The Pied Piper in Nigeria. February 14

Garaha Lar

Pastor House 10º 25.5009’N  012º 50.9226’E

Meeting Place 10º 24.4550’N  012º 50.8742’E

BH1   10º 24.3554’N  012º 50.8073’E

BH2   10º 24.5114’N  012º 50.8724’E

Well1   10º 24.5183’N  012º 50.8701’E

Well2   10º 24.4638’N  012º 50.8579’E

Today we are driving north for an initial meeting to introduce the WASH Protocols to the village leaders of  Garaha Lar in Arewa Diocese. Arewa is Hausa for North. Our guide for this trip in the Arewa Diosese the Rt. Rev. Amos Bukata. We met Bishop Amos in Hong and proceeded to Garaha Lar. The road was initially an improved dirt road with areas of wash outs.We turned onto a typical unimproved bush road for another ½ hour or so. On the way in we paused at a village and looked out at a Dispensary building that Arewa Diocese had renovated and will have an opening on March 30^th. Bishop Amos pointed out a bore hole with a hand pump. He said he thought the borehole was good but the pump was broken. I did not take a GPS reading or any pictures as we thought we would be coming back the same way and we would have time to stop. We took another route back.

We arrived at Garaha Lar and asked directions to the Pastor’s home. The Pastor is a senior pastor in the LCCN. I was surprised by how good his English is. Most rural village pastors have little opportunity to practice their English they learned in school and they preach in the local language. He has had many assignments over the years and has chosen to return to his home village. He told us that the community was 99% Christian. Also they had a new borehole drilled by a politician and like many politicians it did not work. 

While we sat in the shade on the porch of the Pastor’s office, Yakubu pointed to the children at the gate and on top of the wall trying to see the White Man. As I approached the gate to snap a picture some of the children disappeared and a few continued to watch me, ready to run.  When I came closer, those that stayed looked away like they were uninterested. When I turned the camera around and showed them the picture they all wanted to have their pictures snapped.

After the Pastor gave us Maltina drinks for refreshment, we walked to a central area of the village where the leaders and others had gathered under a large Neem tree. Bishop Amos gave a quick introduction. Yakubu introduced Adams and me and then explained that we were from the Medical Board Water Department representing the WASH program. The concept that he stressed was that the village must participate in the program and not be a passive receiver of a gift. The water is their water any borehole in their community is their borehole. They will be expected to organize and collect money to help pay for the borehole and continue to collect money to pay for its repair and eventual replacement. After he was through there were some questions and he tried to clarify his remarks. They did not seem satisfied with his clarification. Bishop Amos then spoke for a while, I believe in Kilba the local language of the area. At the conclusion of his remarks the people seemed satisfied. We thanked the people and started our tour with the new politician borehole. 

 

As we were driving to Garaha Lar, I had noticed that the hand pumps had tires attached to them. This is a Kilba tribal area and I have noticed that the Kilba are resourceful and community minded people. Most of the villages are clean and orderly. The plastic bags that litter many villages do not seem to be present in Kilba communities. The design of the India Mark II and III pump handle is such that it bangs against the bottom of the pump head. This eventually, causes damage to the handle or the pump head. The tire is placed to bounce the handle off the tire rather than the pump head.

This borehole was drilled by what Adams calls a “so called” driller. They do not care about getting water and do not understand the proper techniques of drilling and pump installation. The pump was installed in November. They had not cemented the pump stand into the ground. It is already loose. The driller did use a Down The Hole (DTH) hammer to drill in the bedrock. The say that the little water they did get out of the borehole was dirty. The driller had used mud rotary drilling to the bedrock and had not properly flushed the mud out or developed the borehole. This borehole is a candidate deepening with a small DTH hammer. The pump and pump stand can easily be removed and reused on this or a new borehole in the future. 

