RG3 (not the one from Baylor)

At the end of the week in Karuma we gave a presentation to Tim, the RG staff, and most of the RG kids about our design. It was satisfying to share what we had been working on all week with the people who would ultimately enjoy what we had designed. It was a fun process. Since we were leaving early the following morning, we said our goodbyes that night to everyone we had met while on the trip. Also, I tried some sugar cane which was really good!

Early the next morning two vans picked up our group and headed towards Murchison National Park where would drive through a game park on our way back to Kampala. We saw a bunch of different kinds of antelope, warthog, water buffalo, giraffe, and hippos. 

We saw one elephant in the distance but no lions unfortunately. Overall, it was a pretty cool experience. The plan was to stop for lunch at a resort and have a good meal before heading across the Nile to continue our journey. But while we were eating, the last ferry left! Luckily our drivers got our vans onto the ferry without us and we came after lunch via pontoon boat. It was awesome! Just like boating in Texas except there are hippos underneath you. We played the song ‘pontoon’ before getting off and heading to Murchison Falls as our last stop en route to Kampala.

Murchison falls is hard to describe. Here are some pictures so that hopefully you can get a sense of how powerful it is. It was a really wild experience. And beautiful!

Finally we made it back to Kampala where we stayed at the same small inn that we stayed in before leaving on our trip. Let me tell you, the facilities here were much more appreciated the second time around!

We woke the next morning and made our way to a small coffee shop for a debriefing time before we all went our separate ways. It was great getting to hear what everyone had learned on the trip and what they hoped to take back. I hoped to bring back a renewed sense of intentionality in my pursuit of God and a commitment to prayer over where He wants me to go over these next few years. (God seems to be making that clear with an acceptance letter from Stanford, but no decisions have been made yet!) Anyways, this time really helped give the week some closure and prepared me to go back home even though that was still a few days away for me.

Afterwards, everyone went to the shops where we bought souvenirs and trinkets for loved ones back home (and for ourselves). Then we made one last stop at the eMi office before the volunteers left for the airport. My boss, Justin, and I stayed in Kampala for a few extra days in order to work more closely with the staff there on the project, attend our design review, and get a sense of the office there. I also took a day off to go raft the Nile with Christine and David. What an experience! I never thought I would be able to say I rafted the Nile. Not to brag, but it truly is as epic as it sounds. I have been white water rafting several times in the US and nothing compares to this experience. I was telling my guide about my experience in America, and he told me “an American class 5 equals an African class 2”. (Rapids are ranked class 1 – 6, 6 being impassible, 1 being flat water). For further reference, here is a picture of an African class 4 rapid (if you look closely you can see us coming around the corner at the top of the rapid).

I just like this picture because it makes me look epic...

The way rafting the Nile works is that there are large pools of flat water that you have to row across before hitting a large rapid that separates the pools. A team of kayakers and safety rafts go down the rapids before our boat. They then give the go ahead signal for us to come down the rapid. They are there so that WHEN we get thrown out of the boat by the rapid and everyone flows to somewhere across the Nile (which is over 400 meters wide in some places), the kayakers can come get us and bring us back to our boat safely. Everyone in our boat ended up being very thankful for this service.

When you get thrown out of the boat in the middle of a rapid, it feels like what I would imagine going through a high powered washing machine feels like. You have no idea which way is up, you can’t breathe, and you can’t do anything about it. You feel a little like a ragdoll that can’t control its limbs. First, you remember what your guide said: “Relax and don’t flail when you get thrown out, the river will spit you out eventually.” Then, “try to get your feet downstream and lay on your back.” This isn’t much help because I can’t tell where my feet and back are let alone which way is “downstream.” After 2-3 seconds (feels like 10-15), relaxing becomes more difficult. After 4-5 seconds, you start to panic but think that it’s going to be alright. After 6-7 seconds, you forget relaxing and body orientation and start flailing for your life because you didn’t get a good breath before being dunked and it feels like you’ve been holding your breath for minutes on end anyways and think that your rafting guide looks like a bum who doesn’t know what he’s talking about anyways. When this doesn’t work over the course of 8-10 seconds, you relax again and begin to accept your fate and thank God that you met Jesus before now. Then in the 11^th second, oxygen surges through your lungs, you see the light of day, and you thank God as a large black man unceremoniously manhandles you onto the back of his kayak.

Needless to say, it was awesome.

