Kenya Monday 6/7/10

We slept better last night but were still up by 6:00. Can you believe that Yvonne agreed to get up at that time? Today was our first day to begin work on the water system at Assisi House. This system is amazing. From stories from the Sisters, the system has not worked for 6-8 years. All water is hauled in buckets to each bathroom on each of the three floors where, to flush a toilet you dip a bucket in the barrel next to the toilet and dump it in the toilet. All the showers do not work, so sponge baths are the only way to clean yourself. This is the House that is closest to the hospital so at any time at least one of the sisters in residence is ill or traveling to the hospital for treatment (right now there are three such sisters in residence), which further complicates the problem.

Learning about the water system took all morning. The water is delivered from the street once or twice a week and stored in a 1600 liter tank. From there it comes out of the tank in two ways. One is gravity fed system to some of the ground floor (which means if the tank is full you can have water in two spigots outside of the house and one of the sinks in the kitchen). The second works though a pressure pump that pumps water to the top of the house to 3 galvanized tanks in the attic. The water then falls down through the water system to the different bathrooms and the kitchen.

It became clear the pump was dead (after we spent several hours tracing the electrical system none of which is labeled). There was a valve that allowed me to close off the pump from the tank and we proceed to disconnect it and pull it out. (As you can see in the picture, it was under the tank so that made working on the pump interesting.) Now the discussion of whether to replace the pump or try to have someone fix it began. The Sisters were very careful not to push us into one decision or another but it finally became clear we need to buy a new one. This started a new adventure of finding a dealer in pumps and traveling across town to the industrial area, negotiating a price for the pump and the pressure regulator. Sister Pauline was indispensible as the price would have been at least 1/3 more. We then packed it all up and headed home through some of the worst traffic jams that I have seen. There is just no way I could drive in this city.

When we got back to the Assisi House, we opened up the boxes and found that I needed electrical cable to hook up the pump and pipe to connect the regulator to the pump. This called for some tea and discussion and as it was 5:00 so everyone thought that this would be a good conclusion to the day.

It is almost more than they can understand that there could be water soon.