Water Down the Mountain

By Hearly G. Mayr, Assistant Director, Bureau of Marketing & Development, ADRA International

Out in the Cotopaxi highlands, in central Ecuador, they call it a miracle.

The miracle, mind you, is a long stretch of plastic pipe—14 kilometers, give or take a few meters—that winds down from a mountain lake nestled in the foothills of the Angamarca Range across a perilous but breathtaking track of land, bringing a steady supply of water to the Quechua village of San Antonio de Guatubamba.

Wanting to see the pipeline, I climbed early one Sunday morning into the flat bed of an old pick-up truck along with a group of Quechua farmers. Going by car was clearly not their idea, as they seemed more inclined to walk over the mountains.

“Before the water came,” said Segundo Jacome in Spanish, raising his voice so that I would hear him over the noise of the engine, “we depended on God’s will for water.” Segundo was the president of San Antonio’s pipeline project, and seemed to speak as much on behalf of himself and his family as he did for the rest of the farmers in the area.

Apparently, in years past, they felt that God’s will had not wished for the kind of steady rain that farmers had hoped for, and they worried that their increasing inability to tend to their crops and feed their families would eventually bring ruin to the entire community. After all, a farmer needs his water, and in good supply, Segundo said quite pointedly, to soften the ground before he sows, and to keep the seeds pushing up from the ground until harvest time.

But at some point in his life, water became a problem, and the problem, in turn, a big headache. What to do?

The road we were on—steep, dusty, cut into the ribs of a steep mountain—was wide enough for one vehicle, and little else. That didn’t deter our driver from using the road freely, as if it was meant to be traveled like a high-speed two-lane road. This, naturally, didn’t bother anyone; it was common practice throughout Ecuador.

Driving over the mountains we passed horsemen, motorcyclists, and women walking alongside their llamas. No trucks, thank goodness. Around a bend, we came head on with a herder and his sheep. The animals, with their master, stayed on course over the road unconcerned that we were coming toward them. As we slowed down to a crawl, a cloud of dust passing over us, the entire flock split down the middle, like water around a boat, then closed behind us with no effort at all.

An hour passed. Two. The road climbed several hundred feet to an area where one could see far toward the lower valleys and turn around and face a halting wall of green mountains. The temperature had already dropped considerably and a thick layer of clouds was passing over.

Ahead, the road ended. Only horses and hikers could go beyond this point, since nothing else would get through the rugged path ahead. We jumped out of the pick-up. From here it would be a 20-minute hike along a footpath and then down a steep ravine.

As I looked around, it was obvious that local farmers had used the terrain as efficiently as they could, plowing large irregular plots up and down the sides of the mountains, hoping that in doing so they would get more return for their efforts.

“That’s a pipeline up there,” said a young man, pointing toward the mountain. Using his finger, he traced the path of the pipes across an extensive portion of mountain until they disappeared in the distance behind a pile of rocks.

Getting water down the mountain was easier said than done. A pipeline, Segundo said, was something that every village in the area wished to have, but not all were willing to work and sweat and sacrifice for; laying pipes on these mountains is no easy feat. But Segundo and the rest of San Antonio weren’t going wait for the water to come to them.

In a partnership with an Ecuadorian government organization, a large part of the pipeline was built. Missing, however, was a critical 9,100 foot-long section that dropped into a narrow gorge on its way to the village. For several months nothing happened. The project stalled. Villagers had grown accustomed to delays, but now it seemed they were never going to get water. Unwilling to quit, the village elders met with ADRA to present the problem and, hopefully, return to San Antonio with an answer. Their ambitions did not go unheard. ADRA would lay the 20-foot pipes, but San Antonio would have to put the muscle—and sweat—behind the project.

The work ranged from surveying the mountainous terrain to hammering wooden spikes into the ground to keep track of the path of the pipes. Then came the heavy digging using picks and shovels to make a two-and-a-half foot deep trench and pull out all the boulders buried along the way. Backbreaking work. To bury that much pipe, everyone strong enough to lift a shovel was put to work—116 women, children, and men. Every day before dawn, the group hiked four hours over the mountains, dug up rocks and dirt for the better part of the day, then hiked back to the village. In these conditions, the average human being would have given up after the third day, but not the people of San Antonio. They pushed on for 15 days, undeterred. Nothing would come between them and their water.

The hike down the ravine was quick, although not without a tumble or two. To avoid breaking a limb, I grabbed onto the ends of the stiff clumps of knee-high grass and squatted down, bringing my body’s weight closer to the ground. This wasn’t the first time I was doing this, but I felt clumsy and slow. Naturally, Segundo and the other Quechuas knew exactly how to take on the steep slopes standing up; they whizzed down the mountain effortlessly, placing each step in the right place every time. My lungs and throat started to burn as I tried to take in the rarified air. This was high country—los páramos de Cotopaxi, as these highlands are known—nearly 13,000 feet above sea level. At this altitude, a local farmer will take in as much oxygen as a climber at, say, 2,000 feet below the summit of Mt. Rainier or Mt. Whitney. However, by the manner in which Segundo and the other men were walking, it was obvious to me they weren’t fazed in any visible way by the altitude.

We reached the bottom of the mountain. Up ahead lay an exposed section of pipe about 20 feet long. Only a few sections had not been buried in the ground. This one spanned a small gully and the topography didn’t allow for its burial. No one minded leaving it exposed, a man said. After all, they’d had plenty of pipe to bury on either side of it. The men gathered around the length of pipe as they would around a shiny new car and tapped it gently. Inside was their hard-earned water. How could they not be proud of it?

All their work seemed like a good idea for all the obvious reasons: villagers would have a dependable supply of fresh, clean water, and so would their cattle and fields.

“The water,” said Manuel Pilliza, a farmer whose fields were near the valley, “is helping us grow better alfalfa and that’s improving the quality of the milk we get from the cows.”

What Manuel was trying to get at was profits. Better milk meant better prices at the market. He went over the numbers with me like this:

“In San Antonio we can sell a liter of milk for only 20 cents. But if we increase the quality of the milk, we can sell the same liter for 65 to 70 cents in the city.” That’s triple the current price. Of course, healthy alfalfa and plenty of water would have a considerable impact on pushing up the quality of the milk and its price. This also meant that farmers could work to improve other crops, including potatoes, which are popular in the area.

“If we can produce more potatoes, then we can build a small potato chip factory,” said Segundo. “We can do so much.”

This was the hopeful sort of conversation I would hear from other farmers. No longer would they have to depend on the shifting mood of the weather. They could have water every day, in a steady supply. Suddenly, San Antonio had found the way to move forward. The pipeline, it was clear to me, had changed their lives.

We spent the rest of the morning hiking out over the mountains and back into our old beat-up pick-up truck.

That afternoon all of San Antonio gathered inside the courtyard of the local school to eat and toast and jump up and down in celebration of their water. Soon a storm engulfed all of us. I stood in the middle of the village under a driving rain and watched.

There can’t be too much of a good thing, I thought. Drenched, everyone else seemed to agree.

Related Site: ADRA International