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Published: October 13th 2008
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Operation Lambul
Here's Tom and the Boys from Lambul that volunteered to help out. The shirts are all gifts from La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. Friday morning before the standard morning meeting, Tom Dalton took me aside for a small chat and I knew something was up because he didn’t look like his usual freewheeling self. “I want to get the water to Lambul,” he told me, “The people there haven’t had water for years and their village is just around the corner from Sason.” Now before you can really understand the weight of Tom’s simple statement, you need to understand the situation. Lambul village is not exactly “around the corner” from Sason, it’s quite a ways away actually. Yes, they didn’t have running water at the moment, but I hadn’t budgeted for or purchased enough pipe to make the long run to Lambul. Heck, I hadn’t even purchased enough supplies to repair the Sason line! But here was Tom, telling me that he wanted to run water to Lambul.
“It’s a nice idea,” I told him, “but I think that it’ll have to wait till next year.” What came next was Tom’s plan as to how he would be able to make it all happen with the supplies we had available. The guy had obviously been thinking about it for a while and he
Clinic Clean-up continues
More polishing, less shoveling. had things pseudo worked-out. His proposed scheme would theoretically allow him to finish patching the Sason line, and then by scavenging parts from other locations in the system he would run a line to Lambul. The idea was pretty daring, but I could smell a whole lot of “if” coming off the plan. It wasn’t exactly borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, it was more like picking their pockets and robbing them both blind! Tom was all for it, however, so I told him to go ahead. Our main goal and mission was the Fartafo line, so his scheme couldn’t interfere with that, but if he managed to get water to Lambul it would be doing a lot of people a lot of good.
At the clinic that day Dr. Ali and Schieny finished up the cleaning that they had started on Thursday, and also made an inventory of the medication stored there. Many things had gone out of date and needed to be burned, but there was still a decent stock of medical supplies. Claire was off teaching at the Alua School, and the Yacht Club team was still erecting the main structure.
The Fartafo water team
Framing
The Yacht Club erection continues began pulling up pipes in the Fartafo village to install a couple taps. This was a little more complicated than it sounds because what we were effectively doing was taking luxury and convenience away from some people so that others could share the water. The problem with the whole water system was that too much water was drained off at the start of the water line (in Fartafo), and there just wasn’t enough pressure afterwards to push the water on down the line to the other villages. Fartafo didn’t have any taps on their water lines, so the water would just flow freely out of half a dozen pipe ends onto the sand of the beach. The idea was to reduce the number of open pipes down to two or three, and then put brass taps on them so that they didn’t run unchecked. This, along with the new dam at the source, would boost the water pressure enough to feed the other villages along the line. If each village shared a smaller number of taps, then all the villages could have water.
The plan worked out alright on paper, but I knew that it would be more difficult
Tug-tug
There was a lot of pipe upheaval in several locations. These guys are all monstrously strong. in reality because we would have to take water away from some people that had enjoyed the luxury of an open water source right in front of their huts. With the new water tap placement people would have to walk to one of the communal village taps for their water. I had talked it over with the villages already, and everyone in Fartafo knew that they would have to sacrifice some of their own convenience for the greater good of others further down the water line. Talk and action are two very different things though, so we had to move carefully that Friday morning before pulling up water pipes and rearranging the distribution sites.
Satuday was scheduled to be a half day for the water teams but a full day at the Yacht Club and Clinic. Mark, Tom, and the water teams continued work on the water lines in Fartafo, and also installed taps in the second village along the water line (Batou 5). Later in the day the pipes were connected at the source and the clog in the Fartafo line was blown clear. The pressure was good where the clog had been but we knew that it
The Peter/Paul exchange
Tom and I were cutting corners everywhere we could to shave off a few meters of pipe here and there. These kids are shifting this large chunk of pipe over to the Lambul extension line. would take a while before the whole system was pressurized.
Meanwhile at the clinic, Dr. Ali, Nellecke, and I met with the aid post workers from the three regional aid posts. The interviews were all very informative and it turned out that the health workers had been handling things superbly in the absence of the clinic nurse. After the meetings were finished we started to receive patients. I feel strange making the reference, but it was like throwing a party. Before people started to show up we were worried that nobody would come because there was such short notice. Then as people started to trickle in, we got a new fear: what if EVERYBODY shows up? In the end things worked out alright and we didn’t have too many or too few patients.
Sunday morning started before sunrise for a couple of us. Word had made it out to the ship that Claire, our land-based volunteer, had become violently ill during the night. Kat took both Dr. Ali and myself to shore in the Tinny to see what we could do. After assessing the situation, Dr. Ali and Kat headed back to the boat for medicine and a
Hut call Retur
This may have been a minor fracture, but without an xray there's no way to know. chat with Dr. Henk. I stayed on with the patient till another Alvei volunteer could come and relieve me. Many of the crew had planned to attend the Sunday morning church service in Fartafo, so I played the part of nurse/orderly until they all came ashore.
After the church service I found out that water had started running up at the Sanusup Elementary school and also in the Dempsi village. I was so glad to hear it, because that had been the goal of the whole project this year. We were only halfway through our time in Banem Bay and we had already achieved our goals. At that point I figured that everything we hoped to accomplish in the second week would just be a bonus. In hindsight I can say that I was both a little right and a little wrong. Also after the church service we had the first of several breaks in the newly pressurized water line.
Peter Schieny received an unplanned shower on Sunday afternoon while checking this first leak in the Fartafo line. One of the major t-junctions in Fartafo was dripping water so profusely that it was causing a large area to
Master Sailor, Master Carp.
Kat and company chug along at the Yacht Club flood and get muddy. Upon seeing this, Schieny decided to check it out. The situation was this: someone in the village had propped the t-junction up on a rock so that it would leak a little and allow them to fill a bowl with water. The nearest tap was less than 25 yards away, but this special someone decided that it was more convenient for them to fill their bowl at the t-junction. When Peter Schieny went to remove the bowl and rock, the junction exploded like a fire hydrant because the pipe had already been loosened so much from the joint.
The result of this was a shut down of the whole system so that the t-junction could be repaired. Nobody admitted to putting the pipe up on the rock, but it served as a good lesson to the whole village that the selfishness of one person could destroy the water system for everyone.
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non-member comment
fuckin A brother...
seamus man...so glad to see you taking care of the business over there, things seem good there like you're taking care of business...were all proud of what you're doing. Meanwhile I can't get the bartender to notice me and I am thirsty...