Finishing up

Well my 2-1/2 weeks went by quickly and I'm back in the US now.  The last week was spent mostly finishing up preparations for the water treatment containers and making sure the hospital project is OK to hibernate for a few more months.

Our friend Wilson Fallah brought a couple paintings for me to bring back to the US.  Our friends in Spokane, the Glanvilles, continue to work with Wilson and help sell his paintings at fair trade events.  I wish I would have posted this a couple of days ago before the sale, but I'm sure if you get ahold of Peter or Amber they can get some of his work to you.

SIM continues to try to expand services at ELWA Hospital.  The medical communities struggles to treat malaria, typhoid and other "normal" illnesses have been fairly well documented in the media.  Almost every hospital shut down in July and August due to health workers falling sick, and then struggled to reopen due to the dangers and nurses being lured away by international medical groups with higher pay.  ELWA Hospital is open and operating under new protocols.  All patients must come through a single entrance and are screened for Ebola symptoms before being admitted.  It is a little hard to even recognize for those who are familiar with the hospital...

An X-ray drying in the sun outside the X-ray room.

                                     

Some of the guys worked through Liberian Thanksgiving to try to get a ditch backfilled.  They wanted their picture taken when I came by.

Here is a video of some of the guys, and our security staff telling me what they were thankful for on this Thanksgiving.  Hopefully you can make out their Liberian English.

The day before I left we had our typically beautiful sunset over the Atlantic.

Access to all businesses and shops require handwashing, and usually someone taking your temperature.  Here is the line coming into our office at Samaritan's Purse one morning.  Everyone washes their hands in chlorinated water, has their temperature taken with a non-contact thermometer, has their shoes sprayed with a chlorine solution and has their car tires sprayed with the same chlorine.  then a piece of paper with the date, time and your temperature is stapled to your shirt sleeve.

The handwash station at a local grocery store.

And leaving the country my temperature was taken no less than 5 times.

And again when entering Brussels Airport

Then when arriving at Dulles Airport in Washington DC I went through the CDC's enhanced screening.  That went fairly smoothly and everyone was very professional and courteous.  I now get to be "best friends" with my local health department epidemiologist until my 21 day monitoring period is complete.

November 1

A few more pictures from the past week in Liberia...

It was great to see Doreen and Emmanuel on Tuesday.  Emmanuel is really starting to grow and thrive after his heart surgery in February.  I guess I never posted anything on our poor neglected blog after Emmanuel returned from his surgery, but he and Doreen are doing well.  Doreen was able to rent a small shop and stock it with dry goods to sell with money that was donated to her while she was in the US.  Business is very slow under the current crisis but they are getting by.  I gave him a soccer ball to take home with him and when they went to leave he grabbed a second ball and placed it into his bag.  Doreen laughed and said "Oh, Emmanuel thinks he's taking all two footballs!" He looked up and smiled at me...knowing I would be powerless to resist his charm...and left with both of his new "footballs".

Rainy season is just coming to an end.  The rains and winds were not kind to the first structure that we built to combat Ebola way back in early April.  It was a a triage tent to screen patients for Ebola before admitting them to either the ER or Ebola ward...my how things have grown since then. 

Generator problems are never really solved, just fixed for the time being.  And for the time being they are running so I moved on to the next project.  Three containers with water treatment equipment have been donated to ELWA by Parker Hannifin Corp.  Each container will have a sand filter, chlorination equipment, UV treatment, water storage tanks and a pump.  To prepare for their arrival we cast a concrete slab near the new well that Living Water drilled for us earlier this year.  Here the guys are using the slab around the hand pump to mix concrete for the pad.  It made it easy to add water to the concrete mix!

 Utilities around ELWA can be a little tough to sort out after 60+ years of pipe in the ground.  We were able to extend water and power to the pad so when the container arrives they can hook it up quickly and provide clean water for the campus.  Right now there are sand filters on the water system but all water has to be run through filters at houses and the hospital before drinking.  These containers should eliminate that need.

Here a couple of my workers are making a sweeping elbow for our electrical conduit.  The elbows that you can purchase in Liberia have a very small radius, making it tough to pull wire through.  So they are using a small fire to heat the pipe so they can bend it.

I stopped by one of our security guard's house on Sunday.  Sirleaf has been working on the house for quite some time.  As they typically do in Liberia, every month he would set aside as much of his pay as possible to buy a few concrete blocks or sand and build as much as he can each month.  The project took a turn last month when someone in the house they were living in came down with Ebola.  He scrapped together enough money to put a roof over one bedroom and Sirleaf, his wife, two daughters, his son, daughter in law and grandson moved into the bedroom.  It is a little cramped but at least they are free of Ebola.

 And last but not least here was my office on Thursday.  I walked in and it looked like a dressing room.  Gentry purchased a bale of long sleeve shirts and was selling them to co-workers.  Many people right now prefer long sleeves to cover as much skin as possible while out and about.  You can purchase all sorts of used clothing in tightly compacted bales here that comes from donated or purchased thrift shop clothing in the US...so Gentry went out and purchased one to help keep people covered up.  I told him I wasn't coming to work the day he brought in a bale of pants!

The rest of this past week was spent at the new hospital site making sure things were secure.  When we left in August it was sudden and we didn't really get a chance to walk around on the site and make sure everything was stored properly and covered and secure.  A couple of the containers that materials are stored in started leaking so we repaired the tops of all of our containers and repainted them with anti-rust paint.  Hopefully the project will be able to resume sometime early next year.

Well I have one more week here before I head back.  I'll be going to a private location that SP is having all their staff spend their 21 days in quarantine.  Hopefully I will have time to post some more pictures before I go.