Julie Nyhoff de Valladares. Imagine living without a bathroom—no tub, shower, or functioning toilet! Only a crude outhouse made by stringing together some ragged tarps for privacy. Furthermore, imagine living without any laundry facilities. The only way you can wash your family’s clothes is to carry them by hand to the nearest river, which is over a mile away. Then you have the challenge of lugging the heavy wet clothes back to your house! What I’ve described is daily life for many of the rural poor families of Honduras.
Back in the spring of 2023, the mayor of Taulebé and his wife Brenda approached the Society of the Good Shepherd to see if we could help locally with the situation I have just described. They brought with them an engineer who had designed a complete sanitary unit that could be economically installed in the backyards of rural homes. The sanitary unit includes a toilet, shower, and pila—all on a concrete slab.
A pila is the basic laundry setup that most families use throughout Central America. It consists of two parts. The first part is a deep concrete water basin, where clean water is stored. This storage is essential because in most of Honduras, running water is not available every day. For example, in the Taulebé area, community water is available only once every three to five days. If families don’t have a place to store the water on the days when the water is running, then they have no water the rest of the time. They have to walk to the nearest river to do their laundry. But the Honduran people are resourceful. Often, then, they will turn a discarded chest freezer, bathtub, or garbage can into a makeshift pila.
The second part of a pila is a sink with a drain and a built-in washboard. Families use a bucket or pan to dip clean water out of the basin portion of the pila, and then they use the sink area to wash whatever needs washing: hands, babies, and clothes.
We were able to build a number of these units during the summer of 2023 at a cost of only $500 each. The local government provided the labor and connected the families to the community water and sewer systems for free. All we had to do was to pay for the materials. In other words, for about the cost of a washing machine in the U.S., we can supply a family with a private toilet and shower and a complete laundry setup.
Last year, after we sent out a newsletter about these sanitation units, we received an enthusiastic response from our readers, together with donations to continue to build more sanitary units—which we have been doing. Despite severe inflation throughout Honduras, the cost of the materials for these units has risen only $50 per unit since the summer of 2023—bringing our present cost to $550. Although $550 may not sound like much money to most people in the U.S., it represents almost a month’s salary for minimum wage workers in Honduras. The rural families we are serving live mostly on farming and often earn less than minimum wage. It would take them years to save enough for one of these sanitary units.
Each concrete slab takes a day to pour. Assembling the plumbing and constructing the aluminum walls and roof take another two to three days. The government’s engineer oversees each installment to make sure it is done properly. He is also in charge of purchasing the materials for the jobs and hiring the workers. As it has been the rainy season here between October and December, building these units took even longer during that period. Sometimes it was only with great difficulty that the work truck was able to reach the construction sites, as some of these homes are located far from a paved road.
The mayor and especially his wife, Brenda, work hard to spearhead this sanitation project, making sure the units go to the most needy families in the community. Brenda asked us to thank all our donors for making it possible to continue this work. And, of course, the families that have received these units are extremely thankful for making their laundry tasks so much easier, for raising their level of sanitation, and for providing them with human dignity.
The Society of the Good Shepherd, P. O. Box 122, Amberson, PA 17210 • (717) 349-7033
Click on the following link if you would care to make a donation to the work in Honduras: Honduras Donations
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