Pastor Efrain

During the Christmas holidays we had a visit from Pastor Efrain and his wife. Efrain is pastor of Iglesia Canaan in San Pablo, a village at Lake Atitlan. He has been a proponent of the biosand filter in his village for several years.

During his visit the course of the conversation moved toward the maintenance of the filter and home hygiene to prevent disease transmission. I asked Efrain if he had ever looked through a microscope to see the microbes in the water.

Since he had never seen them before, I set up a slide in the microscope with some water that I had taken from the Guacalate river that runs by our site in El Tizate. We looked at a great variety of protists in the water sample. Efrain was amazed and expressed his gratitude in being able to finally see the "animalitos" for himself. He also said half-jokingly that after seeing them he felt like going to the pharmacy to pick up plenty of medicine.