A Day in the Life at Chogoria, for Ryan

So, what will my day in Chogoria be like? The honest truth is, it is still being determined. However, there are ideas that have been kicked around and some things that will likely come to fruition.

Day-to-day will probably end up a lot of two things: Projects and maintenance/ upgrades/ pitching in with getting things done.

Under projects, there are a few things that are expected to happen in the next few years. First, there is a plan to investigate and install water treatment capabilities for the hospital. At present, the hospital mostly gets the water directly from the river. There may be some sand filtration, but it is not that effective. For this project, I will need to investigate the options that are available, what facilities are in place, and what can be maintained long term. I am sure there will be a lot of other things I will be learning about, such as how the water is being piped in, if there are taps into the existing water, some of the politics of water, etc.
Second, there is a plan to begin planning and implementing some hospital expansion/ updating. I am not aware of much of the discussion at this point, just aware that this is in discussion and something that I might chip in to help with. As mentioned previously, the site has some areas that are almost 100 years old. In addition, there are some things that make life difficult for the medical staff on site. For instance, the surgery ward is uphill and a fair distance from the maternity ward. As you can maybe imagine, this is not ideal in case of emergencies in the maternity ward. So, one of the things that is being looked at is adding an area for surgery closer to the maternity ward.
In both of these areas, I would be using my experience in project management to help out where I can. In addition, with the water treatment, I have an okay knowledge of the things that might need to be done and my background in chemical engineering will help me digest the possibilities.

Under the rest, I am planning to make myself available to help out around the hospital and mission station. Things break, things can be updated, IT support is needed by people, etc. Some of these I have unexpectedly picked up over the years. For other things, there are people at the hospital or friends/ family I have that I can talk to and then get to it. Some of these things are the ones I spent my childhood hiding from my dad when he was working on them… oh the irony.

So yes, it is a little up in the air, but I take comfort in hearing from a lot of people that engineers actually become more desired than their doctoring spouse. 😉

-Ryan

Advertisement