Kenya Wednesday 6/9/10

When we arrived they were slaughtering the chickens that had been raised from the first crop of chickens. They had buyers (240 Kenyen Shillings/Kilo) from several of the hotels. This will buy the feed and purchase the next set of chicks. After the slaughtering of the next set of chicks the cash flow will be positive and they will be able to feed themselves and sell, at a discount, to other houses.


We started the water project being worried that we would not be able to start the pump because there was not enough city water in the tank when we left last night.  We needed to fill the three ceiling tanks in the dormitory and the two ceiling tanks in the house. As far as I can tell the ceiling tanks are about 900 liters and the two house tanks are 400 liters. The city tank only holds 1600 liters of waters so I knew I had to be careful. When we got to Assissi house this morning the city tank was filling (slowly) and this gave me some relief.

When we started up the pump the first time there were leaks around the pump (Chinese pipe) after 3 hours of taking it apart and putting it back together we had a pump that would pump the water to the ceiling. With much dancing from the sisters I began to understand what I had said I would do here. Once the water began to flow, I think that there are only a couple of faucets that work and a couple of toilets that worked on each floor. For the sisters that was a miracle but for me I could only see potential breaks and flooding the place.

With that in mind I went to the ceiling to look at the tanks. One leaks and will have to be fixed. All of the valves to turn off water to a faucet or toilet are in the attic and are not marked. It also looks like pipes have been added without faucets so turning off the water to fix something is interesting. Yvonne spent the day running up and down the stairs trying to find what I had turned off in the ceiling.

At the end of the day I walked by the pump and it had shut off (which is what it is to do when the ceiling tanks are full) and I was dancing. Then I noticed it had turned off for a different reason, we had sucked the city tank empty. The pump had done what it was to do, shut itself off when there was no water to pump.  So hurrah, but it became clear that the Sisters were worried that the tank was empty. They had never had to think about balancing water between multiple tanks. I had not considered the amount of water that it would take  to fill the empty pipes so though the ceiling tanks are mostly full we spent a lot of time talking with the sisters about where the water had gone and they only had to go to the faucets that worked to get water and the toilets that worked to use the restrooms.

In the end everyone was dancing except me. We are to start our road trip tomorrow. What happens if something breaks? Oh well, I will just have to trust that God will not put these sisters in more stress. When we get back from our road trip I will have 4-5 more days to work out the kinks. The sisters believe that the city should be pumping in this area on Friday so all will be well.

I just did not think about a building that had not had water for 6-8 years freezing up and rusting out. I do not know why. In the end it is perfectly obvious.

But for all of that the Sisters are dancing and calling the other Houses telling them that they have water. They are so excited.

Pray for us.