"Hope rises in love."

Practicing while in bed with a fever!

 If you've been wondering why I have not been able to update you on the state and location of the chlorine generator, well... I was dying! Okay not really but almost really. I reached Udaipur on a Thursday afternoon and from that night until Sunday I had a fever that prevented me from leaving bed for more than a couple hours. It was miserable! I had come to Udaipur to finally install the M100 chlorine generator into a school that didn't have clean drinking water, and the very first day I fell ill. It was hard to handle, especially knowing I had a limited amount of time to install and teach it before returning to Kolkata. However, I know SO SO many of you were praying for me and the support from back home was tremendous. Dr. and Madhu Sareen took extremely good care of me though and with medicine and sleep, I was fine by Monday morning.

What the girls were
drinking out of

So then, the water project... I am happy to say that everything went well during installation. It was decided that instead of installing at the bigger school with a thousand plus girls (who already had one filter), I would be at a school of 400 that had no (I repeat ZERO) source of clean water. In fact, the faucets they were drinking out of were dirty and unkept. It was that much more important then for the M100 to be installed here instead of the bigger school. I was able to talk to my friends at Waterstep a couple of days before to work out some key points in my teaching and have a refresher course on the system. (Shout out to Natalie Hymer and Nathan Rider! You guys are life savers!) I stared out teaching 20 girls from grades 9th and 10th. This way, the girls would be responsible for their own clean water, which not only teaches accountability but also allows for empowerment of young girls. Pretty cool if you ask me. So with what started with a group of 20 girls, ended up being
about 45 girls crammed around me watching us build the system. My translator's name was Sandhya Bhatt and she was so amazing in how she translated everything I said, word for word. Additionally she was someone the girls respected greatly, which was shown by how they hung on her every word.

My aim was to make the girls excited about having a way to get clean drinking water. If they were excited, then they would work hard to make it happen every day. I knew the system would require a little bit of daily maintenance, so it was that much more important to make the girls understand they were capable of running the system themselves. Training took a long time. I arrived around 10:30 and stayed until 4. Mostly I had the girls build the system, glue and cut the pipes, move the tanks, and do all the small things that gave them a better understanding how simple the system was to build and therefore easy to fix.

The M100 pumps chlorine gas into the tanks, which kills virtually everything inside. Because of this, there must be a waiting period until enough chlorine gas leaves the water to make it safe to drink. The teachers and I agreed the easiest way to operate this would be to chlorinate the tanks each afternoon before the girls leave for the day,  then by the next morning, they would be ready as soon as the girls got to school.

The coolest part was the next day, when Sandhya and I took the first drinks of clean water, followed by my team of girls. I guess I've read about this and trained about this for so long that I lost understanding that this system literally saves lives. Water is actually made CLEAN. As in
I can drink it too and be healthy. It was a really humbling and encouraging moment for me. This work was really hard and I could not have done it without the help of so many friends, sponsors, and even strangers here. I am blessed to say that will all this help, now 400 girls and their teachers have access to clean drinking water and can do it themselves. No outside help, no reliance on a foreign party, and actually no men haha. So thank you for your belief in me and in this project. Who knows what opportunities will present themselves after this? I am blessed beyond belief by what this process has taught me and the friends I have made along the way.  There is a lot more need in the schools in Udaipur, I understand. What started as one chlorine generator for one school branched out to help another. That wasn't my original idea at all and it seemed very random and unbelievable to have changed how it did. That is why I trusted it, because usually that's how God's plan works.

As for the Blind school, don't worry. I was able to give them something too. Because of one donor we were able to get all new desks and benches for the boys so they don't have to sit on the floor anymore. This less fancy but they are an essential need because they will provide a better learning environment for the boys, especially since they will have designated desk space for their books instead of the floor. I won't get to see this in completion but it has been taken up by the local Rotary club in Udiapur (thanks Madhuji) and so I know without a doubt it will be completed responsibly and efficiently so the boys will be benefited soon.

All in all, Udaipur was hard but I am so blessed to have had everything happen like it did. Thanks again everyone. I couldn't have done it all without you. I really, really mean that!