Thursday, June 2

Thursday was a much less fruitful day. After chapel, we discovered that Dennis had gone to Livingstone. Dennis had to go to correct his salary. As with most trips to Livingstone, it ended up taking all day. He didn’t get back until after we had called it quits for the day.

When we hadn’t heard from Mr. Shaw by 10 o’clock, Joan called him to find out what he had available. He said he was sending the materials on a truck with one of the men working for the contractor building the new outpatient facility who was in Livingstone to pick up electrical supplies. He didn’t exactly say he had everything and didn’t say that he did NOT have something. As a result we couldn’t really have Dr. Dan pick up anything in Lusaka. We wouldn’t know what Shaw was sending and what he wasn’t until the truck arrived.

The nurses and other medical staff had a fairly good productive day, RJ visited the schools and was invited to teach the science class for the next week starting on Thursday. Bob was able to go round on patients as chaplain with Anna (the retired former nurse) in all the wards and to talk and pray with the patients and families. Jon and I struggled to find productive activity. I’d been concerned about the weight of the waterpipe coming from the new storage tank. The bottom of it was resting on the ground, the top was attached to the output, but there was no other support. I worried that when we cleared the dirt from the bottom of the pipe, the weight might be too great and damage the joint where the pipe attached to the tank. So we bridled it and tied it up to the crossbraces of the tower. (When we eventually dug the dirt out from under the pipe or removed the lower section of pipe, it seemed to hold and stay in place without damaging the connection.)

We thought we could try to dig a hole to open up an area around the the water line going to the 5-in-1 where the T-junction would have to go, but Dennis wasn’t there to tell us where the line was buried. No one else seemed to have any idea where it is. We couldn’t proceed.

So we gathered information about the mission compound’s well. I reviewed the material for the Crown Ministry seminary we hoped to conduct on Saturday. Jon kept checking on whether or not Dennis had returned and looking at other related issues (i.e., a leaky faucet). We were pretty frustrated. Toward the end of the day, the truck dropped off the material. Jon pieced it together to make sure we had what was needed.

He was anxious when he discovered that what Shaw had sent was NOT 2" pipe and couplings and junction, but 50 mm materials. They are close to the same size but slightly larger. That meant they might not fit. By this time it was too late to have Dan pick up anything in Lusaka. We contacted Mr. Shaw and he insisted that there is no 2" pipe used in Zambia – that there is only a small set of standard sizes. When we tried them out, they appeared to work, but the pipe we would be connecting them to was 60 mm so we would still need to get two reducer couplings. A bit of optimism at the end of the day.