Rain catchment systems, pianos, and colleges... oh my

-Today we headed to the Nyamasare Catholic Church, which is located up the hill from the clinic, in order to conduct a presentation on clean water. We arrived early so that we could experience the services. The service consisted of nearly 2 hours of wonderful music! : ) We all walked away in wonder at the wonderful voices that the parishioners have. Typically churches will have a choir that provide the backbone to the sound but the whole congregation had wonderful voices and the dancing was equally beautiful. The instruments consisted solely of drums and a triangle that was wrung with rebar. Following the services, Phil and I conducted a presentation on clean water. We discussed the use of PUR, WaterGuard, and the 3 Pot Method. Following the presentations, the church thanked us for our work and the presentations and then made some lofty requests. They started off pretty basic, asking for a rainwater catchment system… but then things got a little strange when they asked us for a piano and then for me to build them the “Scott Webb Memorial Engineering College.” Unfortunately, I feel that previous NGOs have given the community convoluted expectations. Roy took the time to explain to the congregation that EWB strives to work with the community on a level basis to provide technical support that they may not have ready access to. While EWB UCSB won’t be providing a piano and a university, hopefully our future projects can help bring clean drinking water to the community.
-Scott

Roy... dancing...

- No rest for the weary, as Saturday was just another day of work for us. However, today was a little special, as we made our way up to the Nyamasare School where the community was thanking another NGO, One Kid One World, who had provided funds for a computer lab and a solar system. The celebrations were a lot of fun and consisted of lots of singing and dancing. Even our advisor, Roy, got up and showed off some embarrassing dance moves! Later in the evening we met with another EWB group from the University of Wyoming who just began an assessment trip for the community of Waondo. Their EWB group consists entirely of undergrads, which contrasts sharply from our graduate school dominated EWB group. Tomorrow Julia is going to be spending a typical day with a Luandan Woman, from milking the cows to doing the washing, while we head off to a local Catholic Church to take in the service and give a talk about clean drinking water.
- Scott

3 water tanks installed... 1 to go!

On Friday we were able to complete the whole westside of the main building except for the addition of the first flush. We now have 3 of the 4 catchment systems complete! It rained last night, but unfortunately we didn’t have the pipes from the tanks to the roofs connected, so we didn’t catch any water. Its looking pretty ominous tonight, however, as we can see lightning and dark clouds in the distance. We’re hoping we’ll get some more rain so we can test our catchment systems!
- Scott

General Thoughts

-This morning we spent the morning preparing the south facing wall of the main building to run the gutters. After lunch we headed to Mbita, which was about a 30 minute ride west of Luanda, to visit Benson and then Mark’s school. The schools are very simple, and the students appear to have very little in terms of supplies, but they appear to be all avid learners. When prompted to answer a question, the snap their fingers vigorously trying to get the teachers attention. Compared to a US school, they are all very very well behaved and appear to be much more eager to learn

-In general, people in Kenya are very friendly and nice, almost to a fault… We’ve had to walk home in the dark twice because too friendly a Kenya talked us into the wee hours of the night. Generally everyone is happy to meet us and we have numerous visitors a day. It seems as if we get a visitor every morning… a person who generally just wants to come by and meet us… or give their daily salutations. The children are all quite hilarious as well. I think people must know we are coming for miles due to the chorus of children yelling “mzungu” or in English “whiteperson.” Our walk home in the evening is also entertaining, as we are usually ambushed by children and adults alike who want to shake our hands or give their greetings.
-Scott

The "Goop-i-Nator"

-I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before… but it is hot. In the shade the work is not to hard but the sun just beats you down and keeping hydrated has been an important preoccupation of us all. So today we completely finished the back two buildings, including sealing them with a black smearable substance we call “goop.” The goopiNator, Nate, has become quite adapt at applying the goop.

