28^th and 29^th November

Peter Maroney, who has been the driving force behind the design of the biodigester, departed site yesterday (28^th) and stayed the night in Phonsovan. Thanks for all your work and input Peter.

The weather yesterday was terrible, raining heavily all day, so no work was possible.   Yang, Peter and I were invited to a lunch party at the neighbouring village to Ban Xai, called Ladvieng Ngoua, to celebrate the establishment of a new county, called Ang County. Very interesting- I don’t know what it was that we were eating, but it tasted ok.

I received the design guide for the new water pipeline and will commence preparing a schedule and budget asap.  Moua and I will meet with the Naiban to get things moving. This happened on Friday key agreements and points are:

• 25 people are available to work on the pipeline, 7 days a week if needed
• Materials can be stored at Naiban’s home. They will carry to site on tractors,
• If current dry weather holds, we will do a site visit to the western source on Thursday 6^th Dec, together with rep from PBM (see below),
• Naiban agreed to provide one man to take responsibility for their work,
• Naiban will also approach District Governor for permission for road crossing,

I have a meeting scheduled in Phonsovan with the local Gold Mining Company – in Australia they are Pan Aust. In Xiengkhouang they are Phu Bia Mining (PBM) and they have offered assistance with surveying the key locations in the water supply project. The meeting was very constructive – Paul Merriner and Rob Nailer. They are enthusiastic to help with accurate level survey plus a pipeline route survey and maybe doing a search for UXO along the route.  They indicated that they may be able to help with the road crossing and the pipeline headworks – this decision needs to be referred. It seems that they are keen to contribute to community projects.