Here is a picture of our guide taking a big breath just before we go into the washing machine.

After a good meal and drinks at the end of the trip, we got back onto a bus where we got to talk with a couple who were on another raft (one that didn’t flip nearly as much as we did…). They were a really interesting intellectual couple who we learned were in east Africa developing an secular NGO that they had created. We talked with them about their NGO and their life in Beijing (they live in Beijing) and our faith and shared the gospel with them for the entirety of the 2 hour ride back. They seemed very interested in what we had to say, so we exchanged emails and I sent them some resources they could look at to get more information about Christianity. Please be praying for them. I think that the Lord could do some big things in their life! That was probably the most exciting part of the day.

This post is starting to get wordy, so I’ll try to keep it short. We got back to the office, continued to work for the next couple days, said our goodbyes and headed home back to the US. It was a really cool trip and I can’t even begin to explain everything I learned. I hope that more will be made clear through my next posts where I hope to take a more topical approach. After all, the most exciting part of my internship to write about is probably over at this point. I don’t know if I could handle anything more exciting anyways!

As always, thank you to my donors who have made this possible. It has been an amazing experience. (Don’t worry, the Nile trip was on my own dime)

Ryan

RG part 2

In the United States, designing a hospital often takes multiple years. At my last internship, I worked on a small part of Dallas’ new Parkland Hospital: its central utility plant. Completing just this part of the hospital took more than two years. Certainly, the hospital we set out to design is not nearly the same magnitude as Parkland, but we only had a week to design it. Or at least gather all of the information we needed to design it by the end of the semester.

For the architects, this meant meeting with Dr. Tim and figuring out exactly what he wanted out of the hospital, what it should look like, what designs fit in well with the current buildings, etc. 

The structural engineers investigated the capabilities and limitations of local construction techniques so that they could ensure that whatever the architects designed would, in fact, stand up. Here is a picture of some women making the compressed earth blocks used to build their buildings.

Here's a picture of Victor, the head construction guy on site. He is responsible for getting the buildings built. 

 

Our electrical engineer researched current electricity usage in the complex and power production methods. Here are some of the solar panels they were using to power their water well.

 

The civil engineers (and mechanical engineering intern in my case) needed to determine the capabilities of the wells to produce clean water and the ability of the complex to dispose of wastewater. Here is their main water tower. It holds enough water for 2 days worth of storage for the facility.

After determining a plan of action on the first day, the team was split into groups by discipline and we set to work. I was placed in the civil group and we went outside to meet underneath a small tree. We discussed numerous wastewater disposal methods from simple soak pits to wastewater treatment facilities. Due to the hospital’s proximity to the Nile, wastewater treatment is a very important consideration (while most people would be fine just dumping everything in the Nile, we decided to be good stewards of the land and design appropriate wastewater solutions). Based on previous studies, local expertise, and cost considerations, the group settled on the tried and true technology of a septic tank-leech field combo to deal with the hospital’s wastewater. The hospital’s water needs would be met with the currently operating water wells, but updated distribution systems needed to be designed and well production needed to be verified.

As the intern, I was tasked with the not inconsiderable manual labor that was involved. In order to size the leech fields, we needed to know the percolation rate of the soil where the hospital was to be built. This entailed multiple percolation tests, which include digging a hole a meter or more deep and filling it with water to observe the rate at which the soil will absorb the water. Without hoses on hand, numerous jerry cans were used to supply water to the test pits. This often entailed numerous trips of a hundred yards or more with two jerry cans. Needless to say, I didn’t miss out on my workouts while in Uganda. Here are some photos of the process.

Validating the well production was a bit less scientific, but much less difficult. Basically, we timed how long it took each pump to fill a bucket with a known volume. This gave us a flow rate for the well. We did this about 20 times for each of the two wells to give us a reliable average flow rate.Sorry, I don't have any pictures of this process. It was nice though, because the water coming directly out of the ground was really cold. It was the closest thing I got to air conditioning all week!

We then performed a usage test where we turned off the pumps and measured the drop in water level in the water tanks that supplies the community over a set period of time. This gave us a sense of how much water storage is needed to sustain the community and how much storage will be needed once the hospital comes on line.

Finally, I tested water quality at multiple points along the current distribution line to figure out if there was anything concerning in the water (luckily there was not because we had been drinking it all week!). This tests for things like salinity, pH, chloride, e coli, etc. It is very fortunate for the ministry that the water was clean because treating water can get very expensive very quickly.

