"A lazy person
thinks he will become rich, but poverty wants him"
- One of
the many motivational signs scattered around the ArchBishop Okoth Secondary
School
Today, we
went to Kolunje bright and early at 10:00 am to meet with the foreman of the
project and begin construction. But the only thing we saw was a man carrying a
chicken. As usual, the foreman ran on Kenyan Standard Time and arrived an hour
late. In the meantime, our team went to visit our previous project from our
last trip in 2013: a borehole in the school grounds that turned out to be dry. .jpg)
After this
inspirational visit, we headed back to the school and were happy to see that
the foreman had arrived on site with his posse of around 10 workers. We were
even more delighted to learn that this foreman's name was Elvis. Together, we
moved from building to building and went over all our plans again to make sure
we were on the same page. There were some unexpected changes - Gregory, the
principal of the secondary school, wanted the roofs of two buildings painted
really really badly. However, many of the roof panels are very rusted, (pic) and
we decided that it was much more important to replace these panels and make
sure there are no holes. Additionally, if the roofs were painted the paint
would add unwanted chemicals to the water that our system would collect, which
would be unsafe for community members to drink. After explaining all of this,
we decided not to paint at all. On another note, Elvis proposed that we install
multiple taps at some of the tanks in a row, so that many school children could
get water at a time (at no extra cost!).
After
reviewing all the plans with Elvis, we decided to check out the new system at
the Women's well. A solar power pump was added so the ground water was pumped
up to a tank that was 12 meters high. The tank would then store water that
supplied a small distribution system to the nearby area. We noticed that they
believed that water would travel a very far distance and they had plans for a
relatively extensive distribution system. However, we do not believe the water
will be able to travel that far so we told them that we would give them an
approximate distance of how far the water could actually travel. We also found
out that they did not know to pressure test the pipes, so when they tried to
run the water through the system the pipes burst! They are currently in the
process of repairing the pipes.
Today was
also a very important day for Kolunje - the Annual Cultural Day. We were
invited to attend a celebration in Magwar village, where we watched an intense
soccer match between school children from Magwar and Lunga. We also watched a
volleyball game and bought some delicious bananas to take back with us. (pics) From
here, we headed back to the Archbishop Okoth secondary school. We were prepared
to return to our hotel when to our surprise, they had prepared the chicken we
saw earlier as lunch for us! The principal, Peter, Baria, and our team had a
very tasty meal in the school.
Inspired,
Christine, Priyesh, and Gautam decided to try and catch a chicken themselves...
After the
chicken escaped through a hole in the fence, we decided to cut our losses and
return home.
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