Starting Work

Friday, March 13, 2009
11:00 PM
Tenwek Hospital

This morning we all had breakfast in the boys apartment. The staff has left us a great supply of juice, coffee, eggs, bacon, cereal, and fruit to fix for ourselves in the morning. After breakfast we had our team devotional time the we headed up to the hospital campus to get our workroom set up. We're in a computer lab/conference room for the doctors and staff of the hospital. It's great because we can set up our laptops and drawings and pretty much have the place to ourselves to work, and while it's very slow, we do have internet access.

After getting all set up, I joined the head civil engineer, the mechanical engineer, and the electrical engineer for a meeting with the maintenance men at the hospital. They answered all of our questions about the water treatment and distribution and the waste water treatment. Tenwek has two main water sources: the river and rainwater. Rainwater is captured from the roofs and stored in big drums for drinking. It still has to be boiled and filtered though. The river water is treated and filtered in a treatment plant but it still isn't used for drinking. It supplies the sinks, showers, toilets, etc. for the hospital and the staff and guest housing. The wastewater from the hospital goes through a treatment system and then is released back into the river. We'll be working this week to determine the efficiency of these systems, how much more hospital expansion the systems can handle before they exceed capacity, and what options exist for improving and expanding the treatment system.

One interesting (albeit a little gross) maintenance issue about the sewer system: the septic tanks and the sludge created by the wastewater treatment is not being cleaned out right now because the maintenance staff has nowhere to put it. In the US, this would typically be disposed of in a landfill. The sludge could make for a useful fertilizer for the farms around the hospital, but the maintenance staff hasn't tried this because they are afraid that people wouldn't accept it culturally even tough they use animal waste. I think we are going to recommend that they begin a community outreach program with some test farm land to encourage people to try using the sludge as fertilizer. It could even be a potential moneymaker for the hospital someday. It's that or buy property to build a landfill.

After this meeting, we had lunch in the hospital cafeteria/restaurant. We had fried chicken, a local food that is kind of like a square egg roll with beef inside (sorry I can't remember the name!), and "chips" (french fries). Dr. Ben and his wife and kids joined us for lunch.

After lunch, we were supposed to get a tour of the treatment plants and the hydro power plant, but this was postponed until tomorrow due to a rain storm. Instead, I tagged along with the electrical engineer (Wes) to the generator room at the hospital. Tenwek gets power from three different ways: the hydro plant, a generator, and buying it from Kenya. The hydro plant isn't operational right now because there hasn't been enough rain and the river is low. The Kenya power is expensive and not very reliable. The hospital lost power several times today as had to it switch to the generator. Wes hooked up meters to the power system. He is trying to determine how much power each building uses on campus and how many more buildings can be added to the hospital without exceeding the capacity of the power supply.

I spent some time at Dr. Ben's house scanning in a large blueprint of the campus so that we can use it for our drawings and mater planning. After this I headed to dinner. We had a pizza dinner with all of the missionaries at the hospital right now. I'd say there were about 40 people there counting all of the kids. Everyone went around and shared where they were from and how long they were at Tenwek. There were a few people who had been there 25+ years! I talked for awhile to one of these people who is a teacher at the nursing school here. A son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren of Dr. Stuery (from the missionary book) were here visiting.

After dinner, the EMI team gathered in our meeting room to review the day and discuss what we're doing tomorrow. I know first thing some of us are going to tour the hydro plant and water/wastewater treatment plants. I came back to my apartment here to spend some time tracing sections of the campus map for the architect to make some sketches.

I'm tired and have a big day tomorrow, so I better get to bed! Thanks for reading and thanks for your prayers!