Hopefully I haven’t put anyone to sleep with the engineering details. While all of this was happening throughout the week, we made time to eat lunch with the orphans at their homes, attend their staff devotionals in the morning, and even do some devotionals of our own. Here is one of their worship times before devotionals.

 Even though they had a translator, it was very difficult to understand their devotional because of the acoustics in the gym where they were held. 

After dinner, we shared testimonies with the rest of our group before beginning again on our design work. Throughout the week I made sure to spend time with some of the orphans on camp. They loved playing soccer (football) and having fun with just about anything they could find around camp. This included rusty wheelbarrows and even a bamboo pole we found on the last day. Who needs TV when you have a bamboo pole?! It was a blast. Here are some pictures.

The whole week was an awesome blend of technical work, physical work, and play or personal interactions. And everything was done for the Lord. It seemed like a complete picture of the Colossians 3:23 which says “ Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men...”

 Here are some more pictures showing the kind of week we had:

Here is a layout of the outpatient facility that the architects came up with

Here you can see what the completed hospital will hopefully look like.

 My project leaders snoozing while their intern is out doing manual labor

 The kids were really interested in seeing David draw the hospital on his iPad

Me teaching some kids how to calculate flow rates. Or they're just playing with my computer.

 On a different note, as I was writing this, I found out that I was accepted into the masters program at Stanford for the Fall of 2014!! Praise God without whom there's no way this would have happened.

Restoration Gateway Part 1

Wow. I have no earthly idea how to describe the last two weeks. It has definitely been an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. I am thinking that I will split up the experience into multiple posts. For the first one, I guess I will just start where I left off on my last post.

 So I explored Kampala for a little bit on Saturday and got a good look at life in Uganda. Here is a banana pancake that I bought for the equivalent of $0.04.

Our two remaining team members arrived safely on the next flight from Amsterdam on Sunday and we left early in the morning so that we could make it to the project site by lunch. Although the trip was only a little over 150 miles, it still took us almost 7 hours by van to make it to our project site in northern Uganda. Driving through Uganda’s capital, Kampala, is unlike anything I have ever experienced. The streets are lined with shops and packed full of people. Unlike in the U.S., pedestrians yield to vehicles in Uganda. It is amazing that more people aren’t run over on a daily basis. 

This was on the van that took the first group to RG!

I was absolutely certain that we were going to hit either a person or another car at some point, but we didn’t. The roads were not very well maintained, but I would come to learn that they were in very good condition compared to the rest of Uganda. As we made our way into rural Uganda, pavement gave way to gravel and eventually to dirt. In various places, attempts at paving the road were evident but only served to create seemingly insurmountable potholes. Driving is a different animal in Uganda than it is in the U.S. I hope everyone reading this gets a chance to experience it someday. Another cool experience as we made our way into rural Uganda was when kids from the villages would come running and waving after our van yelling “Mzungus, Mzungus!” at us. This is the term used by Ugandans to mean “white people” and comes from a word in their language which means “confused person” or “person who walks in circles”. I was told that it came from when British explorers came to the region and seemed to just be walking around in circles.

Alas, we finally made it to our destination around 2 pm where they had saved us a lunch of rice and beans (a lunch we would become very accustomed to). With kids running around everywhere, I couldn’t help but go play with some of them, so they taught me Ugandan checkers (a clever name for “Mzungu-never-wins” checkers) and we played around on the “football” (soccer) pitch. After a while, the director of RG, Dr. Tim McCall, gathered us up and spoke with us about his history and his vision for the site.

After working in Kenya for almost a decade, Dr. Tim moved back to the states where he learned about the tragedies carried out by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. If you are unfamiliar with this organization, here is a quick summary: Joseph Kony gained a military following in response to governmental oppression by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (still president today). While it may sound just, Kony abducted and recruited child soldiers to do his bidding which included raiding and pillaging innocent towns and people. Basically, he’s a really bad dude who did/does a lot of bad stuff.

Dr. Tim explaining his vision

Despite the LRA’s activities in northern Uganda and the government’s warning against the dangers of the region, Dr. Tim proceeded to obtain land there in order to build an orphanage. While the LRA has since been vanquished from the region, Restoration Gateway has thrived and now contains almost 100 orphans, staff housing, a dental and medical clinic, a gym, a primary school and hopes of much more to come. Dr. Tim explained to us how God had told him that he would own 800 acres of land in northern Uganda which he would develop into a community that would restore national Ugandans to prosperity and send them out into the rest of Uganda to make a difference in the name of Christ. He currently owns 650 acres and has more on the way.

