With the priest’s permission, I hired a couple of local men who knew how to construct cisterns. We built a 4500L concrete cistern, and installed electric pumps to pump water from the wells, through two filters, and into the cistern. We shoveled, carried, and mixed many tons of cement, sand, and stone, hauled hundreds of bricks, and dug ditches to lay the pipes from the well to the cistern. The men working with me usually had difficulty finding work, so they were happy to have a regular job for a while. Within the cistern, I intended to have the water chlorinated every day. My plan was to fill the cistern at night, add chlorine, and distribute the water during the day. I had formed a group of citizens who were interested and involved in the project, and wanted to continue treating and distributing the water when I was gone.

But about two weeks into construction, after the cistern was basically completed, my initial conversation with the priest came back to me in a devastating way. Padre Jhonny called me into his office and told me he wanted to pay me for the expenses of the system so that he would be in control of the distribution of drinking water.

"I want to buy the construction from you," Padre Jhonny said.

One of his friends chimed in, "You need to tell me how to treat the water because I will be in charge of the system when you are gone."

I told him who I had taught about the system and explained that they knew more about the system so I was going to leave them in charge of the maintenance.

"No," he said. "The father said he was going to put me in charge."

My initial perplexity at this demand was clarified when I found out that Jhonny’s cousin was the mayor, and the priest himself was heavily involved in politics. In Muisne, politics is basically synonymous with corruption. Everyone who was familiar with the situation told me the priest wanted to control the system so that he could sell the water for a big profit while he and his cousin could take credit for bringing clean water to Muisne.

"You can’t trust him," they would tell me. "He’s a politician."

If I sold the system to the priest, the people of Muisne would recognize that the water was being used for political reasons, and would not have confidence in the quality of the water. In addition, the priest would sell the water for an inflated price, burdening those people who did choose to buy water from the church. Finally, the priest was not familiar with the design and construction of the treatment system, and had not expressed any interest in my project. I did not have confidence in his ability to effectively decontaminate the water, and I wanted the group of citizens—which included a doctor, an engineer, and three teachers—to direct the treatment and distribution of the water.