Disclosure:  We are looking for help with a facilities upgrade here at the nursing home. The content of this post is an accurate description of the situation, but the facts are presented with the unvarnished purpose of persuading you, dear reader, to contribute something to the effort. Those who are just generally curious about the situation here in Ukraine but aren't ready to help out might not want to read any further.   

The nursing home suffers from a “hygiene and sanitation bottleneck.” The building was originally designed and constructed as a school, so there was no shower or laundry utility. Instead, there was a boys restroom and a girls restroom, each with two squat-style toilets set into the floor. The boys restroom also had a trough urinal against one wall. There is also a teachers restroom which contains a single pedestal-style toilet with a seat.
When the nursing home folks moved in last year, they needed shower and laundry facilities. They solved the laundry problem by placing a washing machine above each of the two floor toilets in what was formerly the boys restroom. They get water from the plumbing that originally provided flushing water for the toilets, use an extension cord for power, and drain the washing machine gray water into the toilet.
They solved the shower problem by removing the trough urinal and building a four-foot by four-foot wooden frame in that location on which they placed a metal shower tray. They also installed an electric hot water heater.

The shower tray drains into the downdrain pipe originally intended for the urinal. Unfortunately, that pipe is only one-and-a-quarter inches in diameter, and drainage is abysmally slow. By the time you finish your shower, you will be standing in a couple of inches of water.
The shower fixture has a valve to switch between a shower head on a flexible hose and a faucet. This fixture is the only source of hot water on the entire residential floor of the building. This floor is inhabited by 40 people. The only other hot running water in the building is in the kitchen on the second floor, which is generally inaccessible to nursing home residents. Because it’s the only source of warm water, there is often a line of people waiting for a turn to use the shower fixture. The only way a resident of the nursing home can access warm water to wash their hands, face or any personal items is by stooping over the shower tray. There is no vanity, no mirror, no counter. A rickety stool stands in as a shelf.

This makeshift shower setup is not only the residents’ only source of warm water for personal hygiene, it also serves as our laundry pre-wash station and our mop sink. As a result, residents and nursing staff frequently need to wait in line for each other . . .
For instance, yesterday morning before the breakfast hour, as I approached the shower room carrying a full bedpan, I was a bit dismayed to see the door was closed. Probably one of the lady residents was washing up. I knocked on the door, and when it swung open, sure enough, there was Grandma Judy in her bathrobe with her toothbrush in one hand and washcloth in the other, looking a little bit nonplussed. Unfortunately, the drain was clogged again, so Grandma Judy had just finished brushing her teeth into a shower basin full of gray water . . .
I quickly sluiced the contents of the bedpan down the porcelain maw of one of the floor toilets so I could turn my attention to the clogged drain. Luckily, a few quick pumps with a toilet plunger opened the drain. I quickly rinsed the bedpan before stepping away to make way for the next person in line . . .
Hopefully this short post gives you, dear reader, an adequate understanding of our “hygiene and sanitation bottleneck.” The manager of the home – Gennadiy – would love to hire an architect and a contractor to figure out and install a better layout. But he’s hesitating, because every coin he spends today is one less coin available to deal with future emergencies.
If you are interested in contributing to a solution to this “bottleneck” please email me directly at [email protected].