Well, this is Africa for sure. I am spending my first weekend here after my Tuesday arrival last week. Yes, Africa where the power goes on and off, the water works some of the time, where there are many shops, but few that carry what you want. The weather this week has been like Saudi Arabia—in the 90’s and above, humidity ranging from 90% to 100% with relatively little wind to cool off when we are outside. Inside is another nightmare where the only relief is two fans that we continually move from one place to another. I haven’t been counting for sure, but I think my water intake is over 3 liters a day and perhaps even a gallon. I like to think that maybe it will cool off now that the dry season is about to start.
A note about the photos is necessary and can will be in context as you follow the special notes starting below:
1st Photo--Sergio, Owner of the Garden
As far as my time here, it has been very productive and on Saturday, we finished one well with a rope and washer pump. On this well, we went to the village of Mbatwe, met with a farmer called Sergio, assessed his small garden that he had prepared and was in the process of planting some lettuce-type vegetable. The location looked good, so we discussed the option of digging a well for him, installing a pump and giving the operation over to him. He was agreeable, so we set to work drilling the bore hole for his well. For this operation we used one of the augers we brought over on the plane with several extensions our local staff had made earlier. The digging was easy, as it was all sand, so before he had dug one meter, water started flowing down the well. The sandy aquifer went another meter or so, and then the sand became quite heavy and saturated with clay. The workers who had showed up (Sergio’s neighbors) pitched in on all the digging, and soon the six inch diameter hole was four meters deep. We stopped there, left the site for the day to buy the materials we needed with plans to show up the next morning at 8:00 o’clock.
1st Photo--Sergio, Owner of the Garden
As far as my time here, it has been very productive and on Saturday, we finished one well with a rope and washer pump. On this well, we went to the village of Mbatwe, met with a farmer called Sergio, assessed his small garden that he had prepared and was in the process of planting some lettuce-type vegetable. The location looked good, so we discussed the option of digging a well for him, installing a pump and giving the operation over to him. He was agreeable, so we set to work drilling the bore hole for his well. For this operation we used one of the augers we brought over on the plane with several extensions our local staff had made earlier. The digging was easy, as it was all sand, so before he had dug one meter, water started flowing down the well. The sandy aquifer went another meter or so, and then the sand became quite heavy and saturated with clay. The workers who had showed up (Sergio’s neighbors) pitched in on all the digging, and soon the six inch diameter hole was four meters deep. We stopped there, left the site for the day to buy the materials we needed with plans to show up the next morning at 8:00 o’clock.
2nd Photo--Starting of our First Small Diameter Well
That afternoon we traveled from shop to shop and it was the typical shopping. This shop had one piece that we needed, the other did not have the other one, and the shopping goes on. And when it is possible to find something, the time it takes to get it on a piece of paper so the East Indian woman or man (all the shops are run by Indians) can look at it and decide if the worker has added the figures correctly and is not being cheated.
The next day and the next were not much different, but on the third day on the job at this one farm, we lost our one and only workable pipe wrench and had to leave in the morning to find replacements. We started at the one Indian shop and all he had was Chinese (low quality) that I refused to buy, so off we went to another, and another and another, finally finding two small ones that said the word Oxford Germany, which I interpreted as Chinese with a German name. But I took them anyway as they looked slightly better than all the rest we had seen up to that point, and it was getting late.
We did finish the job at Sergio’s and after pumping all the mud out of the hole we finally got some clear water to the great excitement of Tim especially and even more from Sergio and the villagers who came by to see and use the pump. It was a great afternoon with our first success.
That afternoon we traveled from shop to shop and it was the typical shopping. This shop had one piece that we needed, the other did not have the other one, and the shopping goes on. And when it is possible to find something, the time it takes to get it on a piece of paper so the East Indian woman or man (all the shops are run by Indians) can look at it and decide if the worker has added the figures correctly and is not being cheated.
The next day and the next were not much different, but on the third day on the job at this one farm, we lost our one and only workable pipe wrench and had to leave in the morning to find replacements. We started at the one Indian shop and all he had was Chinese (low quality) that I refused to buy, so off we went to another, and another and another, finally finding two small ones that said the word Oxford Germany, which I interpreted as Chinese with a German name. But I took them anyway as they looked slightly better than all the rest we had seen up to that point, and it was getting late.
We did finish the job at Sergio’s and after pumping all the mud out of the hole we finally got some clear water to the great excitement of Tim especially and even more from Sergio and the villagers who came by to see and use the pump. It was a great afternoon with our first success.
3rd Photo--Pumping Mud out of the Well
4th Photo--Chrystal Clear Water at Last
Going back a little, I was mentioning the frustrations of trying to find things. On the afternoon of the first day when we went out shopping, we were looking for posts, as the design I had come up with called for four posts to be buried in the ground for the crank frame of the pump to rest on. Frustration in this case lead me to begin some creative thinking that if we used some of the lumber we had seen in one of the stores (long 2” by 7” planks (yes, not your normal 2 by 6 or 2 by 8—this is Africa, after all) and redesigned the frame we could get on with building the pump and all would be well. I got busy with my small note pad, and in minutes had a new design and how much of this 2 by 7 we needed. They didn’t have a saw at the lumber yard, so we took our handy battery-operated Dewalt circular saw, but the boards the length we needed and we were soon on our way back to the farm to begin out work. As it turned out, all the previous design schemes we had for this pump suddenly became obsolete with this new design, and when we were finished as saw it in action, we realized that this design was the “next generation” frame for all of our pumps (we are planning 100 of these around the area).
So far, heat aside, it has been a grand experience so far with our successful first pump, and our association with the people in the village where we have been working. I am favorably impressed with their enthusiasm, and will be looking forward to our continued success hereabouts.
4th Photo--Chrystal Clear Water at Last
Going back a little, I was mentioning the frustrations of trying to find things. On the afternoon of the first day when we went out shopping, we were looking for posts, as the design I had come up with called for four posts to be buried in the ground for the crank frame of the pump to rest on. Frustration in this case lead me to begin some creative thinking that if we used some of the lumber we had seen in one of the stores (long 2” by 7” planks (yes, not your normal 2 by 6 or 2 by 8—this is Africa, after all) and redesigned the frame we could get on with building the pump and all would be well. I got busy with my small note pad, and in minutes had a new design and how much of this 2 by 7 we needed. They didn’t have a saw at the lumber yard, so we took our handy battery-operated Dewalt circular saw, but the boards the length we needed and we were soon on our way back to the farm to begin out work. As it turned out, all the previous design schemes we had for this pump suddenly became obsolete with this new design, and when we were finished as saw it in action, we realized that this design was the “next generation” frame for all of our pumps (we are planning 100 of these around the area).
So far, heat aside, it has been a grand experience so far with our successful first pump, and our association with the people in the village where we have been working. I am favorably impressed with their enthusiasm, and will be looking forward to our continued success hereabouts.
5th Photo--Sergio’s Wife Drawing Water
No comments:
Post a Comment