While Chuck was busy on a tour of the Khai Tri Orphanage, Tom's family and friends decided to visit Khai Tri too. His nephew, who just graduated from college in Ho Chi Minh City, arrived to find the electricity out and being a typical hot day, the kids started to get thirsty.
Compared to Americans, the Vietnamese families don’t use nearly as much electricity. Throughout the country it is not uncommon to have the electricity go out and for the most part it is not a big deal. The big hotels and many of the internet cafes have generators to generate electricity for their guest – most households don’t have air conditioning, lots of gadgets or lights so they just make do.
But out in the country where Khai Tri Orphanage is, the electricity can be out for hours or all day long. Tom’s nephew quickly identified a solution to add some large water storage tanks to hold the water during these outages. He told Tom that when his friend comes back from Ho Chi Minh City he and his friend will install the tanks and run new plastic pipes to the kitchen and bathrooms. He thinks it would be good to add a filter on the kitchen facet for additional purification and a basic filter to trap sand for the water pipes going to the bathrooms. A simple, yet effective solution.
Another visitor that day was Tom's family dentist. Miss Lam has found a volunteer doctor to give each of the Khai Tri Kids a checkup once a year, but up to this point a dentist hasn't volunteered to help. Sure enough, Tom's family dentist was quick to help by connecting Khai Tri Orphanage with a group of other dentists volunteers that help homeless kids. Thank you.
