[upbeat music]
[soft guitar music]
[speaking Spanish]
- When I got here 28 years ago,
we had a huge rain storm every month,
even during the dry season.
This year it was terribly dry.
It stopped raining at the end of December
and hasn't rained a drop since.
January, February, March, April, May, June,
July, August, September, nine months of no rain.
And it's heartbreaking because I know it's comin'.
After that, it's gonna get worse and worse and worse.
There's no reason that
we can't think of a way to store that water
for our needs when there is no water,
during the dry summer months.
We gotta face this problem now to avoid a crisis.
Living in the midst of the jungle is a battle.
You are battling with nature.
So you fight back.
You try to survive.
We're gonna have to, I was thinking about
how do you get water to all these people?
And the dam is the answer.
[soft somber music]
[shaking tambourines and singing in Spanish]
We all have a star that we try to follow.
I think that's where the inspiration for the song
"To Dream The Impossible Dream" comes from.
To follow that star wherever it leads you,
no matter how hopeless, no matter how far
to fight for what's right without question or pause,
and to... [expectant pause] be willing to [expectant pause].
Come on you guys.
To be willing to march at the helm
for?
A Heavenly cause.
Come on, you guys, I thought that song,
the words of that song were written in your hearts.
But anyhow, yeah, follow your star.
Keep doing the best you can do
and let the light shine through you.
In the name of the Father, - The Father,
- The Son, - The Son,
- And the Holy Spirit, - And the Holy Spirit,
- Amen. - Amen.
- Amen, todos. - Amen.
- ¡Muy bien!
[shaking tambourines and singing hymn in Spanish]
- My name is Father Wally Kasuboski.
My middle name is Paul, so in Panama, they call me Pablo.
So there, the people know me as "Padre Pablo."
I think it was November of 1988 that I arrived
in Panama under orders of obedience from my superiors.
[laughs]
I had no choice.
Normally we receive our orders and we complete them.
So I said, "Okay, I'll go."
This is coffee that the Kunas dry and they grind up,
they shell it and they grind it up and they
bake it just like we do.
They boil it and it makes good coffee.
[speaking Spanish]
- [cameraman] They're talking about the school,
Catholic church in Green Lake has helped though.
- [cameraman] Pablo has been here five years.
There's his radio tower.
He's put together this compound in his five years,
but more amazing, of course, the water projects,
the schools, the hospitals,
the jobs he's provided.
- When I first got there I went out visiting
some of the local people down the Pan-American Highway
and it was a hot dusty day and I walked into
this little ranchito with a thatched roof
and they said, "Oh, Padre, thanks for coming to visit us.
Would you like a glass of water?"
I said, "Oh, please, I'd love a glass of water."
When they passed it to me, I looked into it
and it had about 25 little squigglies swimming around in it
and I said, "Do you drink this water?"
"Si, Padre."
"Well, where do you get this water from?"
"We buy it."
"You buy this water?"
Every house I visited, it was the same story
and I had to get dewormed every six months.
And I said, "Oh, Lord, somethin' has to change here."
And that's when I went back to my little chapel in my house
and got down on my knees and prayed for wisdom,
that the Lord would help me help those people
solve this problem.
- [cameraman] Before the Tortí Water Project,
this is the kind of water people were drinking?
- [Pablo] Yes.
- [cameraman] It's incredible they weren't all sick
all the time.
- [Pablo] Most of them were sick all the time.
- [cameraman] The Tortí is just one community.
You've got many communities which need cleaner water?
- Oh yeah, we've got
the whole Cañasas Water System, which covers eight communities
and that project isn't finished yet.
We've still got 20 kilometers of pipe to bury,
which we need to get the money for to bury it.
We need to buy the pipe.
We need $125,000 to finish off that project.
- [cameraman] How many families will that serve?
- That'll serve approximately 4,000 people.
But little by little.
- [cameraman] Little by little.
Want a drink of water, Peter?
- [Peter] No thank you.
[chuckling]
[birds chirping]
[engine rumbling]
Gettin' material onsite is 50% of the project,
just getting material onsite
because the transportation costs,
and the road, getting the road in,
which is a real challenge.
But the objective is get the dam built.
[engines rumbling]
[speaking Spanish]
- Right now, we've just come out of a terrible drought--
actually, it was kind of scary-- where it didn't rain
for almost four months, so our water system
almost dried up in the mountains
where we're building the dam,
and so we had to do a lot of trucking of water
this past summer.
All the water that comes in, it goes out immediately.
Remember, there are 5,000 people on this system.
- [man] And this is the dry season.
- And this the dry season.
And the demand for water is incredible
during the dry season.
'Cause people normally catch water off their roofs.
- [man] In some kind of barrels or whatever.
- Yeah, that's perfectly logical.
Can you imagine getting up and not having water
to take a shower for three weeks or four weeks?
