It's fun working in Sudan. One of the reasons I enjoy it is because you have to be (or get to be) very creative. We don't have all the conveniences of home, so we have to start everything from scratch here. Whether it be bbq chicken pizza, curtains for your windows, or water quality testing...you kind of get right down to the bare-bones essence of it all. I've already explained the pizza story in my previous blog. And curtains...well, I was depressed by the big floral-patterned bedsheets doubling as curtains on my windows, so what do I do? Go to the market, buy 6 metres of fabric, bring it back home, cut it in two, and then take it to a tailor and ask him to sew it for me. I mean, I guess people do things from scratch in Canada too...but, here, it's not really a choice. You want something, you figure out how to make it or do it from scratch.
I may be exaggerating a bit here. There are plenty of conveniences here, they're just different than the ones I'm used to from home :)
Same goes for water quality testing. I mean in Canada, finding out the water quality of a water source is as complicated as going to collect a sample, dropping it off at a lab, and waiting for the results. Here, there is no nice lab to "drop off" your sample to. There is no data bank of past water quality test results. There is simply you, yourself, and you. We have a little kit produced by Oxfam that's called the Delagua kit. It's so cool, it's pretty much a self-contained laboratory. I trained one of my staff members to do water quality testing, and thought I'd show off our little Sudanese lab. It may look a little shabby, but hey...it's the real deal. We may use our kitchen oven to sterilize our tiny petri dishes...but it works! Like I said...working here calls for creativity...it's fun :)
Never mind...I was going to share some pics, because our internet seemed to be a bit better tonight, but, yeah, internet is apparently not going to let me do this...so I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks with some pictures of our "lab".
I may be exaggerating a bit here. There are plenty of conveniences here, they're just different than the ones I'm used to from home :)
Same goes for water quality testing. I mean in Canada, finding out the water quality of a water source is as complicated as going to collect a sample, dropping it off at a lab, and waiting for the results. Here, there is no nice lab to "drop off" your sample to. There is no data bank of past water quality test results. There is simply you, yourself, and you. We have a little kit produced by Oxfam that's called the Delagua kit. It's so cool, it's pretty much a self-contained laboratory. I trained one of my staff members to do water quality testing, and thought I'd show off our little Sudanese lab. It may look a little shabby, but hey...it's the real deal. We may use our kitchen oven to sterilize our tiny petri dishes...but it works! Like I said...working here calls for creativity...it's fun :)
Never mind...I was going to share some pics, because our internet seemed to be a bit better tonight, but, yeah, internet is apparently not going to let me do this...so I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks with some pictures of our "lab".
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