How to start a fire, in 1 simple step

Here in Doro, we use aviation fuel to start our cooking fires. 

A few years back, there was a plane crash on the runway.  It had rained recently and the south end of the airstrip was still a little soft.  The plane was not quite off the ground when the wheels hit the soft ground, slowing it down enough that the Caravan was unable to clear the trees.  Everyone was injured, but the only fatality was the airplane itself. 

Later on, when the wreck was being cleared away, Sandy (who had been a passenger) asked about the fuel from the plane, which could not be re-used as aviation fuel.  An agreement was worked out, and the fuel was syphoned out of the plane and back into fuel drums.  Since then, the fuel has been used by folks on the SIM compound to start cooking fires.

I don't know how many drums there were to start with, but we are now down to less than 1/2 a drum of fuel, which has caused people to start asking what we are going to do about starting our fires when it runs out. 

We at the water project have found a (short-term) solution - keep using aviation fuel!  You see, AIM-AIR brings in full drums every now and then so that they can refuel when they land on our airstrip.  The empty barrels get rolled over to the compound to sit around until another use is found for them. 

We are using them as structures in which to make biosand filters.  (Stephen will give you more on that later.)  To make the filters, we have to first cut away a part of the lid and clean them thoroughly.  I called them empty barrels, but that is not entirely true - they all contain just a little bit of fuel, which we can dump out and pour into our little plastic bottles to keep lighting fires with. 

Most of the drums contain very little, maybe 150 mL or so.  Certainly no more than 300.  Others, however, contain a few bottles worth.  Yesterday, when we were emptying the drums, you could hear distinct sloshing in 3 of them.  1 still has a quasi-reasonable amount (less than 1/4 full still) which we will likely return to the compound for everyone's use.  The other two clearly contained some mixture of water and fuel, as there were two distinct layers of liquid when we emptied them into a basin.  We were all pretty sure that the fuel would float on top of the water, so we started carefully pouring that into the bottles, but then became very unsure of ourselves, as no-one actually knew the density of aviation fuel. 

That was time, of course, for a make-shift science experiment.  (Hooray science!)  We poured some water into an empty bottle, then poured a small amount of the top layer from the basin in.  Sure enough, we soon had a small layer floating on our known water in the bottle.  Had it been water, it would have mixed and we would not have seen any separation.  But it showed us that the small amount we poured in was of a lighter density than water, therefore a different substance, therefore the aviation fuel, and therefore the top layer in the basin was, as suspected, the fuel.  Hooray science again!

And now we have a few hundred more milliliters of aviation fuel to start our cooking fires with.  That's just what we do here in Doro.

Tales from the road (or something)

We're in Nairobi now, getting ready to head up to Lokichogio on Sunday and then on to Sudan Monday.  The past two weeks have been our mid-term R&R, and they've been pretty full with a little vacationing and Nairobi business, including grocery shopping for the next couple months!

We started off by heading down to Tanzania to visit James, my (Ginny's) brother, for a couple days.  We've been trying to plan this for a while, but since the flights to/from Sudan are chartered they are ever-changing.  Our plan was to leave Sudan on 10 September, and we were supposed to ride on the DC-3 from Lokichogio to Nairobi.  The DC-3, however, was delayed as their first trip of the day was to transport a group of students - who showed up 3 hours late for the flight.  Consequently, we had an overnight in Loki rather than continuing all the way to Nairobi.  This changed our plans, as we were going to take an all day bus from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam leaving at 6 AM on the 11th.  The next idea was to take a bus to Arusha on the afternoon of the 11th (we arrived Nairobi around 9:30) and continue to Dar first thing on the 12th, but then Stephen found some reasonably priced flights directly to Zanzibar on the morning of the 12th.  Much more restful of an option!

We arrived in Zanzibar around noon on the 12th - the first time to Tanzania for both of us.  (I have, by the way, quadrupled the number of African countries I've been to since we arrived in June.  Yup, from 1 to 4.  Not bad!)  We made our way to the hotel in Stone Town and wandered around a bit before James and his colleagues arrived.  It was a very relaxing couple of days, including snorkeling in the Indian Ocean, wandering around Stone Town, and eating some delicious Swahili food.  We then took the ferry across to Dar es Salaam and the next day took the bus to Nairobi.  We boarded the bus at 5 AM in Dar, and got off at 11:30 PM in Nairobi after a very bumpy ride with seats in the back row.  Needless to say, we were pretty tired!

Since then, we've been taking care of business around Nairobi - settling accounts, doing shopping for the water project, bike project, other SIM Sudan folks, and our own groceries.  We've also had a chance to enjoy some treats we don't often get in Doro, such as the vast quantities of delicious fresh fruits and vegetables, a little ice cream, fresh fruit, liquid milk, movies in a theatre, and restaurants.  The past couple days were spent relaxing in Kijabe, where I went to boarding school for 7 years, and catching up with some folks.

This weekend we're heading back to Sudan - catch you on the flip side!

We had a potluck the night before the flight as one of the team was leaving.  We eat very well in Doro, as evidenced by the FOUR deserts.  What you can't see in this picture was all the delicious potluck dinner food - including doro wot!

