Finishing up our last week here

Hi everyone. We are wrapping up our last week here and are quite busy. At the moment, Anna, Nate, and I are in an internet cafe writing up a "constitution" for us to work with the Springs of Life Community Based Organization to guide our cooperation in this project in the future. This organization we are working with has been assisting us in our project so far and we had a long meeting with them last night discussing our future work together. They will be the ones maintaining and furthering our projects.
 
Our slow sand filter is just about complete. We have about 10 minutes of work left to be done on it so we'll take care of that later today! I forget what all we have updated you on so I'll start from the beginning. We first bought the sand from some boys who dug it out of a stream bed, but then found that the sand was much too dirty to clean in a reasonable manner. The owner of this new water filter then helped us to bring sand from piles along Lake Victoria which happened to be much much cleaner. After this, we constructed the whole thing in a very tmiely manner since the people here are very good at building thigns. Then about 3 or 4 of us spent about 5 hours a day for 3 or 4 days cleaning the sand using water we drew from a well using a bucket on a rope. In the future though, people can just clean the sand at the lake. The reason we didn't do that was because of the nasty parasites in the lake and all the warnings we had about them. Now all the sand is complete and the construction is complete so we have poured chlorine through the system to kill any remaining organisms and have painted the tank white to keep it cooler. Now all we need to do is flush the chlorine out by pouring a lot more water through it, and then wait two weeks for a bacteria layer to grow. So we're pretty much done! The family was very helpful and receptive to us.
 
Our agroforestry plot is also coming along nicely, but we won't have a final product to show them because we cannot plant until the rainy season. In the past week we have tilled the whole field, dug trenches for the water to flow out, begun to dig a pond to collect the water runoff, repaired the fence, and collected thorns to line the fence. Now we just need to reinforce our fence with sticks which Buana Sam and Nick are getting from the lake today, place the thorns around the plot, level out our field, make a door for our fence, and complete our pond. When I list it out like that it seems like a lot of work...
 
Today the primary schoolers are coming out to the plot to help more. Usually at least 60 of them come out every single day with thorns and hoes to help us out for about an hour. Also, today we are expecting about 20 secondary schoolers to help us out for an hour as well! So we hope to get the whole thing just about finished today and then as finished as we possibly can on Thursday. Buana Sam will be coming back to Orongo in about a week and will be staying with John for a week here so he can ensure completion of the plot for us.
 
Our irrigation team has done some nice work contacting a lot of local NGO's, surveying farmers, talking to microfinance institutions, and setting people up with the appropriate organizations. I do not have all the details at this time, but hopefully Zach or Bebe Sam will update you all about what they have done!
 
Outside of our projects, all of us are healthy and donig well. We are very busy with all these things which is a good thing for keeping us focused and working well together. No one has gotten sick and our only injuries are some blisters from manual labor in the fields.
 
To update you on our plans for the end of this trip we have decided to all take one day at the end of our trip to relax. Anna, Nate, and Bebe Sam are taking an overnight bus to Mombasa on Thursday night, spending Friday there, and then coming back to Nairobi on Saturday to prepare for our Sunday morning flight. Zach, Nick, and myself are taking a day bus back to Nairobi on Friday and then going on a half day Safari in Nairobi National Park on Saturday, after which our two smaller groups will meet up and travel back to the states!
 
I hope you are all dealing well with the blistering cold back home. See you soon!
 
-Mark