From an engineering point of view, the most important work the latest weeks, and perhaps for the whole stay in Kolandoto, has been to install the new water pump. As mentioned earlier in this blog, there is an urgent need for a new water pump for the hospital and village of Kolandoto. After the pump test, thorough investigations of the whole water supply system, and careful budget assessments we decided together with the hospital on a submersible Dayliff 17/10. (For the nerdy readers, read further about the pump here: https://www.davisandshirtliff.com/water-pumps/product/397-ds-17-10. For the not so nerdy readers, a submersible pump is just a device which lies on the bottom of the borehole continuously pumping up water.)
As always, a couple of issues arises. Firstly, the retailer was out of stock in whole Tanzania and had a delivery time of four weeks for this specific pump. This would have meant that the pump would arrive after we left Kolandoto. Since the actual installation would be made by the supplier and not by us, this was of course possible but nevertheless a very unfortunate option. Luckily, we found out that the company had one pump left at their main storage in Nairobi, Kenya, and if we only could collect it ourselves we could have it straight away. By the help of the very charismatic archbishop (!) of AIC (African Inland Church, the organisation which runs Kolandoto Hospital), who we met with a couple of days earlier, we could arrange for the pump to be collected and transported across the boarder and finally to Kolandoto.
Having solved that problem, there were still more to come. When the pump had arrived, a whole day was spent on installation and waiting for the correct equipment and installation material to arrive. The installation was finally completed late on a Saturday evening, but only for us to realize that the pump doesn't work as expected: the power supply from the hospital to the pump was of poor quality which resulted in too low voltage to run the pump properly. When evaluating and excluding different options (buy a diesel generator, replace old power lines etc.) it was clear that the best option was to do nothing and continue to run the new pump on the lower voltage.
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| Pump installation |
Still, the new pump has been a great improvement for the village and hospital of Kolandoto. Even though the pump doesn't run under optimal conditions, it has been working flawless since it was installed almost four weeks ago. With the new pump, we have managed to double the water supply to the hospital and the village, an outcome for the first phase of this project that both we and the inhabitants of Kolandoto are very satisfied with.
The whole Healthy Hospitals survey team has now left Kolandoto, which means that Phase 1 of this project is coming to its end. Soon Phase 2 is to be initiated, and the aim of this phase is to implement as many of the interventions we have investigated during Phase 1 as possible. Some, but not all, of the needed interventions are:
- Water treatment system to ensure safe drinking water
- Solar powered back-up electricity system to protect the hospital against power cuts
- Further increase of the water supply through an additional borehole
However, how much and what we can do depends on the amount funds we can gather. Are you interested to help out? Please visit http://iaidafrica.eu/ and click on "Stöd oss" > "Healthy Hospital". Do you want to read more and maybe get involved in Engineers Without Boarders or I Aid Africa? Visit them at http://www.ingenjorerutangranser.se/ and http://iaidafrica.eu/.
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| Kolandoto Church, view from the top of the hospital's water tower |