Ultimately, he wants the site to house even more than it already has including a resort, a conference center, a hospital (which we are here to design), a bible training school, a secondary school, a university, a nurse and residency training school, an agricultural training program, a vocational school, a children’s retreat, and a pastor’s retreat. Needless to say, Tim’s vision is massive. With this in mind, over the next 7 days, we set out to design a hospital that would help to fulfill at least a small part of this vision.

Master plan for RG

 I will go into more detail about how that turned out in my next post. For now, as always, thanks to all of my donors who made this possible. My experience cannot possibly be explained adequately in this blog, so please feel free to ask questions or grab coffee or lunch with me when I get back so I can better explain everything. I hope I’m not going into too much detail and boring everyone!

Apwoyo! (means thank you in the language of north Uganda called Luo)

Ryan

P.S. If you would like to donate to me and my trip you can do so at 

http://emiworld.org/donate.php

P.P.S. For those of you who have donated, keep an eye out for your thank you letters. they are on their way!

Uganda-bound

Early Thursday morning we departed Colorado Springs for the Denver airport to start our journey to Kampala. I was glad to be traveling with my project leaders, Henry and Justin, who are much, much more experienced travelers than me. We flew first to Minneapolis, where we were frantically trying to make sure that everyone on the team was on track to get to Amsterdam on time. It turns out that we had two people get delayed – one for weather, the other happened to be at the same airport that the President (of the United States) was at so it got shut down for a while. Thanks, Obama.

Other than that, the flight to Amsterdam went off without a hitch. We met up with the rest of the team there and headed to Uganda. I slept for most of that plane ride, but had an opportunity to have a quiet time as well. I hope you don’t mind if I share a little bit about what I am learning on my trip right now. I have just started going through Genesis and am amazed as I fly over God’s creation – whether it be the frozen tundra of Minnesota, the giant span of the Atlantic, the Alps, the Sahara, or even the lush hills of Uganda – and his creativity and diversity. The first verse in the bible – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” – has always been something I have taken for granted. It took us over 24 hours of flying at nearly 600 miles to get here. The earth is massive. And it is excruciatingly detailed. Next time it is night, go look at the stars (if you’re in Dallas, you may just want to look it up online) and think about the extent of God’s creation. Time and Space are relatively amazing if you ask me (haha, get it?).

The other thing that really struck me was Genesis 1:28, which says “ And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” Verse 29 goes on to say that God has also given us the vegetation of this world. What a responsibility it is to have dominion over the entirety of the planet. At the risk of sounding like a tree hugger, we don’t do a very good job of this. Even I, who am an advocate for sustainable practices and everything, am terrible at this. I don’t want to promote an agenda here or anything, but at the very least, this is something that should be thought about. We have a huge responsibility as the human race to take care of this world.

Anyways, we arrived in Entebbe as scheduled, which is about an hour’s drive away from where we would stay in the capitol of Uganda, Kampala. The drive to the inn was, in a word, exhilarating. (Mom, don’t read this next part) Lanes in Uganda are more of a guideline than a rule. I don’t know how many headlights I saw coming straight at me. Motorcycles (bota botas) fly around the street like swarms of flies. We were almost driven off the road multiple times by cars (without headlights at midnight) that were passing cars in the oncoming traffic lane. To be fair, I think we drove some people off the road while passing as well (Mom, you can start reading again). All in all, a very interesting experience in which I grew closer to God.

Finally, we made it to the inn at which we were staying where a few pleasantries were made and every one fell promptly asleep. The accommodations here were much better than expected. We had a shower (but no hot water), mosquito nets and electricity (but not after midnight). In the morning, breakfast was cooked to order and was very good. Afterwards we had a meeting with the team where we discussed a few things about the trip ahead. Basically, one van of people would depart for RG that morning while the rest waited for the stragglers and would depart the next morning. I was part of the second team. This gave me a chance to explore Kampala (which is a big city compared to the rural Karuma where RG is located). I have gotten to see eMi’s East Africa office and even walked around the market. I write this to you now from the East Africa office where the interns gather on a Saturday to get Wi-Fi and to interact with one another. The market was very interesting. Everything is very inexpensive. I got a coke and a pack of gum for a little over a dollar. Probably the most interesting vendors at the market were the meat vendors. Slabs of raw cow meat were simply hung in windows for people to inspect and buy. Good thing they don’t have an FDA here…

