July 16, 2015 - Kisanga General Hospital

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Dear President and Sister Thomas,

You both understand how difficult our humanitarian assignment has been at times.  It’s amazing that some projects we work at developing for months never seem to work out and others just come to us out of the blue.  I wanted to share one such experience with you.

We were happy to accompany Sister Thomas and Zack when he came to visit.  Dr. Mikesell had the responsibility of scheduling the major hospitals and we had the pleasure of scheduling some smaller locations.  We looked at it as a diversion day but thoroughly enjoyed it.  Well, during our arranged visit to Kisanga General Hospital, we had an opportunity to visit with Dr. Kyky about their most pressing capital development needs.  He listed three: (1) water storage, (2) electricity to be run to the coolers that store the corpses and (3) the new TB center.  

We took an interest in the water storage issue.  The hospital receives water from Regideso during the morning hours but they have no clean water during the afternoons or at night.  For water needs including maternity, surgery and toilets, they use the water from the shallow hand-dug well which is contaminated.  Our area welfare manager around the same time asked us to project local projects we would consider for the 2016 budget year.  We included the Kisanga General Hospital Water Storage proposal in a two page listing of potential projects.

The same evening that Phillip Moatlhodi, our area welfare manager received our email response, he called and asked if he could find the money, could we develop the documentation on this project?  From that unexpected beginning during the past month we have been obtaining engineering estimates, testing the water pressure, and securing contractors’ bids before submitting the project proposal.  Yesterday we received approval for a $19,000 project that will benefit 233,000 residents who live in the Kisanga Health Zone.

We anticipate using Brother Mwamba as a site monitor on this project which will provide him work for about two months while he is out of school.  Tell Zack we enjoyed his visit and his involvement is visiting hospitals has helped us and the people of Lubumbashi.  We’ll attach a copy of the project development worksheet (PDW) so you can read a little more about the background.  Isn’t it amazing how we receive help when we least expect it.  

Elder and Sister Davis