steve Lewine and Amy Greenberg are in Peru visiting our 2010 project sites. We’ll be posting photos and updates throughout the weekend. If you missed them, here are parts one, two, three, four, and five.

After a good night’s rest (although a bit too short), we headed north to Asia along the Pan American Highway and then east to the isolated town of Coallyo to check out the work of the February RHOMBO Team and the March Esperanza Team.

After seeing true “construction”  in the other sites, it is hard to imagine the amount of back breaking work these teams put into creating this new water system, as their work is now below ground and no longer visible. But our Peace Corps friend in Coayllo, Mark Vingua encouraged us to walk along where the trenches had been dug and the new pipeline laid.

It may not be recognizable to anyone other than members of this community, the Peace Corps, and B3 volunteers, but we were truly tired after our tour of the “lines” and very impressed with the amount of work these two teams accomplished in such a short time.

We were even more impressed after speaking with families that were so excited about having water in their homes for the first time.  We also heard from locals that before our project together (Peace Corps, B3 and the community), there would be water for only about 10 minutes each day and very little water at that. That has changed significantly for the better — one home owner told us that before he would never turn his tap off for fear of missing some trickle of precious water, but now if he doesn’t turn it off, there is too much water and his buckets and pans fill will overflow!

There is more good news from Coayllo, as well.  The community is beginning to dig again, but this time it is for sewer lines — a major improvement as there were none before. The mayor said that this is an interesting problem to have. Homes are now receiving more water for longer periods of time every day and are now have need of proper sewage lines. The good news is that they have some other charitable partners supporting the next phase of this system

Next month is the Nispero (loquat) Festival time in Coayllo and people come from the surrounding towns to help celebrate the harvest.  Mark tells us that a festival highlight is the annual race from the top of an enormous hill behind to the center of town. Incredibly, the town’s record has been just a little under 2 minutes and Mark is convinced he can beat that record and plans to participate this year – for those of you that have never traveled to Coayllo, this is a very large “mountain”  and the center of the square is quite far.  Our money is on Mark!

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We are now home from Peru and feel so proud of all of the teams and their supporters! Looking back on the year, Peru has been a great place for B3 to work.  We have made incredible new friends, learned construction skills, learned a lot about ourselves and our teammates, practiced our Spanish, embraced the Peruvian culture and food, and experienced the joy of of giving firsthand.

Together, we have continued to work towards one of the most important goals of Builders Beyond Borders, to “build a better world.”

Ecuador…here we come!