First days on the Job

Tuesday 24 November 2009 - First Days on the Job

Yesterday morning, my assistant came to me and told me that there
was a problem with the well. The output had fallen significantly and it was
taking too much time for people to get water. I went and had a look, it
looked simple enough - a couple of bolts holding a plate to a raised
concrete slab with a foot pump and a faucet sticking up. I told him that we
could have a look in an hour after I went through a couple of other things
that I had to do. I figured I would just do what I always do when something
is broken and there is no one else to fix it - take it apart and have a
look.
I went to the Log Admin (Log is short for logistician) who before my
arrival was completely in charge of all things "tech" and told him my plan.
He showed amazing patience as he explained to me the consequences of messing
with the well. If you take apart that pump and don't put it back together
right, that is our water. That is everybody's water. There are two other
wells in the village but they don't produce in the dry season (which just
started). That means everything that we have going on here shuts down
'cause we can't work without water. It's the main non-river water for our
inpatient clinic, outpatient clinic, house, and, oh, at least a couple
thousand other people. I don't usually think of technical problems with
simple things like manual pumps. Usually if something tinkerable is broke,
you have a shot at fixing it and if you can't, you just replace it.
It only took me about two seconds to see his point and to go
further. Additionally to our basic functionality, if I go and open up a
half producing well and put it back together and it produces nothing after
that then "I" broke the well. Then we compromise our community relations
and in turn our security. I went back to my assistant and apologized and
told him that some water is better than none and until the pump stops
producing entirely, we're gonna leave it alone. Balancing our image as well
as our functionality with a desire to have things work properly and
efficiently is a new challenge for me. I never had to worry too much about
image or basic existence.

So I come home today and go to wash my hands in the sink by the
toilets. No water. I go outside and ask the guard if he had heard anything
from the water carriers when they came by to manually fill our water tanks.
"Yeah, they came by and said that the pump isn't working so they weren't
able to fill the transfer containers." I went and got the doctor who is a
native French speaker to double check and make sure that I got that right
because it wasn't really a nod-and-smile-and-hope-everything-goes-fine kind
of situation. But sure enough, "Yup, that's what he said. Oh and, by the
way, could you turn on the generator? It was supposed to be turned on two
hours ago.
Point is, everything seemed so nice and cush' - we've really got a
nice place here, running water, flush toilets, showers, electricity. But
it's all quite tenuous as today proved. If procedure isn't followed and
everything else doesn't stay just right, you lose all that cush' pretty
fast. As it turns out, we made it alright for the night without having to
sacrifice anything. There is a smaller auxiliary water tank on the other
side of the house that doesn't get used but happened to have enough water to
take showers outside and the batteries hadn't been drained because no one
was home all day so we didn't crash our electrical system. Tomorrow will be
a different story depending on how well I do my job.
I knew about all of this stuff before I came but I guess I hadn't
internalized it until I got here. To think, how many people in Denver have
to fail to do their jobs, for whatever reason, for water and electricity to
stop flowing for the entire city? I don't know the answer to that but now I
know that here, in Markounda, the answer is three. The two guys we pay to
go to the well everyday and fill two carts full of water containers, push
them up to our house, carry them up the stairs to our water tower and fill
our 1000 liter tank and the guard who forgot to turn on the generator.
And in case you are wondering - we are the entire town when it comes
to running water and electricity.