Alfonso looked far too pleased.
Maxence ate the remainder of his food, stuffing himself because he’d spooned extra onto his plate to give Dree in case Batsa and Isaak ate everything in the pan.
“Do you take coffee, Andrea Catherine?” Alfonso asked.
Golden sunlight shone on her pixie face. “If you please. I heard there’s milk and sugar?”
Alfonso prepared a plate and a cup for her, which Dree took and ate. “This is good. Where’d you get eggs?”
“Powdered,” he assured her.
“Amazing.”
Maxence could cook. He should have cooked for her.
Dree elbowed Maxence in his triceps as she scooped up scrambled eggs with pieces of naan. “I didn’t even hear you get up.”
“It was early. After your impromptu medical clinic yesterday, you must have needed sleep.”
Dree squinted in the sun that was still quite near the horizon. “What time is it?”
“Just before eight. The goal for the day is to examine the sites Isaak and Alfonso discovered yesterday and take pictures of them for the charity’s board of directors.”
Max didn’t mention that he was on that board of directors, though they’d decided to fund this project in his absence. When he’d found out the idea of NICU micro-clinics had been accepted and funded without his or any outside input while he’d been sitting by his uncle’s bedside in Monaco, he’d not been happy.
Packing up after breakfast took only about twenty minutes, and they roared away on their motorcycles with Isaak and Alfonso leading the way.
Again, Maxence kept Dree ahead of him so he could keep an eye on her. She seemed to ride the motorcycle exceptionally well, but he just wanted to make sure she was all right.
The first spot the engineers had chosen to evaluate for one of the planned NICU micro-clinics was about halfway between the middle of the village and the edge, a small plot of land with a previous dwelling’s stone foundation. Maxence kicked a small piece of wood that bore the black scorch marks of fire.
Isaak said, “It’s centrally located, but again, we have the problems of no utilities, no running water, no electricity, nothing that the NICU would need to be able to function.”
“The architect and industrial engineer assure us that the solar panels and catchment cisterns will provide sufficient electricity and water.” Alfonso’s voice was a bit peevish like he’d said that too many times.
Isaak Yahontov, the electrical engineer whose company designed environmentally sustainable power sources, scrutinized the pale sky. “The sun rose above the mountains for only a few hours yesterday near the center of the village.” He spread his hand, letting the darkness of the mountains’ shadow where they stood fall on his palm. “Even though there’s plenty of light to see by, the sunlight is not direct. The sun is behind the mountains and won’t crest for a few hours. We’ll have only five hours or less of direct, usable sunlight before it descends behind the mountains on the other side of this valley. We can’t make solar power with indirect sunlight. The rays have tohitthe panels. And that river that runs beside the village will slow to a trickle soon. In February and March, it won’t run. We’ll need water here, too.”
Batsa scratched the side of his cheek, where even two days’ growth of beard was beginning to look luxurious. “If I remember right, and I’m pretty sure I do, it doesn’t rain in Nepal like it does in the States. In Iowa, it rains steadily a few times a week all summer long. Here, there’s a monsoon season, like much of Southeast Asia. India is just south of here. A great deal of rain falls during the monsoons, though I think we are on the dry side of the Himalayas and thus in a rain shadow. The problem is that very little precipitation falls during the rest of the year. They have a problem with water supply as well as safe drinking water in these villages. The catchment cisterns would overflow during the monsoons and run dry a month afterward, and there wouldn’t be any more rain for months after that.”
Dree frowned and glared at her feet.
Maxence sighed. The board of directors hadn’t considered this situation, and that was the problem with sending outsiders in to do pre-determined charity projects.
While the intention might be good, the outcomes could be harmful.
He had lived in The Congo for four years. This project would have worked in Rwanda or The Congo, both with lush, verdant farm fields that produced crops much of the year due to a consistent supply of rain and long hours of direct sunlight.
While the six of them were musing on the inherent problems, they mounted their motorcycles. They rode over the rough roads to the next village they’d planned to evaluate, which was eighty miles farther into the Himalayas and a few thousand feet higher in elevation. His ears popped dozens of times under his helmet.
The eighty miles took four hours, guiding the bikes carefully around small boulders that had careened down the mountain.
Again, even though they rolled into the center of town as unobtrusively as they could, people ducked out of their houses to observe the commotion.
Isaak and Alfonso already knew that they were tasked with assessing locations for NICU micro-clinics and setting up the camp, so they rode off on their motorbikes. Father Booker, Batsa, Dree, and Maxence dismounted to peruse the village’s general situation.
Maxence removed his helmet and breathed a deep draught of the crisp air, which was colder as they climbed higher in the mountains. The chilly breeze slid through his hair and over his scalp, and he unzipped his black leather riding jacket to cool off. Riding the motorcycle in leathers with an engine burning gasoline between his legs had overheated him, even though the cold air had essentially become a wind that had howled between twenty to fifty miles an hour as he rode.
Beside him, Dree twisted off her motorcycle helmet and flipped the gray veil over her hair. Almost immediately, she spotted a boy with a skin infection crawling up the side of his neck and commandeered Batsa to translate to his mother what must be done.
