February 12th, Todi Diocese School and back to Ngbekendiwa

Today's trip was an initial visit to the Todi Diocese to visit their new school site which is has no water source and the fourth trip to Ngbekendiwa ti see how the community is coming at getting organized.

The school is located on the Todi Diocese Secretariat site near Beli. The Secretariat building is a little less than a kilometer from the Numan to Jalingo Road down an unimproved bush road.  The road from Numan to Beli is one of the worst roads in Adamawa State. The 31 kilometer trip takes almost and hour of pot hole dodging. There are lot of signs for the Federal Road Maintenance Agency but not sign of any work being done.

The facility is located on a large plot of land with the Secretariat building at the top of a hill. The three room school building is located about 200 meter from the Secretariat building and 400 meters from the only borehole in the area. When the Secretariat building was built in the late 1990's they had a borehole drilled to a reported depth of 100 meters without hitting water. Or it could be 100 feet and they hit water but never installed any casing. It depends on who you are talking to. I prefer the report from the Archbishop who was the Todi Bishop at the time, that they did not hit water. It could as easily had been drilled to 100 feet. They use both systems here and many times the wrong one is reported. Either is possible here on top of the hill. In 2008 we uncovered the old borehole and found that it had collapsed about 30 feet down.  The Adamawa geological map shows this area as Feldpathic Limestone. The school is not significantly lower than the Secretariat. The borehole is somewhere between 10 and 15 meters lower than school. The general slop is the north towards the Benue and to the west. 

We met with the School Principal and the new Todi Diocese Bishop the Rt. Rev. Clement Dogo. The Principal had contacted the LCCN Medical Board Water Department directly. Yakubu explained that the Water Department WASH program was designed to help communities and that funding was mostly reserved for communities. If a Diocese wants a borehole they are responsible for their own funding. Yakubu can contact various foreign funders but the majority are not doing Church Infrastructure at this time. Yakubu explained that they do not do any work without first having a geo-technical survey performed that would cost 50,000 Naira. The Principal and Bishop told us that they wanted a motorized borehole with an overhead tank. That in the future they plan to build staff housing with water for the staff, the secretariat and the school. They called us back on Wednesday and said they have the 50,000 ready and they want the geologist to come out for the geo-physical survery.

On our way back to the highway we stopped to see the borehole that is on the Diocese property and down hill from the school. The hand pump requires two people to operate it. The staff at the secretariat said they had fixed it several time but they do not use it so they did not know that it was broken. Mostly the local people use the borehole. The staff has tried to get the local people to help pay for the maintenance but they have refused. The indications are that the riser main has come loose and is hanging on the operating rod. What is amazing is that it still pumps a little water. Two people have to pump for a half an hour to get a little flow of water. I suspect the pipe is loose at the connection to the tank and on the down stroke of the handle the full pipe splashed a little water into the pump tank.

Next we headed a short distance down the terrible road and then headed north and east through bush roads that were better than the Federal highway to Ngbekendiwe.

Ngbekendiwe and the former Todi Bishop requested assistance from the WASH Program in 2011. The government and various politicians had drilled 4 or more boreholes in the community and none of them have ever worked.  In 2012 I visited with Yakubu and Adams to see the progress they had made towards organizing the community. They had raised an little money and were working on getting a Certificate of Recognition as a social cooperative in order to open a bank account. 

We met with the Lutheran Pastor, the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) Pastor, members of the committee that was formed in 2011 and a ram behind the Lutheran church. This year they have the Certificate and a little money in the account. Since they want to have a borehole with a solar powered pump, overhead tank and a small distribution system they have to raise a lot more money to meet the criteria of a 10% contribution. A 10% contribution is minimal contribution for a village of this size. In the same amount of time they have raised 50,000 Naira a smaller more rural village raised over 300,000 Naira. Most of the households could easily afford to contribute but they do not see why they should. All the other boreholes were free and did not produce any water. Why should they pay for a borehole that will not produce any water. One man in town had one point surveyed by a geologist and did not find an indication of water. The do not want to contribute to an effort they do not think will work. The Lutheran Pastor who had been working to get this process moving for two years spoke at length with the conclusion that after two years they had not made enough progress they should not continue. The COCIN Pastor argued for some additional time. In the end they agreed on waiting until the end of the month and before making a decision.