It has been 10 Days without a post.

It has been ten days since I have provided a new post for this blog. The truth is that is has been ten days of office work. I have been preparing a class on how to repair hand pumps. They were suppose to have a professor from here in Nigeria and some people from various agencies. That did not work out. So I am the back-up plan. I was going to be an observer of the class and now I will be observed.

The class is part of a grant for a pilot project that a geologist in Minnesota created. We are to train 2 people to repair borehole hand pumps and give them a territory to work in. They have two applicants who will be interviewed on Saturday. The chair of the establishment committee told us to go ahead with the training before the interviews. The two applicants for the two positions are both retired government water board employees. Reuben has worked with us before. He is old school plumber who knows a lot about how to repair pumps when you do not have the right tools or parts available. The pilot project will make sure he has the right tools and parts to do the job.  It is a two year pilot program that is starting a few months behind schedule. I will be teaching this American style. I will have flip charts, demonstrations and hands on. The typical style of teaching here is to have someone write on a black board and everyone copies it down. I have printed out three reams of texts for them so they do not have to sit and write. They can listen and discuss what we are talking about. I am at a stand still right now. I have a list of items to be printed but my little generator is only 900 Watts and the laser printer is 1500. I have to wait for the national power grid to turn back on. It has been very inconsistent this last week. Mostly, starting around midnight until 8 to 10 AM. My house here is also connected to the Cathedral Generator which is a massive diesel 25,000 watts.

 To see what I have been up to for the last two weeks I have gone to my phone camera to see what I bothered to take pictures of.

The Boys Brigade Band practicing back on March 1st in the old church building. There are a few girls who decided they wanted to in the the Boys Brigade. The Girls Brigade does not have a band.


I spent a lot of time making some illustrations for the Flip Charts and then upgraded my Acrobat Reader to verison XI and found that it can now print posters on multiple sheets from a PDF. But it was good practice on hand drawing. Have not done that since the early 1990's. I have now printed out some of the drawings on six pages. Had to go buy a pair of scissors. The office supply shop told me to go to the street vendors with the push carts across from the Market. I got a decent pair of scissor for under $2.



Last weekend I was washing clothes. After a couple shirts, shorts and some pants the wash water was dirty but not as dirty as my shoes. So then went in Saturday night and I wore my new pair to church. The dust here during the dry season is powder fine and gets into everything. Come June it will all be a slippery sandy mud.

I am not sure why this came out in Sepia. I may have accidentally selected that instead of backlight. Elegant Bookshop is my go to shop. I have gone to several bookshops but this one is packed with office supplies at a reasonable price. When I told them that the flip charts at Cliff's Bookshop were 1500 Naria they matched the price. I had priced the Student Drawing Board at another store at 2200 Naria (Batura price). At Cliff's it was 1800. The next day I showed up at Cliff's to buy the board and the same man was telling a Nigerian that the price was 1600.

This weekend there were two wedding receptions going on in the compound. March to June is the wedding season around here. I was sitting working on the computer because we had power from the grid. I heard something behind me and I realized I had left the screen unlatched and 9 kids had joined me and were looking at my drawing equipment, pens, erasers and other things. I gathered them up and took their picture and tried to get them to go. Everyday the kids come by during their recess or after school. A lot of Good Morning yelled through the doors. Or Batura or Uncle. After a while it get annoying. I was feeling generous and made a huge mistake. After I took the picture with my phone I connected it to the laptop to show them the picture and then printed off 9 black and white copies. I told them all to leave. For the rest of the afternoon I had kids coming and asking for me to "Click" them. I decided to go to the weddings for a while and then off to buy more printer paper and the scissors.

The larger of the two receptions was Polycarp Joel. Last year I was at his brothers wedding. Yakubu Bulama was the Chairman for this wedding. The first picture I took of him he protested that he did not have his hat on.


The Boys Brigade Band played several numbers.

 I got there during picture taking time. This is the Rt. Rev. Amos Yakubu the Bishop of the Yola Diocese and his wife with the wedding couple.












 I am assuming that this is the ring bearer. He was dancing to the music while climbing on the railing.

