“Enguros”, those are the gang members who stand off the side of the road radioing in every car that leaves and enters the city boundaries. At least, that’s what I’m told in a seemingly calm manner by Daniel, a worker for a local non-profit organization and my driver for the day. He’s just picked me up from my hotel in the city of El Progresso, Honduras, where I spent the night coping with the uncertainty of this new place.

As Daniel’s statement about the gang members sits with me uncomfortably, I notice a family birthday party fit with balloons and piñatas just beyond a hastily built wooden fence. Gang members and birthday parties don’t typically go together in my mind, but this internal questioning is quickly stopped by a sharp jolt as our truck rolls over a bumpy section in the now gravel road. 

As we inched our way further and further from the city, the view from the tinted truck window transitioned from densely packed houses to fields of African palm trees. Gaps between their pipe-like trunks revealed hastily built wooden structures which I assumed to be homes of the palm field workers. Only, these homes coincided with brightly colored flags and banners which felt out of place in such a remote environment. After two hours of driving, Daniel finally brought the truck, and my stomach, to rest in front of a sign reading “Aldea de Dos Caminos”. I’ve just stepped into my first community as a Contextual Engineer… what do I do now?

I had been studying Agricultural Engineering for the past three years and was excited to help with the initial data collection and planning of a water distribution system. To me, the problem was quite straight forward and all we had to do was collect the necessary information so that we could begin the design of a water system that would bring clean and accessible drinking water to the people of Dos Caminos.

On the first day I stood outside of the village church using a laser eye level to collect elevation data. There were a few community members standing there curiously watching me walk back and forth between the church and river border to take measurements. I felt distanced from them, unable to communicate what exactly it was I was doing and why I was there. It was on the second day that my advisor, the head of the Contextual Engineering Research Group (CERG), arrived and recommended we go talk to some of the community members.

We visited several households that day, talking to people and asking them questions about their lives and opinions on the community. We learned that the men had recently been laid off from their jobs in the palm fields and those wooden structures between the trees were encampments of people preventing workers from tending to the land. The parents told us about their high value on education, and the struggles they had with sending their children to school because they didn’t have one in the village and the roads were impossible to navigate during floods.

Over the next several days, we talked to nearly every household. People were excited to see us and get to know who we were and what we were doing. We hung out with the president of the community, and he taught us how to weave hammocks and play “Trompo”. At the end of the trip, we were even invited to a birthday party that the community was throwing.

While it seemed counterproductive to spend time chatting with people when our original purpose was to collect data that we could use to build a water system, I soon realized that this was the best way to address the needs of the community. Talking with community members and opening yourself to their perspectives is an important part of reaching “assimilation” which allows the engineer to make decisions more aligned with the values of the community. There are many ways to approach your conversations and decide what types of questions to ask, some of which are discussed further in this article written by members of CERG. As nerve-wracking and non-engineering as it might seem, talking to people is the best thing you can do when you first step foot into a new community. Would I have developed this meaningful relationship with the people had I kept my eyes in the laser level? Would I have a true understanding of their needs and values had I only seen things through the tinted truck window? By immersing yourself in their culture and way of living, you position yourself to design with others instead of for them.