Past three months

Dear readers,
I want to reflect on the past 3 months and corroborate on the events that have taken place, specifically those that have to do with our new Clinic Building.
This is an exciting time for our entire family and our colleges. We are finally stepping into our medical work with the people. This chiefly is due to the fact that we are cleared to work and that we now have a fully operational building. This building has the chief focus of ours for the past 3 months; it has consumed most of our time so the knowledge that we are finished Is both exciting and a relief. This reason for this post is so that people can get an idea of what we have been busy with on this island for the past 3 months. My family and friends has posted on our blog before but I would like to dedicate this post specifically to the work done on our building.
Before our family arrived on this island we had been told that the building we would use was operational. We expected to get started with the medicine and viewing patents that month, we were also supposed to live that building. The building was to serve two purposes first as a clinic and second as a home for my family and me. With this in mind one morning we arrived to the location of our building. This was the first time any of us had laid our eyes upon this structure. The building didn’t have a great curb appeal but in comparison to the surrounding building or most in this country it is a fine building. When we walked into the building however I had never seen a building so trashed before. There was a thick layer of dust covering all sorts of rubbish, winds walls and floors. The entire building had all sorts of appliances that we broke, old moldy books and many other surprises. It was evident that the building was used for many different things in its past and much of the junk was left over from those past ventures.
So what did we have on our hands? A building made up of four walls and a roof, tons of rubbish within, an old rusty garage door and a door that was falling apart. We had no electricity, water, washing machine, kitchen or even bathroom. Our first order of business was to empty the building of all the rubbish and give it a good cleaning. That day there was a group of youth from couple churches that had arrived and gave us a hand in cleaning the building and its surroundings. During this cleanup my dad was busy replacing the door. Our second order of business was to build up walls in order to divide rooms for us to live in as well as creating a kitchen. Painting the walls was part of this process we used dozens of gallons of paint in part to protect the wood from termites. We were having progress and everything was moving along then we had a major setback, we discovered that our building was infested with rats. They would sneak into the building at night via the roof, eating and destroying everything they could.
In order to deal with these vile creatures we laid out poison and set out traps, weeks later now we have results dozens of dead rats and more on their way to the grave. Meantime a friend of ours (Bruce) was staying for a month helping us with a great deal of things. During his stay here we tore down the old rusty garage door and replaced it with solid double doors. Another major development with which he helped us was replacing the wire for our electricity. The wiring was terrible it was inches underground and the constant driving of cars had damaged the wire. We dug a deep trench replaced the faulty wire with a solid wire within a pvc pipe then we laid it in the ground and now we had electricity. Now all that was left for us to move in was a running water a working bathroom and drinking water. My dad had begun working on the bathroom breaking down a wall in order to enlarge it and create a shower, fix the toilet and build in a sink. In the meantime me and a couple other lads where busy working on the solution for our drinking water problem. We had a ten thousand gallon water tank all we needed now was to create a stand for it and have all the pipes connected then would have drinkable rain water. This took weeks however we accomplished those last of couple tasks my dad hooked up all the pipes for running water and for our rain water.
It’s been a long and hard past 3 months we’ve been busy working sunrise to sunset, now we are finished it has been worth it. Our building is now fully operational now we live in it. We have gotten a green light to work from the Board of Doctors and Minister of Health. Now we are at a new stage we will begin work with the people the reason why we came here. Pouring out our resources working for months had taken its toll some days but it has been all worth it now, once we are finished others will be able to carry the torch and work here that has been a goal all along to create a workplace that would outlive our stay here in Kiribati. We are grateful for all of your prayers, financial and moral support. We thank God for everything and pray that He blesses you all. Peace
Domas Firstborn