Aug. 8/19 - Day 19: MCC

Today was spent at the Milk Collection Centre. In the morning we were given a demonstration of how the pasteurizer works. We are very excited about the pasteurizer! It is going to make a huge difference in the amount of milk coming through the centre, the automation will allow the workers to be able to focus on other things, it will produce better tasting pasteurized milk and it is environmentally much more friendly. 
We were able to pasteurize 150 litres of milk in 30 minutes. But, the capacity of the pasteurizer is 500 litres. At full capacity, it will take 1 hour to pasteurize 500 litres of milk. So, just think of all the milk we could run through in a day!! This has also made the government pleased as they would like to see all milk collection centres with pasteurizers versus doing it the old fashioned way over a cooking fire! To that end, the government of Rwanda is giving the MCC a break on the electricity costs which will help keep the cost of running the pasteurizer down. 

We were also able to give Felicien all the medications and supplies we brought from Canada to help restock the pharmacy. Felicien was quite excited!

After lunch we went back to the MCC with Jeremy and Margaret.  Felicien and Festus gave them a tour.  Afterwards we met with the whole staff and discussed the day to day running of the MCC as well as future plans including a chat about a vehicle for the MCC which, as discussed previously, will help them considerably.