Anyways, everyone here is polite and the culture is very positive and interesting. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but this is a great place to be. I really like it here so far and am excited to see what is to come of the next few weeks. This may be the last blog I have to write for a while because I may or may not have internet. I will try to keep writing things down though and will post them when I get back. As always, thank you to my donors who have made all this possible! I have a few prayer requests:

-       pray for safe passage for the two remaining team members who are trying to make it here. They should be here tonight but you never know I guess.

-       Pray for Restoration Gateway: that we would be good servants of their ministry and that I wouldn’t offend anyone because of my cultural ignorance.

-       Pray for the guidance of the spirit that we would do the Lord’s work and not our own.

I think that’s it for now. If you would like to donate to this cause or to me specifically, you can do so at http://emiworld.org/donate.php

Thanks and blessings (and gig ’em)

Ryan

First Week in the Office

Sorry this post is a little late. I am going to try to get at least one out per week on Monday or late Sunday night, but this week was pretty slow. The Colorado Springs interns spent this week in office orientation. Most of our time was spent in the conference room learning about design conventions and fun stuff like that. I have been learning how to use Google SketchUp, which is pretty handy for 3d modeling. I practiced by re-developing a model of a clinic in Gabon from a few years ago (pictures below).

More importantly, I learned a little more about the project I will be working on in Uganda. But first, I’ll give you a little background on how eMi works (or at least how I understand it). Typically, a pre-existing ministry reaches out to eMi to fulfill a design need that they have. They usually have a grand vision for where God is leading their ministry but need technical expertise to make it happen. That’s where eMi comes in. Through meetings with the ministry, we develop a master plan in the form of a report that delineates in broad terms how their grand vision will be executed and ultimately completed. The concept of a “master plan” is common to secular engineering firms as well except that eMi incorporates Christ into the actual writing of the report. Using data gathered onsite, the master plan prioritizes project goals and sub-projects, creates a tentative timeline for project completion, and highlights technical obstacles that must be overcome for a successful completion. Hopefully, the ministry then opts to continue to partner with eMi to carry out the specific design necessary to complete each portion of the project. This is essentially what is happening in Uganda.

Restoration Gateway (RG) was a ministry started in 2004 by a few men who met to pray underneath a tree. Their vision was to create a place that not only provided housing and food for orphans, but also gave them the skills they needed to be productive members of society. With the help of a few donors, these men bought the tree under which they used to pray as well as 500 acres of land. In 2012, eMi sent a team to Karuma, Uganda to meet with RG. The result of this visit was a master plan that outlined increased orphan housing, educational facilities, agricultural development and a hospital among other things. Now, eMi is returning to do the design work on the hospital portion of their vision. You can find out more about this ministry at (http://www.restorationgateway.org/about.php). If you need more evidence that this is a good ministry, their U.S. office is located in Texas!

There were a few other things that happened this week. The first project trip of the semester left on Saturday and I had the privilege of dropping them off at the airport at 4:00am. Work was delayed one day because of snow, but we went in early anyways for some reason. Trust me, your prayers for my safety were felt that morning and I hadn’t even left the country yet (who needs four wheel drive when you have prayer)! Speaking of cold weather, I have done something I told myself I would never do: wear a scarf. I don’t care if I look like a hipster or get made fun of by my family. Tell me you told me so. It is unbelievably cold here in the mornings and I am unashamed. Someone please explain to me how it can be cold enough to wear a scarf in the mornings and warm enough to play Frisbee in the afternoon.

Highlight of the week: We got a really good deal for lift tickets at Copper Mountain on Saturday so we went and spent the day on the mountain skiing and snowboarding. The mountains are an amazing testament to God’s power and creativity. Here is a picture from the top of the mountain. It doesn’t do the sight justice, but I hope that you get a little bit of an idea of the size of the God that we serve. 

Well, I leave for Uganda this coming Thursday. I am not entirely sure what to expect except for God to move and for me to be changed and grown in some way. Your prayers are very much appreciated; keep them coming! I am very excited to see what God has in store and to hopefully learn A LOT.

As always, thank you for those who have donated to make this possible. I have been incredibly blessed!

Blessings,

Ryan