Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Now in the city of Panguma! Sierra Leone, Africa

We arrived in Panguma late on Monday night, November 15th.  The first thing we encountered - no lights in the guest.  We had to immediately jump into the problem solving mode.  I had to rewire the end of an extension cord that was supposed to back feed the house through a receptacle, (I can't believe I did that, but there is no connection to anything so back feeding is not an issue and their plugs are much larger then ours.) 

No water either, but we could work on that tomorrow. It just really felt good to get off those bench seats in the back of the Land Cruiser after another 10 hour trip.  Six of us crowded in the back seats with Linda in the passengers seat.  Even with all the hand bags and groceries, including a 50lb bag of rice, we felt somewhat better every time we passed one of the local vans that usually had 20+ inside and sometimes another 6 or 8 on the roof.  It really depended how many goats were on the roof first.  

The three men from Camp Hill United Methodist Church started handing out clothes this afternoon.  They had brought three large suitcases of clothing with them. The village and our guest house immediately turned into mayhem as every mother wanted her child to get the free clothes, which for many of these dear folks it would be the first clothes they have ever owned.  We had to lock the doors and allow only one child in at a time in order to maintain any control. 

One medical prayer request --
I had a small (1/2 in) cut while in Lebanon and it was scabbed over good and I thought, no problem. I guess something got under it here in Sierra Leone and my leg from my knee down to my ankle is now red and swollen.  I only have Ciprofloxacin.  I took the first dose today.  I put a fresh bandage on it with antiseptic cream.  Those of you in the medical field who would like to share some medical advice I would be most appreciative.  There is a small hospital here, but I hesitate to go there for many reasons.

Now, allow me to warn you, that the rest of this letter will be technical stuff, so if you ladies want to sign off until tomorrow I completely understand.

I just finished an initial drive-through on the electrical system that used to be operational until the war started 17 years ago.  Both of the village transformers had been stolen and all the wires on the 1/2 mile line are gone as well.

The step-down transformer from 33kv to 11kv is still mostly intact. I am not sure if it is useful as I can not see any oil level.  I suspect it was drained and used for motor oil or something else of equal compatibility.  I'll dig deeper into it later this week.

The electrical substation, or power house, was built by the Chinese before the war so it is basically junk. I will begin praying now for help and for some design engineering on a simple 33kv to 11kv system. 

All the concrete poles and anchors and most of the insulators are still intact. I will count and do measurements tomorrow for total line length needed.  I expect it will be about 1/2 mile. 

This total 33kv system is fed from two power plants.  One source is a diesel system at 5 Megawatts and the other source, is a hydro system at 6 Megawatts. I visited both and have lots of pictures. "Interesting”…

That’s enough for now.  Please keep praying.  The needs are great and the workers few.

Serving Together,

Tom and Linda

No comments:

Post a Comment