Started Working on the Water Project

This past week we settled down into work more. We started off with a meeting with Max and some project managers who are involved in the water project at Gairo. The project aims to supply water points in 7 villages affecting about 2000 households. These households on average at the moment have only 6 litres of water per person per day and the people have to walk/travel 5 km for this every day. The project goals are to install 22 hand operated water pumps that will enable these households to access 25 litres per day per person and within a maximum walking distance of 500 m. Max had a draft of a request for quotes to be sent out to various drilling companies to ascertain their interest and ability to perform the required drilling. We took a copy of it and started modifying it somewhat based on our experience from our previous work in Australia. Max also gave us a report from a local but USA born guy, Larry, who has a company that does underground water searches. On Tuesday we had a meeting with Larry at a local hotel and spent about 1.5 hours talking to him about this project and how to work with drillers here. It was a very good meeting. On Wed we finalised the RFQ with Max and sent it out on Thursday. On Friday morning we met with two of the drillers after they had read the RFQ and had questions. One of them was a UK guy who has lived here for many years. He too had a lot of good advice for us on local conditions and what we would need to do to get the work done properly. On Saturday I sent out to the drillers some more information that Larry had put in his reports, to enable the drillers to access the work load more accurately.
While in town on Friday we bought some basic tools that we need on a current job at ADRA and expect to have a need for the Gairo project when we get there. We got them from a little store on a back street figuring they would be priced more for the locals there rather than the stores on the main street of town. It is funny how things are still priced as 5000 schillings or 10,000 schillings and nothing in between. Maybe as we are Mzungu.
At the campus we have a couple of projects on the go too. One involved taking down (well more of a controlled fall!) some 10 m poles and moving them up to the front by the main road where they are to be resurrected with some vertical banners on them promoting the campus with the baby home, the cottages and furniture operations. We are waiting on quotes for getting the banners made at the moment. The second project is to try to improve the water pressure into the cottages. The first method is to see if we can raise the height of the water tank. To do this first we have to test however if the water supply will have enough pressure to fill the tank at an extra 2 m of height. Now that we have the tools we will test this in the coming week.
While I was up the ladder trying to disconnect the water line into the tank, Ramona was helping one of the volunteers from the baby home who was working on a flyer. We had the software she needed luckily so she was using my computer with Ramona’s help.