Water Security at Kibuye

(By Caleb)

In university my studies focused mainly around Water Resources Engineering.  Surprisingly, in my current role here at Kibuye, I do not get to put my degree to use very often, strictly speaking.   However, over this last year, a very generous gift from a friend of the team has enabled us to make a concentrated effort to increase both the quality and quantity of water available at the hospital.  

Despite our best efforts over the last 10 years the hospital continued to experience periodic water outages.  As you can imagine, the lack of water affected the ability of the hospital to function at just about every level.  With the construction of new ferro-cement water tanks, new pipelines, some new controls and a new disinfection system, I hope that our water woes will mostly be behind us!

Planning out the location for these new tanks and a pump house.  There is space for five tanks, but we started with 3.  Each tank can hold 100,000 liters.

Setting out. 

Laying the foundation.

Beginning to lay the reinforcement and starting to construct the small pump house in the background.

With the ground slabs poured, they begin to tie the reinforcement of the walls.

With the reinforcement cages finished, the plastering begins. 

Two tanks complete and curing under hessian coffee sacks.  

Finishing the plastering on the inside. 

A visit from a local inspector.  

After close review, final approval received!  

Tanks complete!  Only awaiting paint after curing.  The hospital's water storage used to be a mere 60,000 liters.  Now with these tanks we have 360,000 liters.    

More curious inspectors checking on the filling process.  

This is our new Ultraviolet disinfection system.  Recent water quality testing showed that we can now drink the water straight from the tap!