Monday February 4th Mayo Belwa and Back

Last Night someone started blasting a song over a loudspeaker at around 1:30 in the morning. It sounded like the same couple of lines of a song over and over again for at least an hours. Even with earplugs I could hear it.

Yakubu has been having trouble with the diesel engine in the Hi-Lux. This is the air filter. It can be cleaned but somehow the mechanic managed to smash it. Now it does not provide a good seal. They drive on very dusty roads and rarely clean the filter. We took it to a vulcanizer and he blew the dust off of the outside. I showed him the picture of blowing the dust from the inside out to get the deep down dust. I think we need a new filter. It will probably be over a $100 for this type of washable filter. Tomorrow we may wash it per the instructions on the filter. Today we are going to test the Hilux on a short trip to Mayo Belwa. If it seems good we will use the Hilux to go to Pella and Hong on Wednesday,

We drove to Mayo Belwa to talk to someone on their WASH (Water and Sanitation Hygiene) Committee but could not find anyone. Mayo Belwa  Sabon Gari Community is one I have visited many times. (They have been featured in past blog about their efforts to raise money, hiring bad contractors, hiring another bad contractor, fixing their bad pump, having the head of their committee run off with their money, hiring another bad contractor. raising more money and last year we hired a contractor to do geo-physical surveys in the community that did not indicate there was water. They have not been successful at getting water but they keep trying and we will keep helping them.) We got in touch with the retired pastor who lives near the Sabon Gari Church. He told us that the 3 boreholes in the area all work but he has no idea how deep they are. He took us to the owner of a borehole only about 100 meters from the Pastor's house. The owner told us he did not know how deep it was but drilling was started at 5 PM and finished by 8:30. It could not be very deep with that quick of drilling. Adams estimated the deepest they could drill in that short of time would be 40 meters but more likely to be 30 meters or less. They have had good water flow and good tasting water for the past three years. This is encouraging since we have had geophysical surveys of the area done before and they did not indicate the presence of enough water to support a borehole.

We got back to Jimeta by 2 PM with no problems with the engine. The first start in the mornings seems to be the worst problem. The rest of the day is seems to work ok. The trip to Pella and Hong will happen on Wednesday as scheduled. When we got back the power was still on. This is the first chance to recover some of the items I left at the other mission house where Yakubu's office is located. I got the voltage regulator and power cord to connect the generator to the building but could not find the gas can. When I got back to my house I connected the voltage regulator and the power shut down.

Without power I decided to walk to City Market to get some tea and sugar. They are the most expensive of the markets but are a short walk. I did not like their selection of tea so I walked on the main Jimeta Ultra Modern Market, passed through the market and continued on to Yakubu  Market Plaza. There I found the tea I liked and the sugar was much cheaper than City Market. The round trip walk as about 3.8 miles. Will definitely need a shower before bed tonight and will probably be sore tomorrow. On the way I past the Investment House being painted. The man on the ladder has a long pole and he is rolling green paint to near the top of the building.

The peanut harvest is just finishing. We stopped and bought some fresh peanuts from a street vendor. I roasted some in the shell and some that had been shelled. The labor to shell them is not worth the effort. After roasting in the shell the shells come off much easier. I think my counter top oven thermostat is off. At first I turned it up all the way to 250. Figuring that I should be cooking around 350. But after a few minutes a realized that the temperature was in Celsius which is 482 F. I reset it for 180 C which is close to 350F. After the recommended cooking times the nuts were still a little raw. I roasted them another 10 minutes. They taste better but still a little on the raw side. Maybe it is because these are so fresh compared to the we buy in the US.  I will let them dry in the Sun and try again this weekend.

Wednesday we head to Pella and Hong. Pella has raised money towards installing a solar overhead tank in the area around the Maternity clinic. We are going to meet with them on planning for the project. They are not using a borehole at this time but have a deep hand dug well that is being cleaned out, deepened, covered and have a solar powered electric pump installed.