On the Doro-Kurmuk-Yabus-Air drop of a solar battery for a satellite phone in the middle of nowhere-Lokichogio flight

Arriving in Lokichogio - this place seemed huge and fancy after a couple months in the bush

View of Kilimanjaro on our flight to Zanzibar!

Landing in Zanzibar

On the boat to go snorkeling

James found a starfish, but put it back before it became too angry.

In 1919, they brought 4 tortoises from the Seychelles to this little island off of Zanzibar.  Now they have a lot more, and they're really big and old - the 2nd largest species of tortoises so we're told.  One of the original 4 is still there.  

Wandering in Stone Town

We had just eaten some delicious Swahili food, and then took about a MILLION pictures in this doorway.

We toured the Anglican church in Stone Town, which is built where the slave market used to be, and the high altar is positioned where the whipping post was.

On the ferry from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam

Clean Water & Sanitation

One of my (Ginny's) big projects during our time here is to see how the water project can assist Mabaan women.  I've developed a set of questions to determine three things: 1) Felt needs  2) Water Usage and 3) Comprehension of water and sanitation.  The idea is to go into a community, interview 3 or 4 women, and then do a follow-up session.  So far, I've done a test a run with the local Doro church women.  I had two interviews, with two ladies answering the questions in one of them, and today had a follow-up session.

We invited all of the Doro church ladies to come at 2 PM for a discussion/teaching/outreach about water and sanitation.  7 ladies showed up, which was about ideal for what I had planned.

First, we had a great time using some of Living Water's health teaching materials.  They have a set of line drawings showing various sanitation-related practices, some of which are good and some of which are not so good.  Each of the ladies got a handful of pictures and took turns describing what was happening in one and then determining as a group if it was a good or a bad practice.  There was some quite lively discussion, but my Mabaan is far to limited to understand all but the occasional word - I picked up on "pwatchin" - good, "yeya" (or yaye?) - bad, and "pieg" - water quite a bit!

Handing out pictures

Katarina explains her picture

Now it's Elizabeth's turn (children, of course, are all around - especially when you're with the women!)

  

Second, I had some photos to show of some water testing I did to try and explain about keeping the containers for water clean.  The ladies seem to at least have a concept of bacteria, so I did my best to explain how we can test for it.  As I said this afternoon, we can put the water on special paper, add food for the bacteria, and put it in a warm place.  If the bacteria are there, they will eat the food and grow until we can see them.  They will look like spots on the special paper.  I didn't find it necessary to go into the more scientifically accurate details, such as there being all sorts of kinds of bacteria everywhere, they're not all bad for you, and the test looks for thermotolerant fecal coliform bacteria, and that the bacteria don't actually grow, they multiply so that what began as one or a few bacteria becomes a very large colony.  But I digress..  I first showed a picture of the test from the local borehole.  The water there is very nice, and there were 0 cfu's (colony forming units, counted as blobby bits on the filter paper after incubation) in 100 mL.  Then, I showed a picture of the test from one of the barrels we store water in on the SIM compound.  It had over 200 cfu's - not to be drunk without filtration, please!  I also showed three treatment photos.  In the first, I had heated water to nearly boiling, and it went down to 2 cfu's per 100 mL.  Much better, but still doesn't meet the EPA drinking water standard of 0.  (Not that the EPA really has jurisdiction in Southern Sudan...)  Five minutes of boiling resulted in 0 cfu's/100 mL, and chlorinating the water also resulted in 0 cfu's/100 mL.  I demonstrated the use of chlorine, as we were giving each lady attending one bottle.  We are able to make chlorine in the water project "lab" by doing electrolysis on water saturated with salt. 

Demonstrating proper use of chlorine

John Kiya, who was translating, explains that the chlorine should be kept out of reach of children.

Tabitha looks at the photos of water testing results

The next section was a short Bible study, being that we are a Christian group.  I read the passage on Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:1-26 in Mabaan (!) and expounded a little bit on the barriers Jesus broke by talking to her, and the great gift of living water that he offered her.  While preparing, I initially wanted to use a different passage, as everyone doing water work with a Christian organisation uses this passage, so it seemed a little cliche to me.  But then I read through the passage, and there were a lot of really good things in there so I stuck with it.  Read through it again and think about presenting it to a group of undereducated (but very bright!) women who work hard all day but are undervalued.  Good stuff!  Just yesterday, another SIM missionary - Debbie - began a literacy class for this same group of women.  Very exciting!  They still won't be able to read the Old Testament in Mabaan at the end of it, but neither can the most literate of men since the translation has not been completed.  I hear they have Genesis!

Reading in Mabaan!  Tabitha and Katarina may just be straining to pick up the words in my khawaja accent, but they seem to be listening...

At the end, we gave each of the ladies a bottle of chlorine and a bright pink bar of soap, and then had tea.  Stephen left before tea to prepare for tonight's Men's Bible Study, so I don't have any pictures of it, him being the event photographer and all.

Handing out the bright pink soap!

It was a great afternoon, and a lot of fun.  I enjoyed watching the women in their animated discussions of the pictures, and had some good reactions while reading 26 verses in a language still not entirely familiar to me!  My pronunciation is apparently decent, but I don't know half of the words coming out of my mouth. :D

Living in Sudan has been a great adventure, and doing this work with the women has been especially enjoyable and rewarding.