The difficulty with deepening a bedrock borehole is lining up a large drill rig over the existing hole. A 4 inch diameter borehole with a 3.5 inch bit does not leave much room for error. The large trucks and trailers used here are lined up with no precision. To maneuver and level the rig to ¼ inch precision would be difficult. The second problem is that they do not have DTH hammers and bits small enough to fit through the existing casing. The smallest I have seen here is 5 7/8 inch.

I have been considering this problem for the past few years and had been working in the concept of cable tool drilling that used a heavy bit that is repeatedly dropped to crush the rock. In the granite around here a cable tool would probably drill less than a meter per day. I have recently learned that Lone Star Drill is offering a option for a 3 inch DTH hammer with a 3.5 or 3.75 inch bit with its LS 200 Portable Drill Rig. This portable drill can be more easily aligned with a existing casing. Now I need to find an organization willing to finance a pilot project to purchase and ship the drill rig over to Yola, purchase a truck to transport the rig and purchase a compressor to operate the hammer. All together I am thinking the projects will cost between $100,000 and $120,000 for a one year pilot project. I hope my fellow Nebraska native Warren Buffet, who just bought Heinz and his friend Bill Gates might have a little pocket change for a project this.  I eat Heinz baked beans over here every week and like their canned vegetable salad when I can find it.

 

When the children saw me taking a picture of the hand dug well they decided to give me some perspective. The children following me are multiplying and want to be in every picture. 

After visiting two of the hand dug wells, we went to the other politician borehole. It was also drilled to bed rock and stopped. This driller cleaned the drilling mud out of the hole before installing the screens, casing and the hand pump. The pump appears solidly installed and the borehole produces clear water. Unfortunately most of the water is probably in the weathered bedrock below the level of the pump. After pumping a short time the casing runs dry and they have to stop pumping and wait for the water to re-fill the casing. By the end of the dry season (May or June) it will get worse and worse until they get no water at all. The second problem is that the rod catches on something on the upper part of down stroke. This could indicate several things. The borehole is not vertical, the pump stand is not centered over the borehole, the operating rod joint are catching on the riser pipe joints or there is a problem with the pump head.  If a pump is properly installed the operating rod joints are a minimum of 6 inches above the riser pipe joints. We won’t know what is causing the problem until the pump is removed from the borehole. This pump is also a candidate for deepening but the pump stand is solidly installed and would be difficult to remove without a jack hammer. 

After seeing the second borehole we headed back to the meeting area and the crowd of children had grown.

I stopped under the big Neem tree and sampled some ground nut (peanuts) some women were shelling and purchased what they call pancakes for the ride back to Hong. They taste like pancakes but are greasier and more like large donut holes. I asked for 5 at 20 naira a piece and gave her a 100 naira bill. She put in five and started to give me the bag and then started adding more. I still had three left when we got home.

On our way to Hong we stopped at Wazhimamyi (10º 23.7737’N  012º 56.4102’E). Wazhimanyi is the home village of one of the LCCN Accountants, they have submitted a request a future water project to the Medical Board but had by passed the Bishop. We stopped and the Bishop and Yakubu discussed the project and Yakubu gave the proposal to Bishop Amos to be reviewed by their staff.

Next we stopped at the second Dispensary that the Arewa Diocese has renovated and looked at their well. It needs to be cleaned out and covered with a hand pump installed to keep the water clean. Even with a cover the water should be boiled or filtered before drinking. Household biosand filters would be an appropriate technology here. The problem with biosand filters are the initial cost of the filters. 

As I have said in past blogs. Rural farmers' first priority is to have enough water to live. Their second priority is to the water source close to home so that the time spent fetching water is minimized. Their third priority is having the water clean. Most villages are at the first or second priority stage in their development. More education on Sanitation and Hygiene are needed to move them on to water quality. 

After leaving the dispensary site we noticed a large flock of birds had been spooked out of two large trees. I looked again and realized they were bats. There are no large caves in this area. Bats sleep in the trees.

Clicking on the pictures will make them larger.