First Update
Hello everyone! We have been doing so much lately and so much progress is being made!
Our team had a very helpful Skype call a couple of weeks ago with Mohammed (our NGO coordinator who has been EXTREMELY helpful with all of our on-ground questions), Marty Rumbaugh (our waste-water technical advisor), and Mary Lou Ralls (our structural technical advisor who will be traveling with us for her second trip to Tanzania). The meeting lasted about 2 hours and was extremely useful in helping us move forward. This conversation led to Mohammed running a permeability test for us so that we know exactly what we can expect to plan for the soakage pit. After the meeting, Mohamed was also kind enough to go around and find us some specifications about some of the fixtures that will available for us in Tanzania, such as information about the available cisterns. This information is extremely useful because in order to keep our design sustainable for years, we want to use materials available in Tanzania, so that it can be replaced easily in case anything breaks down the road.
The other day, we had a very successful profit share with Kendra Scott which we are all extremely grateful for. They were kind enough to help us out by donating a portion of the profit they made from in-store sales yesterday, February 17th, between 6 and 8 pm. All of the proceeds from this will be going towards the building materials we need to complete the project (such as concrete, CMU, or wood).
We also are currently working on all of our official papers, such as the official budget, scope, and underground designs. We have also made great progress in Tanzania this week, we were able to coordinate our soil test and get the results back. These are crucial to our design of the septic tank and soakage pits and our technical team is working on finalizing our designs tonight. If all goes well, we should be able to send the designs to contractors who should be able to start breaking ground by next week.
While in the midst of all of this we are also need to start working on study abroad paperwork for UT, paperwork for our visas, and getting all of our medical stuff tracked away. We have a lot to finish up and are still working on getting everything done before the rainy season with our race with time.
After these steps are complete we will have to start working on the superstructure design, gathering exact prices for the supplies we will need, and begin finalizing our travel plans.