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