2000 Visit Report

Highlights

One team in Romania for 2 weeks, material sent out by Link European.

Team flew both ways with special fares from BA,

9 members, 4 old timers and 5 new faces, new members include 2 electricians and a photo journalist. Heat almost unbearable, we went to do a job and did exactly that!

Summer Team

Finally we got the school finished. Total rewire! There was some major problems though. When we isolated the system, we found that it was still live. It transpired that the mains input from the grid had swapped a live and neutral! Luckily no one was hurt, but one electrician received a shock!

Also because of the heat, people working in the loft could only work for 10 minutes before being overcome.

Also during this trip, a second pair of flushing toilets were installed in the junior side of the school complete with wooded cubicles, and finally a hot water dispenser was installed, and is now very much used.

In the hospital, we installed a new extractor fan to help combat the smoke and fumes from their oil burner cooker.

We found that the hospital wiring and fuse boards were ancient and downright dangerous! We resolved to start replacing sections in future trips.

In conclusion, the director of the school was thrilled with our work, and is planning to make an exhibition of the school as a model of how it should be done in other schools.

He has requested new desks and chairs for the pupils, and some computers so that the rudiments of computer operation can be taught.

In the hospital, the patients seemed genuinely happy at our visit, and had remembered our names. They were dressed a bit smarter and looked in better health than previous years. The hospital itself seemed much cleaner. It was still overcrowded, but we were happy to see whole wards  were being refurbished. This was paid for by an Irish charity. It did however mean relocating whole wards, which made the hospital even more overcrowded.

The head nurse also discussed with us the possibility of purchasing a new industrial washing machine that is so needed, but also very expensive. We agreed to look into the problem. If only we had the money, we could do so much!

We left the hospital £500 to finance the building of an outside shelter for the patients. We also gave the hospital some manual blood pressure cuffs and various other tools of the trade!

The dentist did not work during our visit, but contact was made and we were assured that he works twice a month with the patients.

Only a small amount of work was done with the village children due to the heat, and frankly, the lack of children about the village.

We left sweets and some small gifts with the head teacher of the school, to be distributed on the first day back from the summer break.

Another year of hard work bites the dust!