Displaced Enginerds

More Bukaleba Splendor


I'm posting early this week because I'll be gone for the weekend. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I'm supposed to be some what of a councilor (from what I gather, but I'm still not exactly sure what my role is) at a primary and secondary school camp/retreat type thing. I'll let you know all about it next week.

For now, this past week has been good. While in the office, I've been doing some real engineering-type stuff, which I find fun. It's rewarding to find out that stuff you learned in school actually has some practical utility. Ya just can't beat crunching numbers and putting to use the good ol' Navier-Stokes equations from Fluid Mechanics class (ok, so for you fellow engi-nerds, I didn't actually apply the Navier-Stokes equation directly, but I did use a modified Colebrook to calculate friction head losses for pipe flow). I was delighted to resurrect two completely different principles I learned from two different classes back at U of I. The other application had to do with soil density and stabilization calculations, but I'm sure most of you don't care at all and are getting really bored, so I'll quit talking about it.

On Wednesday, we planned on getting an early start to head out to Bukaleba again. We had a lot of things on the agenda. This, of course, is Africa, so it was not at all surprising that we didn't actually leave Jinja till after 11am. Over here, there aren't so many stones, so you usually try to take out as many birds as possible with each one. Our vehicle quickly (or easily rather, because it took all morning) filled up with people and supplies who needed to be transported. When we finally got there, we began our visual and GPS survey of the orphanage site, which meant bushwhacking through an overgrown wasteland. Our trek through the weeds was a good reminder to me why I decided not to be a farmer (my allergic reaction to wading through the bush was about like wading through a corn or bean field back home - not good.) We managed to get our survey, take a look at a few other areas for potential livestock habitation, and collect some lake sand samples before we ran out of daylight - not quite everything on the list, but pretty good for only half a day.