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Published: November 18th 2010
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Scouting Team #1
Here's Joseph Mape, Frank Zolnai, and Me en route to the first site visit. As some of you all know. I’m not back in the states as was originally planned. I’m still in Vanuatu, still building clinics. Had I held onto my original tickets, I would have landed back in the states late October and spent the holidays with family.
I’ve changed my tickets thanks to some very generous benefactors here in Vanuatu. These benefactors have promised to finance the construction of a second clinic this year in Espiritu Santo. The location has already been selected by the Ministry of Health and Project MARC had already planned on building a clinic at this location. Realistically, I didn’t think that we’d get the funding for it within the next two years.
The villages surrounding our next clinic site are truly lucky to have such generous business owners on their island. Now they’ll have a clinic to service their area in one year instead of three to five.
There are many unique challenges to this new project. The site is landlocked and deep in the jungle. Our ships will not be able to help with the delivery of goods. The land is on a hilltop far from the beach, and does not have running
The Road
This is how it looks on a nice dry day. water. We’ll need to mix many tons of cement and make over 1200 cinder blocks. This will require over a dozen tons of sand and gravel, plus thousands of gallons of water. Being so far from the sandy beaches will make this job interesting.
Before we get to the logistic challenges of supply shipment, there are several steps that come first. There’s contractual agreements between the villages, Project MARC, and the Ministry of Health that must be arranged. Then there’s supply quotes, securing transportation, creation of the millions of contingency plans, etc….
One such plan was to begin moving supplies to the site during the last week of October. This didn’t really work out. But hey, it’s Vanuatu! Time doesn’t exist here and there will always be delays.
Please enjoy the photos. They don’t do justice to the majesty of the area.
More to come later.
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cabochick
Andrea
Majestic Indeed!
Glad to hear the new projects are coming along... Can't wait to be a part of it next summer. On a side note - am I the only one that has noticed - (with the passing of every new blog) - Frank appears to be morphing into a Captain Jack Sparrow? Enjoy the wet season...thinking of ya in Canada! Andrea