Finishing up work

While I've been playing hard during these final 2 month, I've also been working hard. The big thing we have been working on is our water project. If you are reading this you probably already know about it. During these final 2 months we did an Indiegogo fundraiser to raise money to build a new water system at our hospital. We did it. We finished it about 2 days before I left site. If you are interested in what we did you can check out this link and this video.

With all work here there were some bumps along the way. We had one day where we purchased most of the things, but we forgot others and added on more to the original project. So on 1 occasion I had to go back to Bishkek and lug around a 20+ pound water pump just to end up lugging it back to the village. We had to make 3 trips to Balackchy (about an hour) for other items. I like planning and these are all things that could have been avoided if we would have planned a little better, but at the end of the day those were all minor things and we got it done. There is a Kyrgyz proverb that means measure twice and cut once, but they say to measure 7 time and cut once outdoing our english version. We didn't and that's okay, but hopefully next time they do a big project they will think through everything a little more. One more bump was when they poured a cement foundation for a new toilet before checking the pipes. So after 2 days of the cement setting they connected the toilet just to discover that the pipe leaked so they had to go back and break up all the cement that they had just poured, fix the pipe then re-cement. That was a lot of extra work. I even got my hands a little wet fixing the toilets. No one in my village has flushing toilets so when they put them together, the mechanisms were not quite positioned correctly. As a result the float could not float all the way up so the water constantly ran. They assumed that was what toilets did so they disconnected the water from them to keep them from wasting water. We cleared that up and now they know. 

The mess from breaking up the freshly laid cement

For how often work is slow and often there is no work in Peace Corps these last 2 months have been really busy. Balancing saying goodbyes, traveling and seeing as much of this beautiful country as I could, and getting this project done have made these final 2 months be the fastest of all of my time here. The hospital staff could not be happier that this project is done and I know when winter comes and they know longer have to deal with freezing temperatures outside fetching water and ice cold water for hand washing they will appreciate it even more. I've said it many times but thanks to every one that donated this project was possible. You have made myself and more importantly a small village of 3000 people and a small hospital with 38 staff incredibly happy and given them the tools to have a more hygienic and sanitary hospital. Their health and daily lives will be improved thanks to this project and that is because of all of us and the work we did. So thanks again.

Also Kara and I went on our trip to Ala kul and we made it. It was completely frozen and we did not try to do the whole hike since numerous reports said there was a meter of snow in the pass and large unstable ice walls we decided to play it safe.

Ala Kul in June on our recent trip

Ala Kul in August from when I went during my first summer here

The final blog post will be about the goodbyes.