Banjiram Village Survey, April 29, 2011

When Kiri Dam was built in the late 1980's to provide irrigation for the Savannah Sugar Plant cane fields the villages of the Banjiram District had to be relocated. The Federal government constructed a new village with blocks laid out in a grid pattern with raised roads of a firm gravel. What they did not give the people was water. The map shows the main village of Banjiram and Old Banjiram near Lake Kiri. Much of old Banjiram is under the lake. Now that Old Banjram is at the edge of the lake the Malaria and mosquitoes are a problem.

(Click on the map or double click to make it and all the images larger. The hit the back button on your browser to return to the blog.)

 These two boys will rent a cart for 200 naira a day and take 8 - 25 liter jerry cans to the river at the bottom of the map from the church. The trip is a little over 5 kilometer round trip. They can make two trips in a day. The push the cart with 200 kilograms (440 lbs) of water. The cost is 0.5 naira per liter. The older boy is 10 and the younger 9. They are students in Primary 3 and 2. The other choice is to buy from the people that go to the river for you. They charge 1 naira per liter. (In Jimeta I pay 0.4 naira per liter.) In the Chanhassen the first 6000 gallons is $1 per gallon and there is a $5.01 quarterly billing fee for sewer and water. For 6000 gallons water in a month you pay $6.84. That caluclates to 0.045 naira per liter. They pay 11 to 22 times as much for water as we do. They also use a lot less.

Collecting warm water from Banjiram borehole.

The School near the top of the map is a large residential secondary school. Currently, school is in recess so the people of Banjiram are at the water source 24 hours a day. When school is in session the student get the water first. The water from the borehole is artisan. It flows to the surface at a very slow rate. Women sit here for hours waiting to fill their containers. Currently, the borehole has a 220 volt 3 phase submersible pump and is wired to a generator over at the school. The gen is run by an old diesel engine that also operates a grain grinder. The problem is that there is no budget for fuel. Problem number 2 is that the pump is not working properly. The pump mechanic that installed it told them it was bad. We were told that it was donated by the Guyuk Local Government and it was the only one they were going to get.

In 2004 the Ministry of Education had a deep borehole drilled at the school and an overhead tank. It is over 1000 feet and the water that come out is feww flowing at a very slow rate and hot. Probably around 100 degree F. Originally, the pump was a Gundfos Solar with a bank of solar cells. That had a box that the people call a converter that was stolen a few years back. Some NGO brought in a different pump and wanted to use different solar cells. They installed the pump and they moved the solar cells to the roof of the tank. That pump worked for a while and quit. The water may be too hot for the pump. The people went back to getting water from the overflow pipe. We did not measure the flow but it looked like maybe 5 to 10 liters a minute (1.3 to 2.6 gallons/min).

Then the people went to the local government and the setup of the diesel motor that can be used for grinding or for generating power was arranged and the Guyuk LGA gave them the defective 220 volt three phase pump. The cost of fuel to run the generator to run the defective pump is not budgeted for the school.

They still have the first Grundfos pump that is reported to work if we can connect it properly we may be able to return the system to its original operations. This helps the school but does not do a lot for the community. To increase the water capacity of the system we many need to add more solar panels, batteries and store energy to continue pumping into the evening.

After we finished a the school we drove around the village and found this other broken borehole. Originally, this borehole had a diesel engine that powered a monolift pump. In 2007 the hand pump was installed. We did not get the story of why is was not working. In the background in a Mark II cylinder with some rods attached. I have been told that people install Mark II heads into these AfriDev pumps because they are only familiar with the Mark II. The AfriDev pump has a 225mm stroke length and the Mark II is only 125mm. It would not take long to destroy the piston or break a rod with this setup.


We are going to look at several short and long term solutions and then discuss them with the community. Then talk with the village about what resource they have to put towards the solutions. After that we will need to do fund raising to complete the long term solutions.