OPD Finally

Last week we received the green light to sign the contract for the building of the new out patient department. Was a long wait but we succeeded. Still had some final hustling - even after laying the foundation - with Ministry of Health about room sizes, patient flow, shade, veranda size, wind direction but managed to get thru this without major changes. Sometimes you need to be bold and just start. Exciting to calculate the Bill of Material, 5673 bricks, 10 trucks of sand, 12 trucks of pebbles, 10 tons of cement, 35 zinc plates for the roof, 20 windows, 8 doors, 10 kilo of nails, etc. Now lets see at the end how well we calculated. Also the builder - Kallas - did something the Egyptian way as they say here. He aksed me to contact the local tribal chieftain for a guard to protect the material at night. So he is responsible for the man and his duties. Interesting. Went to see the brick factory. In the middle of nowhere - run by two Turkish guys - producing 20 bricks every 15 second.Amazing especially if you see one of the guys operating the noisiest machine i have seen sofar without wearing any earplugs. Deaf for sure in the future. Whenever you travel from the base to the hospital and you are near the camel market you see birds of prey as kites hanging in the sky and suddenly whoosh falling like a stone and returning with a nice pray in their claws. Amazing. On a more serious note last week MSF-B had to evacuate our team in Kebkabuya - Darfur as there was too much figthing going on between Army and Rebels. I think am lucky to be in Port Sudan it relative safe and quiet.

PS. I can watch the English Premier League live in the Palace Hotel so that's where i will be in the weekend.