One of the biggest traditions at these wedding is to throw money onto the couple, or their parents, or other people while they dance. Only clean new bills are used. One of the most crowded spots is the bank area. Here the larger bills are changed for hands full or 20 Naira notes. After each dance on the carpet the bankers go out and collect the small notes and come back and use the nice ones again and  again. I suspect that this tradition at a large wedding like this one adds up to hundreds of dollars. Which is big money here.

This is the other wedding. It is over in front of Yakubu's office. They had a live band while Polycarp had  DJ.

 I was out taking pictures toward the end of the receptions. The kids from the neighbor hood have been scavenging around for whatever they can find. I saw one little girl with a sack full of empty plastic drink bottles. One kid had three Styrofoam food containers. Other had packs of cookies.

 I went back to the house and got the keys to Yakubu's bus (van) and headed to the stationary store over near the Market to get more paper for the laser printer. When I got back it was not long before I had more kids wanting their pictures taken. I told them I would do one last picture and they had to promise to leave and not come back. That promise lasted about 10 minutes.

A couple miscellaneous things. Every morning I get up start a pot of water on the gas burner and go take my shower. I make a hot cup of tea and a bowl of instant Quaker Oats. Then I make a cup of cold milk by mixing the coldest water in my little refrigerator which can actually have ice in it in a coffee mug. By the time I stir it up and carry it to my desk to read emails and eat breakfast the cold milk is not very cold. The obvious finally dawned on me. The ceramic coffee mug was at room temperature. 90 degrees. So now I have been keeping a mug in the refrigerator. I actually get cold milk and cold water. It is now almost 10 PM. My little generator has been going continous for 6 hours with only one stop to refuel.

I had a water pusher come earlier today to bring in 13 plastic gerry cans each with 25 liters of water. I had opened both of the doors and left them open all day as I worked on the Flip Charts. I forgot to close them as evening came and the bugs were attracted to the lights. For the third year in a row a bat also flew in. I had the ceiling fan going on low speed. But the bat manged to bounce off it twice before I could turn it off. This is the third year in a row that I got bats in my house. One year I managed to get one to fly out. One year I did not know where it went until I found it in the back of my refrigerator by the hot condenser coil. There was one other that flew around until it was worn out and I caught it and took it outside. This one landed on top of the drapes and I figured it had died of its injuries from hitting the ceiling fan. When I went to know\ck it off the drapes it took off flying again. I opened the door and tried to get it to fly out the door. Finally, exhausted it landed on the table of pump tools and parts. I picked it up in a towel and took it outside. I tried to gently roll it out of the towel onto the porch but it rolled off the concrete down to the ground. I went out later with a flashlight and it was gone.

So far I have heard of two people finding snakes in their houses. I have been watching but have not seen any snakes here or any rats this year. Just cockroaches when I turn the lights one in the middle of the night. Only one or two.

This week we will be giving the pump repair training and then over the weekend we will drive to Taraba State to visit with Bali Project and the dedication of the Galadima Church. The following week we will go with the new trained pump repairmen and repair the pump at the Todi Diocese Secretariat and hopefully a couple others. The one at secretariat is really a strange one. It takes two people to pump it and you get very little water. I suspect the riser pipe is disconnected. Usually when a riser pipe is disconnected you do not get any water. If you follow the procedures I have seen "so called" pump repair men use, they will loose all the riser pipes, operating rods and cylinder to the bottom of the borehole. This will be a good challenge for the new repairmen working with a proper set of tools.

If we can afford it, this would be a good candidate to be converted from an India Mark II to a Village Level Operation and Maintenance (VLOM) India Mark III. According to the Diocese this pump is over used by the village and has to be repaired frequently. I suspect the repairs are not done by an experienced technician. With a VLOM pump it is much easier to fix with less tools, time and cost. It would be even easier if it could be replaced by an Afridev pump but they are not available in the local market and the type that works with the uPVC with SS connectors are not available in the region. I think we will have to order them from India or Kenya or South Africa. This type of pump is even easier to fix with less tools and cheaper parts but the initial cost is higher.