Day 7 Water Mission – RO Filter Element Change, World Central Kitchen, Samaritans Purse

Long day today. 7:00am we started changing some of the Reverse Osmosis Membranes. We typically monitor the production water from each pair of membranes and when the conductivity (indicator of salt passing through the membrane gets high) we need to change the membrane. The picture above is Dominique (Bahamian working for Water Mission) and Mark Allen (Volunteer) inserting new RO filter into its pressure vessel.

Our main plant in Marsh Harbour has 16 membranes and 4 of them were indicating it was time for replacement. We worked on this from 7:00am to about 11:30am and then got the plant back into production. It is not a difficult task per se, but we could have used a few specific tools and adapters to speed the process along. Unfortunately there is no hardware store within a couple of hundred miles, so we make do with what we have on hand.

Oh yes and another oil change of the pump we use to transfer water from the tanks at the plant to our water truck. Not exciting, but necessary.

In the afternoon I took an hour and visited a couple of the most prominent relief organizations on the island. First, and probably the most impressive was World Central Kitchen. https://wck.org/news/2-million-meals-in-bahamas They’ve served almost 3,000,000… yes that is 3 Million meals through out Abaco and Grand Bahama since Dorian. They were on the ground here and bringing meals within days of the hurricane and are still here. This is one impressive and powerful organization. Water Mission has supplied their cooking and washing water since the beginning here in Marsh Harbour. Great people and they serve everyone.

I have also seen Samaritan’s purse in action throughout the Abacos, https://www.samaritanspurse.org/media/dorian-press-kit/ They are 60 people strong still and continue to work on projects beyond hurricane relief. Next project planned is to use solar power to provide water for schools when the power is out and/or the Municipal Water is not working. Interesting little project for 6 schools here in Abaco.

I just browsed through these two websites and I am surprised how the website shows so little of work that I see here personally. They just don’t do themselves justice.

Happy to discover late in the day that CJ’s Welding is still around and working away. Building is relatively intact and they are alive and in business still. Sorry it is a boring exterior picture of their building. I’ll do better next time.

Hygiene Kits

Beth spent the day delivering hygiene kits. The kits include toothbrush and paste, washcloth, soap, shampoo, deodorant, comb, bandaids and lip balm. We dropped one huge bin of them off at the New Vision Church distribution center in the morning, and then helped sort and organize supplies as waves of people came in to collect them. The community still has great need for the basics.

There are many “tent communities” located at churches in the area, so we spent the afternoon delivering hygiene kits to several of those sites. Our last stop of the day was at a church quite near the entrance to Treasure Cay. the people there were so happy and grateful to receive supplies as they are pretty far from Marsh Harbour and the distribution centers. The most vivid memory of the day for me happened as we were getting ready to leave the church. A young girl was already at the water stand, towel over her shoulder with her new toothbrush, soap and washcloth in hand, ready to wash up. A small moment, but it sticks with me.