If week one was all about landing and finding our rhythm, week two was about getting our hands in the water, literally. Team Aguaciy (that’s me, Charlie, and Isabella!) officially kicked off our lagoon treatment experiments, and let me tell you…things got real murky, real fast.
Our mission this week? Turn murky, sediment-filled lagoon water into something “clean” enough to be considered for consumption (don’t worry! no one actually drank the water hehe). And we’re doing it using Moringa seeds! Yep, actual seeds from the Moringa tree. They’re locally available, super sustainable, and (here’s the wild part) naturally contain proteins that help clump together the gunk floating around in water. The scientific names for the process above are coagulation and flocculation.
We prepped, stirred, filtered, and waited. Our turbidity goal is to get the water below 1.0 NTU (with hopes of hitting the gold standard of 0.3 NTU), which is crucial for the next step of our treatment: solar disinfection. It’s slow work, and sometimes messy, but watching the water clear up feels like watching progress in real time.
Aguaciy’s Petrifilm and Colilert tests for Moringa seed, control, and SODIS procedures
Safe Water is a Process, Not a Product
Before coming here, I used to think of safe water as a switch—either you have it or you don’t. But what I’m learning is that it’s more like a chain, and every link matters. Just because a sample looks clear doesn’t mean it’s free of pathogens. Just because a community has a water tank doesn’t mean it has water justice.
This was driven home by our visit to Cántaro Azul. Their work is grounded in community, not just in terms of installing systems, but in earning the trust of the people who use them. That trust takes time. It takes understanding the pace and rhythm of a place like Cuxtitali, where water comes through a community-managed system called Chupactic.
We read about it in Ramos Castillo’s work on water governance: how Cuxtitali’s system works not in spite of its informal structure, but because of its deep-rooted social networks. This is a type of engineering I never learned about in class, built on relationships rather than rebar.
Beyond the Filter: Rethinking “Helping”
Reading Michael Hobbes’ article “Stop Trying to Save the World” this week was… uncomfortable in the best way. It made me face the reality that well-intentioned water projects often fail, not because the technology is bad, but because the context is ignored. The idea that we can scale solutions like startups or chase the “lowest overhead” as a sign of virtue? Hobbes challenges that hard, and I needed that.
As we prototype our own system, I’m asking different questions now. Not just “Does this work?” but “Who is it for?” and “How does it fit into the daily lives of people who already know how to live with water, scarcity, and all?”
What’s Staying With Me
I came here thinking I’d leave with better engineering skills (and I will), but the real growth is happening in how I feel, how I question, how I design, and how I want to show up in this work.
Here’s to week three: more reports, more teamwork, and more reasons to believe that engineering can be human, slow, joyful, and just.
My awesome Professor Dr. Loyo testing our Colilert tests for E. coli by identifying any fluorescence and yellow color
~ A few days left!
Yaz = wrapping up an amazing abroad trip!