Last night I got back home to Kampala after an amazing 1.5 weeks in Kenya. I was on a project trip, helping Kijabe Hospital design their 10-year plan for their large hospital campus. They currently serve about 650 patients/day, and with the expansion we designed, they expect to serve about twice that many.
I was part of the water and wastewater team, which we affectionately named the "Poo Crew." We focused mostly on figuring out how the hospital's current water and wastewater systems worked, and then we did some design on a recommended chlorination system for the drinking water, and a new design to appropriately treat their wastewater. While things like water lines and septic tanks are probably the least glamorous part of any building project, you could argue that they're one of the most important parts. If people don't have clean water, they can't survive. And if a hospital is treating people, yet polluting nearby communities with their untreated wastewater, those same people are just going to have to be readmitted to the hospital. The wastewater for the hospital was in a very sad state, but we were encouraged and excited by the work that we did to first figure out WHAT was currently happening to it, and then second figure out how to improve the design. While wastewater is also generally the most ignored part of any building project, we were encouraged to find many hospital staff very committed to the idea of improving their current system, which also would effectively improve their witness to the community around them. Besides being an excellent hospital that serves the East Africa region and treats many patients who can't afford to pay for their services, they also share the love of Christ with their patients, many of whom decide to follow Jesus after seeing the love and care from the hospital staff.
Most EMI teams are about 8-10 people. This team was 24! I think it was the largest EMI team ever. It was actually a lot of fun to have so many people on the team. We definitely didn't all get to know everyone as well as we would have if there were only 8 people, but it resulted in a wide variety personalities and skills and insights to learn from and hang out with which, as I already said, was a lot of fun! The Poo Crew itself swelled to 7 people, and sometimes more, because we just had so much work to accomplish in our short week on the hospital campus. Also, there were a ton of 20-somethings on this trip, which was really, well to be redundant...fun. There were 9 young single adults on the trip, and we ended up hanging out a lot, especially during the safari. It's funny to think that just our sub-set of young folks was the size of a typical EMI team. I think that was a neat by-product of having such a large team; it gave more young professionals and recent college grads the ability to join the trip, where they were able to work with and learn from professionals with a lot more experience.
Kijabe is in the Rift Valley, but is half way up its eastern slope, so it was nice and cool most of the time we were there. Some days we were actually pretty cold, but I still loved it! It was such a nice change from the almost-constant heat of Kampala. Another neat aspect about the trip was that I got to see several of the people that I met when I was there three months ago, including some of the souvenir vendors who showed up once they knew we were there.
We stayed in a little motel and in a couple nice apartments and did most of our work in the apartment living rooms. The architects took over one living room, so the engineers and site master planners ended up in the other living room, which was filled with two large tables to serve as our dining room. A few cooks made food for us the whole time, which was really good! It was kind of a combination of Kenyan food and "American" food and was always finished off with an amazing (and large) dessert! We had pretty limited access to internet, but we had power almost the whole time, and the motel even had automatic hot water in the sinks! (They had solar power water heaters on the roof.)
The project itself focused on some of the top priorities from the hospital's 10-year vision: a new building for an expanded pediatrics ward and outpatient department, a new building for adult outpatients, reorganizing and improving the internal hospital layout, design of new staff housing units, site layout for better pedestrian & vehicular circulation, upgrades to their deteriorating electrical system, analysis of the soil for building foundations, stormwater drainage analysis and improvements, finishing up unanswered questions from the February as-built project I was on, and the stuff I worked on: recommendation and design of chlorinating the hospital's water supply, discovering and analyzing the current sewer pipes and septic tanks and designing their expansion for the new buildings, and designing a new way to deal with the large amount of wastewater after it received preliminary treatment by septic tanks. For the last item, we decided to use two oxidation ponds that are 37 m x 47 m each (!), where the wastewater will sit for 15 days, allowing for secondary treatment by the sun and breakdown of bacteria in the water (or something like that...I'm not the one who analyzed the effectiveness of the oxidation pond).
Unfortunately my work shoes (Merrells) were stolen because I left them outside the apartment door one evening. And I somehow misplaced a coin purse with some (but not most) of my money in it. Man, there's something about me losing things/getting them stolen! But nothing has upset me too much, and I figure they're all good lessons in materialism. =)
At the end of the trip, we all went on a two-day safari at a nearby game park at Lake Nakuru. The lake is known for its flamingos, of which we saw hundreds lining the shores. The park is known for its bird watching in general, and we saw many types of birds including storks, herons, pelicans, ibis, egrets, ducks, etc. We also saw lots of monkeys, baboons, impalas, waterbucks (a large deer-ish animal), water buffaloes, zebras, rhinos (including babies), some warthogs, one hyena, several giraffes, and even a lion couple lounging in a tree. (My favorite is definitely the giraffe, but the baby monkeys were also a highlight.) The scenery itself was absolutely beautiful: lush forests with some green plains, all covered with yellow-barked acacia trees. We also got to go to a lookout on top of a cliff, which gave us an amazing view of the lake and surrounding valley. We went on three "game drives" and spent two nights at a really nice lodge with fancy duplex cabins covering the hillside. They had a large and delicious buffet (especially delicious for those of us [me] who've been away from fancy American cooking for a while). Each night they had some live traditional dancing out on a stone terrace, complete with a fire pit. (We hung out late around the fire one night, which was reminiscent of summer camp.) They even had a pool and a pool-side massage/spa tent. The only downside was that the place was rather mosquito-saturated. Yesterday, as we left the game park, we stopped by another lake and took a short motor-boat ride to see some hippos. I loved being right at the water level. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the lake gave us gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains.
I loved getting to know everyone on the team and especially spending lots of time with the "Poo Crew" and being able to hang out with everyone in a more social waye socially on the safari. I was really sad to leave at the end, since it felt like I had just met a bunch of new close friends and then had to so quickly say goodbye. It also felt a little bit like they were all going to leave and go home and I was being left here in Africa by myself. Now that I've been back in Kampala for about 24 hours, I'm starting to feel "at home" again and remember how much I've been enjoying life here in Uganda. It felt very different being around 23 people for 1.5 weeks who live in the US, Canada, UK, and Taiwan, and then realizing that I wasn't going to go home at the end like all of them. But I know that I'll feel settled back in here soon, and I'm looking forward to what else God has for me here. I can't believe that I've been here five months already, but it's also a little amazing to think I'm not going home for another six! I feel so blessed that I was able to go on this amazing trip with so many great people, and get to help this inspirational hospital again.
Pictures coming soon....
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