Not even water for a cup of coffee?
As they kept saying, "Padre, we don't even have
enough water for a cup of coffee."
We're on our way back.
[rooster crowing]
- Wells do not work in this area because when
Panama came up out of the ocean,
there's all this ocean water trapped in between
these two mountain ranges on both sides of us,
and when the water evaporated, it left the salt.
So when you drill a well the water comes out salty.
So the only thing we can rely on right now
is the water that falls up in the mountains,
preserve the watershed, collect the water up there,
and then pipe it down to the communities.
That's our only source of drinking water.
Because that is where the rains fall
and the water comes down into the river
and that's where we're building a dam because
during the long dry season, the river dries up,
and there's no water.
So the dam will provide water at the times
when the river dries up.
- Nope, they cut it all down.
They cut down everything since I was gone.
- Up above the watershed is where it's really bad
because a guy, a school teacher,
cut down about 10 acres.
[speaking in Spanish]
Right there.
[engine rumbling]
- Right, it's completely different.
The dam does not serve the people of Tortí,
that's a whole different water system.
Tortí Playa Chuzo is one,
San Jose Cañasas, where the dam is, is completely separate.
- No, but they're gonna need one.
I told the government that they have to
think about building a dam because the population
is growing and growing,
and if the Tortí water system dries up,
they're gonna be in big problems.
- Naturally you wanna try to do something
to better somebody else's life and you ask
God to help you do that, I mean, God's gonna say,
okay, are you prepared to make the decisions
that have to be made?
Do you have the intellectual capacity?
Do you have the studies required to do this?
And if you don't have 'em, are you gonna get
somebody to help you do it?
Which I did.
And so this engineering firm out of Canada,
through friends of mine, came down and designed
the dam free ,
free of charge.
All I can say is they did this fantastic investigation,
not only on the location, but the possible
seismic activities, that's, in other words,
the earthquake intensity in the area,
the amount of water it would hold,
and the hydrology, how much water fall's in the area,
did all the elevations on that.
- There's always the negative and positive aspect
of every issue, nobody likes to see jungle cut down,
and nature being affected.
Hey, is human life worth more than a tree,
or an animal life?
And I say 'yes'.
All I know is that without water,
there is no life.
And I've been working on water systems for 28 years
in this area.
The putrid water that a lot of the people were drinking,
before we started this project,
caused a lot of sicknesses and death.
Who wants to see a little kid die from thirst?
I don't.
[speaking in Spanish]
- People volunteer, they come here and they volunteer
with all that knowledge and it's just been
a great, wonderful support for this mission,
and for our projects.
- [blond man] Trying to get every angle I can here.
There you go.
Oh, I dropped it.
- [brunette man] I got it.
- [blond man] You kiddin' me? - [brunette man] Nope, I got it.
- [blond man] There's just no way to get in here decent.
- [man] Just screwing around is what they're doin'.
- [brunette man] I'm doin' more than screwing around.
- [man] You keep droppin' it, too.
- [blond man] I'm not even gonna be happy about this because
when we get it together, that gasket's in pretty bad shape.
- [brunette man] Oil drippin' all over the place, huh?
- [blond man] That's what I'm thinkin'.
[conversations in background]
- I got it. I thought she was heavier.
[metal clanking]
Whoever designed that should be shot for doin' it.
Boy oh boy, some of that design is terrible.
- [Pablo] Through the generous donations of people
in the states, I set up this foundation and the foundation
has acquired a considerable amount of equipment,
just all kinds of things that a lot of places
in Panama doesn't have.
- Trying to get the people to understand
the connection between forestation and water,
or deforestation and the lack of water,
is a very slow process, and if they don't hear it
from the government, and the government keeps
giving people permission to cut down trees,
it's gonna be a disaster.
It's already turning into a disaster.
If it isn't stopped immediately
and reforestation takes place.
You know, the land was grabbed up by a lot of people
that had no environmental consciousness
and the big movement was cattle.
When the farmers go into the banks,
"Well, we want a loan."
"Well, how much pastureland do you have?"
"We got 100 acres."
"Is that all you got?"
"No, you got 100 acres of forest.
"Well, we'll give you a loan for cattle
"if you cut down the other hundred acres.
"And if you don't cut down the other hundred acres
we won't give you a loan."
So, I mean, you got the national bank of a country,
very surreptitiously if you wanna say it that way,
supporting deforestation.
Then they kept cutting, cutting, cutting trees.
Pasture, slash and burn.
And it gradually gets drier and drier and drier.
- [Pablo] Farmers are so sick and tired of farming,
a bunch of 'em, and the rich teak companies come up
and say, "Hey, we'll give you $2,000 an acre for your farm."
And they come on a stack of $100,000 and
these poor farmers have never seen $100,000 in their life.
And they say, "Where do I sign?"
