Drilling for Water

For the last two weeks, I’ve been in a rural area about 45 minutes outside of Matuu, in a small village called Kivingoni.  I had met some students from the University of Nevada when they passed through Matuu last year, and was able to meet up with them and help with their project this year.  The project was to bring water to a community in a dry part of the country by drilling a bore hole by hand.  They require that the community contribute to the project and were eager to teach any curious onlookers how the technology works.  Maybe the greatest part about this project is that it can all be made with locally available materials.  It wasn’t easy, but giving the community the power to raise themselves up was a great success to me. The method involves a vertical pipe with a drill bit and valve on the bottom of it.  The top is attached to a rope that is pulled up through a pulley by some workers standing off to the side.  The workers pull the pipe up and let it fall down again, slowly chipping away at the ground.  As the drill bit breaks up the soil and rocks, the valve combined with the up and down motion of the pipe ejects water out the top of the pipe into a small pond which in turn drains back in to the hole.  It sounds complicated, but I will try to post a picture that will show this method much more clearly.

So after drilling down 6 of 7 feet, we hit rock.  This was no surprise to us, because this area has very tough and rocky soil.  The drilling immediately slowed down, but we slowly kept making progress.  Until the bit broke.  The bit broke off somewhere around 10 feet down, and we had no idea how to get it.  We made a few “fishing” tools out of bent re-bar and rope, and finally after a few hours got it out.  Crisis averted, I thought!  But over the course of the next 2 weeks, we lost a total of 11 items down the hole, including the tip of a bit that had no edges or grooves to catch on a hook.  We ended up using the magnet from the back of a speaker to fish it out of our now 27 foot hole (it was one of the community members who offered up this idea, we didn’t even remember that speakers had magnets in them). So after more than two weeks of this, we feel we are very close to the aquifer.  Once we break through, we will put a concrete cap on it and install a pump.  This community has been fetching water by digging holes in a dry river bed down to where a small 4 inch deep puddle will form with recharge from the ground water.  The community says this river has been dry for 20 years.  So I am very happy about this project, though I cannot take credit for any of the ground work for it.  I was happy to offer manual labor and help out as a community member.

At the end of our time, our generous host Peter offered to have a goat slaughtered in celebration.  He offered the group to slaughter the goat, but the girls didn’t want to, and the only other guy on the trip was a vegetarian.  I was more than happy to step up to it, as it is an honor to be asked to take part in the slaughter.  I’ve helped in my fair share of goat preparations, but this was the first time I was the one with the knife.  It is not a glorious act, but it certainly makes me appreciate meat a lot more.  That goat was giving it’s life for our food, and I will never take the sacrifice of an animal for granted again.  In America, it’s so easy to think of meat as just another ingredient in our food, not part of an animal that you have been sharing a yard with for awhile.  It was a good experience.  This goat party we had also made me acutely aware of how Kenyan I’ve become.  It felt strange being stuck in between the Kenyans and the Americans, but I felt proud to be both.  I had seconds of Matumbo (boiled intestines and stomach), drank chai instead of coffee, and got called out on my new Kenyan accent a number of times.  At first I felt that I was neither part of the American group nor part of the Kenyan group, but then I felt that I was part of both.  I guess I integrated more than I thought.

It really was great to have some American company though, as overwhelming as the whole trip was.  It was nice to hear stories about home (Reno sounds kind of nice), and chat with like-minded people about things that we don’t have to explain to each other.  It was a good warm up for when I return home and go through some pretty heavy reverse culture shock.  Congrats to all the Saiwi (saiwi.org) members on a successful trip.  I know you guys have learned as much as the communities that you have reached, and I think everyone has benefited from your efforts.  Keep up the good work!