Engineers without Borders: If you've been paying close attention to the rest of my profile, this involvement should not surprise you at all.
I have been helping out this organization for several years, in various roles, such as committee members for the Nyambogo, Botswana, and Grant Writing Committees, as well as serving as Design Chair last year. Unfortunately, I had never had the time to go on a trip to one of the project sites. This year was the first time that I had both time and money to go to one of the project sites. I left on January 1st, 2019 and returned on January 14th, 2019 from our trip to Roche, Tanzania. (We were supposed to get back on the 13th, but I'll get to that later!) My involvement in the UC chapter of Engineers without Borders has varied from the Botswana sanitation project committee freshman year (which didn't pan out due to complicated paperwork), to Nyambogo committee in my sophomore year (mainly working with latrine things), to being Design Chair my third year of college (working with t-shirt, and advertising designs), and this year, going to the Grant Writing Committee from time to time. One thing that hasn't changed for me during all that time though, was a passion for international travel and a desire to learn how engineering would be applied in the real world (including in places such as Africa). So, starting from freshman orientation, one of my dreams for college was going on one of the EWB-UC trips to Africa! (I always have been a futuristic person... just ask my StrengthsQuest test!) I've tried to go on other ones, but at the beginning of college, I didn't have the money to do so. As time went on, the time of the trips conflicted with other obligations I had, including the Japanese intensive language for my international co-op. So when I figured out that I had the time to go on this trip, I jumped at the chance! There were many pre-trip meetings that I didn't expect, but it helped to prepare me for part of what we were about to go through in the Roche community. We had a whole day meeting on a Saturday with the equipment we were going to use, and learned how to couple pipe, among other things. On January 1st, we left Cincinnati for Washington D.C., to pick up our travel mentor, Julie, who now went to grad school in Virginia, but had been president of EWB-UC two years ago. I remembered her and was glad she was coming along. After a long layover, we headed on our 12 hour flight to Qatar, where we would later fly out to Nairobi (6 hours.) One night in Nairobi (more like a few hours of restless sleep), and we headed out to Tanzania, via a 13 hour drive, including a rest stop, where I had a military officer almost arrest myself and another person on the trip for not having a seat belt on! (Overall, we realized it was a bluff, as he asked if he could arrest us, and he didn't have a car to take us anywhere anyway! But he kept stressing the fee, so it was probably a money grab. Our awesome driver, John, managed to get us out of that sticky situation.) Getting across both borders took a while, but was relatively pain free. We got in late at night, due to longer visa times than expected, but we were able to eat the delicious dinner that the workers at SHED (Shirati Health, Education, and Development, our partner NGO) had cooked for us. In the morning, we had to get right to work, as we only had 6 days to get what we needed done! The first day was a lot of assessment, and there was the initial fumbling around of how best to work on things. Our main goal was to unroll heavy plastic pipeline from the Roche health center to one of the Roche schoolhouses, called Ratia. We had to have an inlet line, and an outlet line, to get it to the schoolhouse (through many forests, fields, and crop fields!) and extra back to the health center. Fortunately, our trenches for these pipes were already dug. Unfortunately, some of them weren't deep enough, so over the next few days, a lot of them had to go back and redig it. We found the best way to unroll pipeline was to roll the whole heavy circular roll at once, which took many people. The inlet 1.25 inch pipe wasn't too bad, and could be done with 2 people who had good stamina, but the 2 inch pipe roll was much heavier and required many more people. There were also issues with holding everything together, and the townspeople came up with the idea of using a big stick to hold everything together_ this was on the 3rd day after we had suffered for a while (pictured below). We used this same stick for many days, as it did the job fantastically. The only issues were when pulling it through heavily wooded areas, where it would often catch on stuff, or people would get thorns in their clothes. The acacia bushes and cacti were a constant threat to us! There were also a lot of roaming cattle, goats, and chickens, and unfortunately, their poop was common in the open fields, so we tried our best to avoid it. We could only work until sunset every day, as obviously there were very, very few electric lights, and most of them were inside buildings. Dinner time was fantastic, and they cooked great meals to reward us for our great work. The rice, beans, soup, special chicken, griot (fried pork), and fresh avocados, and fruits, as well as coffee, tea and cocoa we could make