As you can imagine, in a place that receives twenty or more feet of rain a year, there are more than a few streams and rivers around Shell. Today Quesla went with the seventh and eighth graders as the collected water samples from several of the rivers.

Streams and rivers in Ecuador are used for many things, and bathing is one of them. Most people don't have showers and hot water in their houses, so they take their bath in the river.

The stream in this picture is called the Motolo. It runs through the middle of town, and is polluted with sewage and other waste. We took our samples to the missionary hospital in Shell to see what kinds of bacteria are in them.

One of the places we collected water from is also the kids favorite swimming hole. It's a river called the Alpayacu. Can you see Quesla in the picture below? That's Loren jumping into the water.