Many of the families do not have Latrines..

I started working with Jun in Lagoa dos Cágados, Ouricuri and Serinha, Brazil. This community is 1 hour away from Quijingui city by bus. We live in Lagoa dos Cágados. It has a population of about 300 and the population is really young.

The people are so nice and kind. They always help each other. Ouricuri is as big as Lagoa dos Cágados, but the families are poorer. Serinha is smaller than these two communities and this is the poorest community between the three. There still is no water tank system. Each house stores the rainwater.

The first two weeks, we did interviews with the families. Through the interviews I knew and realized a lot of things. All of the family we interviewed have Bolsa Familia program, it means the family has less than the lowest income. Most of the families we talked to do not have latrines, even though some of them have a TV. Many children have repeated their grades and generally they stop going to school when they are 18 years old, even though they haven't finish their study. Even the parents don't care a lot about their children's study, more than half of the parents are analphabet. So, here, the children go to school to get the Bolsa Familia program.

I think the biggest problem is the employment. Here most of the people work on the farm, but, especially in the dry season, there is not enough employment for all of them. In general, the person can earn only R$100. It's really difficult to support a big family with this small salary.
  

After the interviews, we planted fruit trees. Actually, it is difficult to grow them, because of the dry season. We told the families it would be better making some shadow and some stuff to prevent the animals from eating them. Now the plants are growing little by little. And we also started to have 5 English classes per week and we made activities with the children.
   We started building latrines. We will make 10 latrines in these 3 communities. To make the latrines, at first, we had to make a hole of 1 meter and then we prepared the cover which is made of cement. This week we've just finished making 6 holes of 1 meter.

Greetings Risako, Japan

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