A day in the life

A day in the life of a Marion Medical Mission volunteer begins early. Waking, breakfast, and grabbing all your gear (backpack, android, truck) before meeting your field officer or installation supervisor. Depending on the field officer that you're working with, we either go to load the truck with pipes, pumps, and all the pieces needed for installation or the truck is already loaded and it is time to head out. A stop at the gas station, a shop to pick up lunch supplies and we're on our way! 

As we try very hard to NOT drive after dark we try to go to the farthest village first which can be quite a ways...time to see the countryside, get to know your guide/translator better, and talk through the idea of the day. The number of wells that my field officer plans to put in each day almost always sounds very high and overly optimistic but we try our best and know that that is all that we can do and that all of the villages that have been promised wells will get them even if we can't be the ones to help install. 

Along the way we pick up a few more installation supervisors and/ or builders who know better where we are going and who is getting the wells. Upon arrival at the village/well site/ place to leave the truck to hike to the well site we jump out of the truck and pull all the pieces we'll need big pipes, little pipes, pump, plunger, connectors, tools. Then to the site (sometimes 10ft away and sometimes a hike). Installation as American volunteers meet and greet all who come to the well is followed by a dedication ceremony and instruction of correct usage for maintenance. Depending on the village there is singing, dancing, gift giving and hugs before we load up in the truck and head to the next well site. 

After 4 or 8 installations we head back to our accommodations aiming to be back by 6pm (dark). Once there we have dinner, shower, make sure that all our information is backed up, them crawl under your mosquito net into bed and rest to do it again!