Engineers Without Borders at MSU: Team 3 Wrapping it Up

Karibu! Welcome!

Since 2004, EWB@ MSU's professional and student volunteers have worked with community members in Khwisero, Kenya to provide water and sanitation infrastructure at the district's 58 primary schools, making it easier for Khwisero's children to avoid waterborne disease and get an education.

In that time, the group has grown from a small club to one of MSU's premier student organizations, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund seven borehole wells, six composting latrines and a biogas latrine that serve thousands of community members.

Thank you for joining us as we continue to work hand-in-hand with local partners to make a difference in one small part of our world. As Western Kenya's limited internet access allows, we will update this blog while in-country with the successes, stories and lessons provided by our work.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Team 3 Wrapping it Up

So team Green Hippo’s Kenyan adventure is beginning to wrap up and I think that all of us are going to be sad to see it come to an end. A lot has happened these past couple weeks and we have seen many projects continue to progress. We all settled into our home near Munyanza and enjoyed seeing Team 2 and Team East for a couple days before getting rolling on our work. We got the incubator working again so Amy and Kalen took water samples at a few schools and were able to test them at the house, we also did some work finishing up hand-washing stations at Emwaniro and continuing on with the composting latrines in the east. Damon and Dalen have been cranking away with the biogas latrine. Unfortunately, we won’t be here long enough to see its completion or participate in the “group poop”. At Munyanza, we’ve been looking at problems and solutions for the orange water issue, as well as working with the teachers to improve their hand washing stations. Although it would be nice to stick around and be able to see some more aspects of our work and the completion of or our projects, we have all thoroughly enjoyed our time here, eating ugali and drinking lots and lots of tea. We hope that everything continues to go smoothly as JJ continues on with the projects.