How A Filter Grows...Part II

Before a filter leaves the construction sight it is numbered and labelled.

As an aside, this is where I live. Quite pretty, I think.

As another aside, I never expected to trade in my sterile gloves and catheter kits for this stuff!

Okay, back to the filter.

The filter gets to stay at the construction sight for at least one week in order to fully cure. After that, it's time for the little guy to make his (sometimes arduous) trip to his new home!

At the beneficiary's house the filter waits for the installation technicians to come and set it up. It gets washed out, like in this picture, and then a level spot is found or made inside the house for the filter to stand on.

Next the gravel and sand layers are added and we check the flow rate to see if the filter will work properly.

Then it's time to mark the filter's location with the GPS so we can find it again for follow-up (no road signs out here).

After receiving education on how to use and maintain his filter, the beneficiary signs a form saying that he did indeed get his filter installed.

How A Filter Grows...Part I

First you have to put together the mould and attach the riser pipe to the inside.

Then you sift the gravel, sift the sand, sift, sift, sift...

Then it's time to mix up the concrete and fill up the mould.

Next, you hit the mould with a rubber mallet to get all the air bubbles out. This takes forever. You may be able to tell from my expression that this is not my favorite part of the job.

Once the moulds are full we let them harden overnight! The next day the moulds come off and the whole process starts over again.

I had every intention of putting together a blog today about the ins and outs of the filter building/installation process. I took all the pictures these last two weeks, starting composing the captions, etc. However, I forgot my power converter and my battery is about to go. Next week, seriously. It's going to be great! Colorful, informative. Words fail me.

On another note, turns out I have malaria. I am actually relieved because you can take medication for malaria and start feeling better quite quickly. Please pray that I will be back on my feet soon and that I won't get it again. I am thankful for a good clinic to visit and the medicine I need. I love you guys!

I promise, I will soon grace the pages of this blog with some pictures. Sadly, I forgot to bring along my camera cord this weekend so it will have to wait.

This last week Melissa and I spent our mornings in filter construction and our afternoons in language lessons. The construction site we were at has four moulds, so we built four filters a day. A couple of beneficiaries would come from the community to build their own filters, and we would build the rest. It felt good to dust off some of those manual labour skills from my job with the Town of Three Hills a couple of years ago. I am still infinitely weaker that my Ugandan coworkers but they were very gracious and let me be involved in all the aspects of construction. I feel pretty confident now about the actual construction of a filter. This next week we will be focusing more on properly installing them, and I am looking forward to learning more about that aspect of the BSF as well.

If you have ever had any cross-cultural training I’m sure you have heard of the different stages of culture shock. The honeymoon, rejection, acceptance, adaptation, etc, etc. The first time I came to Uganda in 2001 I was just moving into the acceptance phase when it was time for me to leave. When I returned in 2006 I remember being pleasantly surprised that I was picking up where I left off. I felt comfortable and safe, and at home in a small sense. By the time I was getting ready to leave I was starting to think about building life in a totally new culture. Now I am back in Uganda for a third time and once again picking up where I left off, thinking about living and working here for years instead of months. I know that I can adjust to no running water, no electricity, no phones or supermarkets. My fear is loneliness, and I don’t know if I can adjust to that.

Whenever I leave the privacy of my house I am instantly a spectacle. When I walk down the street I am bombarded by the constant shouts and greetings of almost everyone I pass. I know that every conversation is about me as I walk by. I know that hundreds of eyes are staring in my direction, curious, leering, suspicious, delighted. This last week, in a hushed voice, one of my coworkers asked my partner and I how we could get him to Canada. My heart sank. I am still just a mzungu, an opportunity, a pile of money, a white. That is how it feels, at least. It all makes me wonder if I can ever really enter into a community here. How long do I have to stay before I will become a person with a name and a personality and not just a skin tone? Is it possible?

These questions are heavy on my heart as I ponder God’s direction for my future. I think of the rich community of friends, family and church that I have in Canada and I experience the loss of my familiar feeling of belonging. However, instead of seeing this experience as something that is robbing me of my community, I want to see is as an opportunity to expand my community. I want to learn how to do that. I want to have faith that wherever God sends me is where I belong. I want to learn that it is impossible for me to be alone.

About time for a new post, I'd say!

I imagine that pretty much everyone who will be reading this blog knows this already, but just in case....I have been here in Uganda for almost two weeks. I am working as an intern in Samaritan's Purse Canada Water for Life until the beginning of February 2009. Currently I am living about nine hours west of the capital city in a tiny village called Ntara. Currently SP have two construction sites near there where teams of local technicians are assisting people in the community to build their own biosand water filters. Currently my fellow intern (Melissa) and I have been spending our time in language learning to a few others things, but in this next week we will be meeting with our program manager to set some goals and determine where exactly we will fit in the project here.

The staff here are amazing! They are so knowledgeable and hard working. Plus, they are willing to uproot themselves and move fairly regularly in order to best serve the people they are trying to reach.

Our boss out here on the field likes to say, "Africa! Adventure unlimited!" True, true. Life in Ntara has been a bit of an adventure for me so far. I am adjusting to the "rustic" conditions and the amazing number of bugs and other creatures that I have never seen before. It is funny how quickly completely foreign things become your new normal, though. I am SO excited to really get into the work here and build relationships. Melissa and I are really enjoying getting to know the people we will be working with. Most of them are around our age and I hope we can become great friends. I think we will.

It feels like the time is already flying, and I want to make sure I get everything I can out of this time! God has been challenging me to evaluate my motivations and my philosophy of ministry, and I hope that five months from now some great heart changes will have taken place.

Well, Facebook is calling so I will conclude this chapter. I miss you guys so much! Love you a lot....

There's a man in the Bible who's name is Jacob. His name means "the deceiver". He lies in order to steal his brother's birthright, and then runs for his life to a new place where he is deceived into marrying a girl he doesn't want. This pattern of deception seems to follow him. Then, one day, he decides to return to his father's home. God meets him on the banks of a river one night and they wrestle. They wrestle all night; Jacob won't let up. Finally, when dawn is about to break, God has to dislocate Jacob's hip so he'll stop fighting. But Jacob won't let go until God blesses Him. So, God does, and He changes Jacob's name to Israel, which means, "he wrestles with God".

Months ago, when I decided to start this blog, I called it "Not Like Jacob" because I wanted to have a place where I could work out my thoughts as I tried to be an Israel; a wrestler. At the beginning of this last year I felt betrayed by God. I was horrified that I could even feel that way, but I did. It was like the injustice and suffering and confusion that I had seen in my travels, compounded by all the things I didn't understand about my own life, all caught up with me at once. Throughout the last twelve months God has been leading me through some waters that have felt very deep, helping me to find peace and rest in a world that is not my home. And while the circumstances have changed which initially prompted me to start this blog, I still want to keep wrestling. By not acknowledging my fears and questions and struggles, which I know are bound to come, I lie to Him. And part of His blessing to me is to let me bring all my turmoil to His feet and ask, "What does all this mean?" And I know that the point will come where He will see that I am going to keep wrestling beyond what is actually helpful to me, and then He will stop me and say, "Because I am God." And that will be enough.

My second motivation in making this blog is to create a record of what God has done and what He is doing. I am about to start living a dream that I have held dear to my heart for years and I know that God is going to do great, awful, wonderful things. I guess I want to keep a record for myself as much as for you all. C.S. Lewis wrote that God has "paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us", meaning that He loves us so truly that He is determined to make us into masterpieces- which takes time, joy, pain, effort, reshaping and even restarting sometimes. I know that this is what God is doing for me and I want to remember it all.