Filter Drop

One of the things I love most about my job is that every day is different. I could be in the office one day, driving a team up country to show our projects the next, or photographing one of our 35 projects! This past Tuesday I joined the Water and Sanitation (WATSAN) team on a "Filter Drop" with the helicopter, sling loading 14 water filters into a village with no road access. The village is located on the top of a hill, surrounded by swamp land, with no roads and only small foot paths. With no real logical way to carry 14 heavy filters in, we used our SP Chopper to do the job in just a couple hours.

All of our supplies were on the soccer field ready to be packed in the nets.

Situating the filters on one of our four nets. Each filter weighs 300 lbs empty!

Picking up the first load

Off they go to provide an entire village with clean drinking water!

Usually when we do sling loading, the chopper has a good 20-30 minute turn around time, which lets the team on the ground have enough time to get the next load ready. This time, the village we were dropping in was a THREE MINUTE flight! So they had to be on the ball because Dan was back ready for the next load in 6 short minutes!

Making sure the load is ready to go

Incoming...

Ben, our Water and Sanitation Coordinator in Foya, watches his water filters arrive.

Quickly trying to move the filters off of the landing site before the next load arrived... Ben told me to go ahead and move this one... all 300 pounds of it... Yah it didn't go too far!

Once the filters are in the homes, they need to be leveled and installed with the proper medium.

This woman was so happy for the filters, she sang and danced the whole time we were there. She also took the initiative in her village to build a church! I love the Ellen poster in the back... Featuring our President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female President/ruler in Africa.

Once the filters had arrived safely on the landing pad, they needed to be moved into the village and into each house. Both dolly's we had broke in the rush to get the filters off the landing pad, so the guys rigged up a "stretcher" to carry these heavy filters into the village.

Flying back to Monrovia, dodging quite a few rain showers. As long as you can see over the next ridge you are ok! :) Gotta love rainy season flying.

Just goofing around in the back of the chopper. I think we were laughing so hard that Dan (pilot) could hear us through his helmet in the front! He turned around to see what all the noise was about... and this is what he found!

Taya had her camera and took a few pics of me at work.