Drainage Project

    This morning Greg had to go over to the drainage project to check on the stones they were delivering and to pay for them.  He talked me into going with him.  Wow, what an experience! 
    The project is only about a mile or so from where we live, but it was about three worlds away.  There are several levels of life and living that go on here - there is what you see when you drive down the street, and then there are several 'layers' once you get back into the neighborhoods behind the typical every day scenes. 


    We parked the car on the street by the Fukatony office and then the Fukatony president took us 'back into' the project site.  We went down several different little alleys until we came to a main thoroughfare that was about two and a half feet  wide, some of it was stone paved and some was hard packed dirt.  There were little stalls where they were selling some of everything along this walkway, and it wound in between buildings here and there.  Part the way the pathway has a building on one side and then a wooden railing on the other, it looks and feels like you are walking the old city wall in Jerusalem.  Everything here is either uphill or downhill, I don't think there is much that is a flat, level surface.  Over the railing and a bout 20 feet down is someone's little patch of yard with their laundry hanging out to dry.  As you walk along, all of a sudden you will see a head coming up above the surface of the walkway, out of a two foot wide space between two buildings.  When you look, there is a trail with steps cut in the earth and it is a main walkway that lots of people use. 
  Once we got past most of the buildings, there were some really steep concrete stairs that went down, then switchbacked and went down some more.  After that it was mostly a walk across a dirt area that was part garbage dump, storm drainage, and kids play area.  Along with lots of dogs and chickens. 
    When we got over to the project site we could see that quite a bit of work had been done.  They had moved all of the pipe sections into place and connected them and there were several guys hauling bags of dirt up the slope to pack around the pipe.  They are going to put a good layer of dirt over the pipe and then make steps out of some of the stones that were delivered today.  This was a main thoroughfare for these people in this neighborhood when it is the dry season and they want to get it usable again as soon as they can.  It looks like that when it rains it becomes a 'rip roaring' water slide. 

This is the pipe from the top side

 The view from the bottom.  On the left at the end of the pipe is a 'public' bathroom.

    They are trying to get this project done before the rainy season starts.    By the sound of things tonight, the rainy season is starting.  This is the third night in a row that we have had some pretty good rain.  Everyone says that it starts raining for a little while every day in November and December, and then it really rains in January and February!  Tonight we are getting pretty good rain by Utah standards.  It will be interesting to see what happens in January and February.
   They don't have enough money to buy as much pipe as they need to completely enclose the drainage, so they are planning to line the trench with the large stones and take it on down the hill to a fairly deep drainage ditch.  There are some houses not far downhill from the end of the pipe that will get flooded for sure if they don't get the stone lined drainage ditch deep enough.  Today when we were there, there was a woman outside the door of the house doing her laundry.  It just amazes me how clean they can get their laundry with just a couple buckets of water.  They have to haul whatever water they use, so they use it sparingly. 

Dad was taking a picture of me so that the people wouldn't think we were just taking pictures of them.

This is the house that could get flooded if they don't get the channel  at the end of the pipe deep enough. 























The local Ward in this area is providing a lot of the labor for this project through Mormon Helping Hands.  Some of the missionaries went over this afternoon and hauled rocks for a while. 

The Mormon Helping Hands that were there when we were.  Bishop Roger is just behind Patrick, who is kneeling; then the Stake Patriarch is just behind behind him.  Elder and Sister Shupe and a couple from the Ward were also there.