-Meanwhile, Phil and Julia headed to a nearby school to teach the children and staff about clean water with Steven as a translator (from English to You). The education revolved around sanitation and the importance of handwashing. To keep the kids entertained, they performed two skits. In one, Julia was sick and then handled water. Phil then drank from the same water and then received the same sickness that Julia had. The children and teachers were really attentive, having numerous good questions following the educational workshop.

-With the west side of the main building completed, we started on the eastside. The lattice work went up and we were able to make some good progress, marking out and attaching all of the brackets required to hang the gutters.
-Scott

Opanga Means Steel

-In the morning we headed over to the Mercy school, which has a mix of regular community students and orphan students. The program seems to be very well put together, as even Chief Michael has enrolled his son in the program. The kids were all really cute and they used the opportunity to demonstrate their singing voices! Their song topics ranged from a song of greeting to educational songs that taught about AIDS. The children at the Mercy School are quick learners and right from the beginning to teach them English and Swahili whereas most schools begin to learn in grade 7. Following the introductions, we presented the students with exam books and pencils, which the teachers were very happy to receive.
-After the Mercy school, we started work at the clinic. During the days work we were able to finish the back east building and get started on the back west building and the front building. As all the gutters were handmade, figuring out how to join two pieces to turn a corner proved to be an interesting task. After a few bumps, however, we were able to figure out the best way to join two gutter pieces while minimizing the amount of water lost. We put in a lot of hardwork today but were very satisfied with our efforts. It also gave us a great opportunity to teach the local handymen the importance of certain design components, such as the first flush system to clean away dirty water from the first rain off the roof.
-Scott

A Very British/Kenyan Breakfast

-In the morning we got up and had a very British (Kenya was colonized by the Brits) but nice meal of jam, peanut butter, butter, bread, boiled eggs, honey, freshly grilled peanuts (very Kenyan), and the usual serving of tea.
-After some breakie we headed to the clinic where we were greeted by the clinic staff. We then had the opportunity to explain what ewb was about, and how we would be helping to implement a rainwater catchment system with their help. Following the meeting we broke up in two separate teams to tackle several water issues. Team Slow Sand Filter, starring Julia and the clinic driver Freddy set to work putting together the slow sand filter. Team Rainwater, featuring myself, Roy, Nate, Phil, Aaron, a polytanks tech, and Matthew, a local laborer, set out to work on the rainwater system. Aaron began by setting our outlet and overflow taps. You have to be a trapeze artist to conduct this job, because it involves climbing into, and most amazling, out of the very tall water tanks. Afterwards Meanwhile, Nate, Phil, Roy, and I proceeded to layout all the piping and gutters so that we could ensure we had enough. At this time we noticed that our large 15,000 liter tank had been busted during the transport. Polytanks wanted to repair it for us but we decided we didn’t want to start the clinic off with a broken tank and asked for a brand new one to be delivered. They eventually agreed, but they’ll have to make us a new one from scratch and we won’t get it till Friday.
-After lunch, we finally got a chance to start putting a system together. We choose the back east building because it was easy to reach the buildings roof without the use of ladders. Everything was proceeding well until we realized that the nails we purchased to mount the gutter brackets to the wall had no heads! There was no way we could mount the gutters… this was a problem because there was no big hardware store to bail us out. After 2 hours of trying to find a solution, we finally found that local roofing nails would do the trick. Within an hour we had the gutters up on the east side of the back east building. Julia had also finished her demonstration slow sand filter by this point.
-Next we met with the Opanga Water Committee to discuss the possibility of EWB helping them implement a water system for their newly drilled well. They were very enthusiastic and had some good ideas about how to distribute water and who the well could service. Prior to heading to Kenya this year, one of our biggest worries about implementing a large clean water system for the community was who would operate the system and pay for its maintenance. They had already thought about all of this! We also learned that Opanga means steel in Luo… the area that the well is in is called “steel” because this area had the first house to get a steel sheeted roof.
-Scott