Tuesday, January 17, 2017

January 18 Update: Toilet Problems

One of the major problems faced by Foyer House is the toilet situation.  It's bad enough that the 75 or so residents share a single bathroom with six toilet stalls.  It's almost unmanageable given that *five* are non-functional. They can be fixed; but that would involve a fairly major plumbing overhaul and in the interim would leave no toilet facilities in the building.

The A Bed for Each Child Project will be adding two toilet stalls to the new addition. (We'd have loved to add a couple more, but the building space is limited.)  So, at very least, sometime in March (insh'allah, Zeus willing, Murphy's Law be damned) the kids will have three toilet stalls among them.

A few months ago, Kimbondo completed the modernization of the toilets in another building.  (This orphanage is huge; they house at least 600 abandoned kids and it's hard to see demand declining in the D.R.C. for the immediate or intermediate future.)  Here's a two minute look at the current Foyer House toilets and the recently remodeled ones--which will form the blueprint for "our" toilets...and maybe more.



You'll note that I added "and maybe more".  Right now, we are focused on getting this ~$25,000 project completed on-budget and on-time.  And so far, the prognosis is good.  There's even a chance that, since we exceeding our fundraising goal by about $3,500, we may be able to do a little more, possibly take some steps toward renovating the existing Foyer House toilet facilities.

Madlen (our Everything on the ground at Kimbondo) estimates (ballpark-ily) that turning the awful old into the sparkly new at Foyer House might cost about $5,000 and could be completed in a month or so.  And the residents could stand the disruption, as the two new toilets would be, as it were, open for "business".

Just an idea...Frankly, if this thing gets built, we're happy with that.  But if there's a bit of change left over, this might be the priority for the next step.  We might have to do a little more fundraising.  We'll let you know if that possibility arises.

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