on our own was very thoughtful (Africafe-- some of the best coffee I've ever tasted, even though it was instant! Quite a feat: I will definitely buy it here as well!) Breakfast was similar, with chuppati as well, some of the flatbread that was inspired by a lot of the Indian immigrants that Kenya had. We'd take leftovers for lunch, and tried to save leftovers from dinner as well. The last couple days, we'd take leftovers to give to the water committee, because they wouldn't pack lunch (normally they would go home to eat, but couldn't when we were there). Other tasks my group and I had to do was drill holes and put faucets in the 10,000 liter tank (I wasn't there for that), build the foundation for the tank (one of the most fun things that we did in my opinion, even though the community said it was already done before we got there), build and put in tapstands, cut into the pipe at the water station, and thread new pipe (very nervewracking to watch), and couple the pipes (which I didn't do much of myself). The community was very eager to help, especially the water committee, and kids often tagged along to see what we were doing, help, or (unfortunately) ask for things. Sometimes we'd give the helpers water, and obviously take photos with the kids, but we didn't want them to become dependent on us, as much as it was frustrating not to help. The last day, we were waiting on pipe for the last part, and so, in the morning, we had a meeting with the Roche water committee. Through our translator, and the doctor who knew English, we conducted the meeting, and found out that our plans were all wrong! The way that we would have the pipes set up would give the water away first to the health center and then to the school before they were able to sell water to the community. They wouldn't have enough money to run the electric pump if they couldn't sell the water. They said that they had told the last group of people to Roche, but we expressed that we had never heard it before. After this, we went to Ratia to put the tank on the foundation, and waited for the last of the pipe. After several hours, it still hadn't even reached Shirati (a 40 minute drive from Ratia!) so we decided to flush the line of the dirt the best we could. We connected the ends that we had together and starting pumping water. A couple hours later, it made it to the schoolhouse, but barely. It didn't make it back to the health center though, and many of the couplings were leaking, so we had to teach the water committee how to finish things up. Slightly disappointed that we weren't able to finish, I chalked it up to being a problem of real engineering. Things rarely work out as you expect them to the first time. But the important thing is that we got the base of it done, and the next people, and the water committee could work on things from there. A few days later, we got word that they had continued pumping, and it never did make it back to the health center. Maybe due to the elevation, maybe due to the water pressure, maybe due to the leakage of the connections, and maybe a combination of all three, we don't know. But we made sure to talk to the Roche committee when we came back, and they said that the next trip (which will take place in June), they'd be sure to fix it. There will be several meetings in the next couple weeks to sort things out. Additionally, three of our group went to Burere, another community that EWB-UC is working with right now, and talked to them about the things that they need fixed there. Apparently, their latrines and water system is up to date, and the other matters will be discussed with the Burere committee later. Bonus: We had a pre-planned safari in Nairobi National park the day we left Africa. It was absolutely beautiful and as scenic as all the tourists say! Some pictures are to the right. We were also able to go to the elephant orphanage, where we saw some delightful elephant babies interacting with each other! It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen! Our travel back took way longer than expected. The flight to DC was 14 hours this time due to the earth's opposite rotation. In DC, we had an overnight stay.... and our flight the next morning was cancelled. We found another flight, but we had to take a shuttle to the other DC airport. And then that flight got delayed (the airport closed while we were on the runway!), and we missed our connection. 4 of us stayed overnight, while the 2 most urgent (one was sick, and one had co op the next day) got to Dayton that night. The next morning, 2 of us got on the 8:30 flight to Cincy, and the other 2 got on an 11 am to Columbus, where they were from. But we all got home safe eventually (and got our luggage back too!) All these trials and tribulations showed what travel really is about. Taking everything and adapting to it as it's thrown at you, either good or bad (including the roughly 60 bug bites I got in one very unlucky night!) . I was lucky that I had a fantastic group of people to go experience this with, and I'm forever grateful that we were able to get through everything together! Whoever thought a trip to Africa would help teach me the hardships of both international travel and engineering in one go, and how important it is to have a great group by your side? |