On Site...



Since we're actually here to help construct a hospital, it might be a good idea for me to post some photos of Nate working on site to help you visualize what it is he does in a day!

This building will be the pharmacy.  

This is the other corner of the same building.  It's actually three buildings in one.
There's the pharmacy, triage, and another thing I can't remember right now.  


This is the foundation/footings/first few courses of brick on the actual hospital building.
This is a fuzzy picture of Nate with Bawa and Fusini, the two carpenters here.

Nate and the carpenters are building the door and window frames here. Then
a special beam called a "bond beam" gets build out of concrete along the top.


On this building you can see the bond beam framed and poured with concrete.
Nate's arms were pretty tired the other night from lifting buckets of concrete
up to this height!  I'm pretty sure I would have been crying if I had to do it.
When a patient comes, this is where their family will stay.







This is the entrance to the hospital.  You can see a building with no roof.
This is the cookhouse.  When a patient is admitted, the family stays
on site in housing and cooks for them.  I bet it's better
food than our hospital food in Canada!!  Okay, may be not.


And this is what Nate does on his lunch break after a hot morning in the sun!

Comments

  1. MarianneSeptember 17, 2012 at 6:14 PM

    Wow, that's pretty intense physical labour. How far are you all from the work site? And is Nate working with just two guys, building this thing by hand?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fufu Friday!

Image
Last Friday, we had a fufu party at our house with the construction team that came from Michigan.  Fufu is a major staple here for the locals.   It all begins with manioc, a long tuber type vegetable that is black on the outside and kinda hairy, but it's white one the inside.   It's kinda like a huge yam.   So first,  you peel 'em and boil them.  And then the fun begins. Here is Joseph, Marie, and Adzo, putting the boiled manioc into the fufu pounder thing. Joseph and Marie sorta beat the manioc up a bit for us first. And then the rhythmic pounding begins.  This is me and Jennifer working together pounding it. And here is Nolan and Zack, pounding it too.  It takes a LOT of pounding! And here is Nate and our guard, Ibraim, taking their turn.  Still pounding. And here's the fufu, the first batch is ready.  Think of it as really gluey mashed potatoes. And here is Teddy at the table ready to dive in.  He got a tiny portion becau
Read more

What the Dickens?

Image
Week 2 back home has been interesting one.  This is going to be a pretty long post because there is a lot to cover, so hang with me. Last Friday was Kylie's surgery date.  On the morning of, we got a call from the doc's office saying that they were ahead of schedule (as if the snow wasn't enough of a clue, I knew for certain I was not in Togo when I heard the words "ahead of schedule"!).  They were waiting for US!  Imagine, docs waiting for patients?? We left right away for the hospital and when we got there, we registered and then were zoomed through the paper work, taking Kylie's vitals and getting ready for surgery.  Here we are in the little surgical waiting room: And here we are gowned and ready to rock and roll about 3 minutes later.  These guys waste no time. Before we went off to the OR, two of our pastors and my mom and my sister came in with us to pray.  Above photo is our little group who stood to pray for Kylie.  So aw
Read more

Week One Done.

Image
We made it! We're here and we're settling and things are good. Here's what's been going on since we left Canada last week... We left London on Monday morning after a very difficult good-bye.  It was hard.  Really hard.  We took at bus to the Toronto airport and from there flew to Paris, then from Paris to Niger, then Niger to Togo.  Amazingly, our trip was completely uneventful. Everything was smooth sailing, even all 18 of our bags and rubbermaid totes made it.  We were very grateful - and still are. We arrived in Lome as very weary travellers but were greeted at the airport by our dear friend and co-worker, Anna.  She and Parico, our Togolese driver, helped us get all our stuff into the van and took us to the Southern Baptist Seminary compound to stay in their guest house.  Sweet Anna had pizza and chips and cold drinks waiting for us when we arrived. The next morning we began our shopping in Lome.  This is the capital of Togo and has an abundance of stores
Read more