[chuckles dryly]
And then they cut down every tree on
the farm and plant teak.
Teak is a fast-growing wood,
but this is for commercial purposes.
It's not reforestation, per se,
it's for commercial tree farming.
The problem with teak is that during the dry summer months,
they lose every single leaf, they're a stick
with branches on it stickin' up all over.
The teak tree does not give off humidity during
the summer months like the Espavé or some
of the native varieties, which causes clouds
and then draws in the water from the ocean.
Teak does the opposite, it makes the whole thing
drier and drier and drier.
[somber music]
Thousands and thousands of acres
have been planted in this area.
I mean, the program on reforestation is wonderful,
but plant native varieties of trees.
But how much money is in that?
So unless there's some control on the logging industry,
it's gonna be an uphill battle.
That's why it's so important that we have this watershed
that's totally virgin, virgin jungle,
and there are a lot of species up there
that the logging companies would just love
to get their hands on.
And it's worth, right now, millions of dollars,
just the wood that they could get out of there.
[engine rumbling]
- What the Sam Hill happened to the sugar?
[various conversations overlap]
You gotta be kidding.
[general chatter]
[speaking Spanish]
- If you come next year, you're gonna see it workin'.
- That's a whole year.
[speaking Spanish]
- They're gonna send you a photo by Internet.
- That's from them workin' on them bags.
- No, that. - From the cement.
- You need to clean up down at the crick.
- Tell him we could roll him in one of the barrels. - No way.
- One of them water barrels. - Roll him? - Down the hill.
- We want him to get him cleaned up. - Down the hill.
[speaking Spanish]
[laughter]
- Like the washer machine.
Okay, guys, let's get out of here.
[engine rumbling]
- It would be pretty disastrous if this project
is not completed.
Pretty disastrous.
That's why there's always a certain urgency
to finish it,
make sure everything you can possibly do
to keep it going, you do.
[crickets chirping]
- [inaudible] the Eucharist.
The judge says, "Well, we don't need all that land."
What is one judge got to say about the people's right
to protect their watershed--
if it's a hundred acres or a thousand acres or 2,000 acres--
that people thought it important
to protect their whole jungle area,
nobody's up there contaminating their water
with insecticides, pesticides, herbicides,
with cattle, with pigs, and all that stuff
goes right into the water intake
and the people are drinking that and the people say,
"We don't want that anymore.
"We wanna go back to its natural form
"so the water remains pure and clean."
- It's out of our hands, actually.
Only thing we can do is tell the people
and let people know the truth
because there was a lot of things hidden.
So the people wouldn't find out that the common people
don't know about.
So the investigation is up to us.
And then we put the facts before the government
and then if the government acts on those facts
after investigation, well, that would be wonderful,
but I don't suspect they will.
It's a big, it's a big issue right now
in the life of the water committees and in my life.
Gotta get the land titled in the name of the water system.
Because I want that in the hands of the people.
So that the people can control their area
where they drink the water from.
- We can hammer drill the ones that we didn't hit right, okay.
We'll [inaudible] at 'em right now and just put 'em in.
But we all gotta be on the same page.
Not 14 guys goin' one direction
and 14 goin' the other direction.
Today anyway, today anyway.
- That's why we're here.
- You wanna do somethin', come and see me,
'cause it might not fit in my plan.
If you wanna take over, you take over
and I'll go on the top of the bank.
That's as simple as possible.
Got it?
- You just tell me what material you need
and where you need it.
- Okay, now we're on the same page.
I've got it figured out how we wanna do it,
how we should do it. Alright.
[engine rumbling]
[cement mixer humming]
[truck's back-up beeper blasts high-pitched tone]
- [Pablo] It's functioning right now and because of the help from
all the volunteers that came down from Wisconsin in January,
we were able to raise the dam four feet
and we calculate that it has tripled the capacity
of the dam and we know from last year's experience
that the water that was stored up there last year lasted
a little over a month during the dry season.
We should have enough water to cover three months
instead of one month like last year.
[bright music]
- [Pablo] The government right now issued a decree that
there shall be no more deforestation
or logging
for a year until the whole thing is evaluated.
No cutting down of trees, so it's not just
the watersheds that's gonna be protected now,
but also the areas around the watersheds.
At last something good
for the future of the people
has happened.
Now enforcement is another question.
[bright guitar music]
[singing in Spanish]
[cheering and applause]
[conversations in Spanish]
[speaking in Spanish]
[soft music]
- Tired.
Lots of work has gone into this,
and thankful that there's so many people that are helping.
Because if it was not for the help of the people,
this would not exist.
- Water.
A gift from God
that we got to fight to preserve.
If you don't have anything to die for,
do you have anything to live for?
[soft music]
[singing in Spanish]
[upbeat guitar music]
- [announcer] From Mass To Mountain
is available on DVD at masstomtn.com/dvd.