Getting water where we need it the most.

My counterpart and I are in the process of planning a project to bring reliable running water to our hospital. It is sad but true that our hospital does not always have running water. This is a huge problem and one that I along with my counterpart hope to fix in my remaining 5 months. 

Our hospital is in the center of my town. It is a large building with a basement, ground floor, and second floor. However the only part of the hospital that is operational is the ground floor. The basement and the second floor, like most of the infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan, is sitting in a dilapidated unusable condition. My village is the central village in our village region. Our total region has about 8,000 people in it. This hospital is the main health care provider for these people. Our hospital consists of a maternity ward, a general medical unit, and a dentist. About 100 people come through the hospital everyday. Many people spend multiple nights if they are very sick or have had a baby. All of this is happening at a hospital that only has 2 working sinks that only work from 9 am until 1 pm, and sometimes there is no water at all. The rest of the water comes from a pipe in the back yard of the hospital. However in winter the pipe does not thaw till about 11pm and then there is only water there for about 2 hours. The work of fetching the water lies on the woman in charge of sanitation. She is older, not very quick moving, and spends a lot of her time lugging buckets of water in and out of the hospital. With my remaining time in Kyrgyzstan and I am devoted it to fixing this. 

Our outback water source

Hauling the water

I am in a position to help improve the sanitation and hygiene of the hospital, to reduce the amount of manual labor the hospital workers are doing and allow them to devote more time to their patients at the hospital. These are things I find to be very important for my counterpart, my village, and the health of my community. This is why I am going to be devoting most of my time towards this. It is an ambitious project. The hospital has 7 sinks that do not work, 2 that work and only for a limited period of time each day, 4 toilet hook ups that may work if we had water, and some of the other rooms have portable sinks. My counterpart uses a recycled beer bottle to dump water over her hands when she washes them, and she’s the gynecologist at the hospital. We are in the process of tracking down a professional plumber to help us create a concrete plan. We have some ideas but they need work. One of our ideas is to use the second floor to store several large tanks that we will pump water from the village source into during the 9 am to 1 pm time frame. These tanks will be large enough to supply the hospital for several days in the event that the village does not have water. We will have a second pump that will deliver the stored water to the hospital. We need to replace all of the existing piping since most of it is rusted, cracked, or non-existent. We need to verify that the existing village drainage system works. Our work is cut out for us, but if this project is successful our hospital will have: 11 working sinks with 8 of them having running hot and cold water, 4 working indoor toilets, a working shower, and the remaining rooms would have new portable sinks. The sanitation and hygiene of the hospital would be greatly improved, the amount of manual labor the workers are doing would be reduced, and the hospital would have one of the most basic, but necessary items for a hospital, running water. 

Our outhouses

Water damage from broken pipes

Rusted leaking pipes

We will have a more solid plan with all of the specifics within 2 months. Our preliminary budget is about $5,000. We have to figure out all of the logistics and the funding still, but we are optimistic. We are investigating using online fundraising like indiegogo, we are looking into several charities in the U.S. that are devoted to water based projects, and we have several large companies in Kyrgyzstan that have a history of donating money to similar projects. Hopefully by March we will be able to secure funding and begin this project. I’ll keep you all posted! 

Our Hospital scheme with potential water plans.

My Amazing Counterpart

I haven’t written a blog post in a while. Partly out of laziness, but mainly because the things that I once deemed exciting are now normal and commonplace. A taxi ride that includes random vodka stops is expected, watching a sheep be slaughtered is as eventful as buying a package of ground beef,  and upon returning to Kyrgyzstan after a short visit to America, for my sister’s wedding, it felt proper to be cut in line by an old pushy Russian lady. I guess this means this once foreign place is no longer foreign to me. It has become my home and feels like home. There are some aspects about Kyrgyzstan I truly love, but other aspects I can’t wait to escape.  There is one thing in this country that has been for me the best part about living here. She has made this experience amazing and made me so thankful for her. It is my counterpart Janyl Eje. In Peace Corps all volunteers are paired with a counterpart or two. This is the person our host organization has chosen or by some other means became interested in working with an American volunteer. Often times the counterparts don’t work out and the volunteer ends up with another counterpart, no counterpart or several others counterparts for a variety of reasons. The counterpart moves to Bishkek or Russia for better work and pay, or realizes this American is not a source of income and unlimited resources for their personal gain. These scenarios have all played out in Kyrgyzstan with other volunteers, but I won the lottery.

 

My Kyrgyz tutor on the left along with my counterpart on the right at a Peace Corps training

My Counterpart in the middle and her daughter far left at our summer camp

My counterpart is a middle aged doctor and mother of three. She is one of two doctors at our village hospital. She is technically a gynecologist by training but sees all kinds of patients. Her husband is the other doctor and director of the hospital. They both were trained during the soviet times. Her husband fought with the soviets when they were in Afghanistan and I’ve seen the medals and heard the stories that go along with it. They are more educated than most from the village and have even travelled outside of Kyrgyzstan. Most in my village have never left our region and if they have, they have only been to the capital. These are not the reasons why my counterpart is the best. Yes she may be more educated, cultured, and slightly better off financially than others in my village but none of these affect my opinion of her.

The felt rug my counterpart made my family from their own sheep

My counterpart talking about HIV at one of our lessons

For me she is the one local Kyrgyz person that doesn’t speak a bit of English but can communicate with me better than any other local. It is her numerous acts of generosity towards me, my family, and friends she has shown. It is her hugs and cheek kisses she greets me with every time I see her. It is her devotion to her work, her patients, her family, and the health of Kyrgyzstan that makes me view her in such esteem. The only times I’ve ever seen her angry or upset are when higher ups in the village (the village government or school director) have lied or deviated from what they said they would do to help us accomplish our work. For example raising money at the school to pay for sinks and soap, instead the director bought wall paper for the school and the sinks remained in their broken and soapless condition. One of my first memories of being at site was on a trip to our regional city center Bokonbaev. I was starving all I had eaten was some stale bread in the morning and it was now late afternoon. She shows up with a bag of fruit, I presume to share but she says no this is for you take it home and keep it in your room for when you are hungry.  When my parents came to visit they gave up their master bedroom for my parents, they slaughtered one of their sheep, and gave them amazing gifts expecting nothing in return. She has done so many similar acts of kindness towards me only because she is that kind of person. No one in my village has made me feel more welcomed, no one has gone so far out of their way to make me feel comfortable here, no one here has spent so much of their own limited resources on me just because. People often ask volunteers what their favorite part about service is, or why they stuck out, or what they will miss the most. For me the answer is easy. 

My counterpart.

My counterpart far left and several others from my village after a recent HIV themed event.