Conference call with Travel team in SL today

Hi all,

Today, 5 PM our time, we had a conference call with the travel team. All is well. The team seemed happy and busy.

Here is a quick summary of some of the things we discussed:

They are meeting lots of people, they did not get to meet with the Paramount Chief but with met another person in his place.

Monday the team met with the whole staff of the school and met several of the students, approx 750 people?
When meeting with the staff they did confirm Water, Sanitation, Power were their priorities. They also want supplies, such as, sewing machines for home economics classes and sewing class, lab supplies for science education, etc.

The team said Mattru was much more densely populated than they imagined. Not many roads. Their guest house accommodations are very good, they have showers and toilets.

They are meeting with many individuals and have received lots of input from them. The team stands out in the community so everybody greets them and talks to them. They feel very safe in the community and are starting to feel like they recognize and know people there. Everyone has been very helpful. The travel team has gotten lots of useful information and stated that the community has a general awareness of health needs.

Today they did a lot of water testing of several water sources: the Sella creek, Jong River, Well on site at Centennial Secondary school (CSS), another well in the town, and the guest house water. Water appears to be cleaner than expected. Some sources of water were low in pH so they are trying to assess why and will take further test tomorrow. Coloform test are inconclusive yet because it takes more than 24 hours for results, tomorrow they have results. The team was able to look inside the well at CSS. Wells in this area are all hand dug.

They are meeting the Well driller guy tomorrow, they will try to get a quote for drilling wells for CSS. They will try to find out typical depth of wells in this area. The Sella creek had a high turbidity.

Phone reception is marginal, lots of time lag between talking, which causes overtalking. Text messaging is hit and miss, they seem to be able to send better than receive text messages. We have not had too much of a problem reaching them by phone though.

We will try to have another conference call at 5 PM our time on Thursday. I will keep you all posted.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Best Regards,

Jamee Pemberton
267-377-9542