'Kind of like the rez'

The villagers of Guadalupe, Ecuador, had never seen an American like Andrea "Edgie" Dailey.

Save for the fact she was a head taller than them, she could have been one of them, with her smooth brown skin, almond eyes and straight hair.

"Where is she from?" they kept asking the translator.

The translator explained that Dailey was indigenous to North America just like the Quechua are indigenous to South America.

"Really?" queried the villagers. It was news to them that there were Indians in North America too.

Dailey, a 20-year-old college junior from Pinon, Ariz., is the only Native American in the Ft. Lewis College Chapter of Engineers without Borders, an all-volunteer organization that assists developing nations with their engineering needs.

She recently returned from two weeks in the tiny Andean village of Guadalupe, where she and six colleagues installed improvements to the village's water system.

She shivered in her sleeping bag in the 13,000-foot-high community center, ate guinea pig, and went two weeks without a shower.

And she wouldn't trade it for the world.

"It was a really good experience," said Dailey, who is Many Goats, born for Tangle People. "I would love to do it again."

In fact, Dailey is saving her money for a return trip to visit Guadalupe again and see more of the country she came to love. She would also like to take part in another Engineers without Borders project in Laos.

Dailey and her colleagues spent last semester raising funds and planning the project, so "when we got there we knew what we were going to do," she explained.

There were a few glitches: They had bought the wrong size pipe and had to make a long journey to the nearest hardware store for adapters. And they discovered all the young men of the village, whom they were counting on for the labor, had taken jobs in the nearby larger city of Riobamba and only came home on the weekends.

"It was kind of like here on the rez," Dailey said.

But with a workforce of women, children, and old men, they finished the project two days ahead of schedule and had time for a side visit to the world-famous woolens market at Otavalo.

"Everyone in the village worked really hard," Dailey said. "There was a 75-year-old man there who I think worked harder than all of us."

Then there was the land dispute, another situation that was not exactly alien to the group's only Native.

"The neighboring village said the water source (a runoff pool) was on their land," Dailey recalled.

Being as they were Engineers without Borders and not Negotiators without Borders, the Americans stood aside and let the two villages wrangle it out. Eventually they came up with a nice compromise: the volunteers would install a tap at the water source, where the residents of the neighboring village liked to water their cattle, and the rest of the water could run down the mountain to Guadalupe.

The villagers wanted their water to be cleaner and more accessible, so the volunteers enclosed the runoff pool and created a crude particulate filter of cloth and rocks (EWB likes to use appropriate technology that can be understood and maintained by the villagers after they leave).

Then they installed a series of communal taps that the villagers could eventually supplement with individual connections to their homes.

One man couldn't wait and tapped into the system with a garden hose fortified by strips cut from old tires. The water line from the source was so steep, explained civil engineering major Dailey, that residents on the downhill side of the village were getting 121 pounds per square inch of water pressure - far more than the average municipal system in America.

"It basically exploded his toilet," Dailey said. "We used him as an example of why you need the right parts to connect to the line."

What's next for this globe-trotting young Diné? She'd like to join the Peace Corps after she graduates. And then, ironically, she might join the Army.

"This trip made me realize how much I enjoy traveling and learning about other cultures," she said.

Of course, Dailey realizes that right there in her hometown of Piñon, there are people not much better off than the villagers of Guadalupe.

"One of our sponsors wants to do projects closer to home, and she was very interested that I'm from the Navajo Nation," Dailey said.

If the project gets off the ground, Dailey will offer her services as a liaison, going around to different chapters and assessing their engineering needs.

She's also sharing her EWB experience in the hopes of recruiting more minority students to the organization - and by the way, you don't have to be an engineering major to join.

"I think it's good for people in developing countries to see some different faces," Dailey said. "Otherwise they think all Americans are white."

Information: www.fortlewis.edu/ewb.

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