Positive and Negitives of the Spring 2011 Trip

This trip had some positive and some negative results. That is to be expected.
Positives:
1. We did get the Sabon Gari pump near Mayo Belwa working again and found a young man that could become our repair person in Mayo Belwa. When we came back a week later the women said the pump works good but as they pump the pumping gets hard (heavy) and the flow decreases. When they stop for a while and it is easier.

2. We got the Danish borehole pump working in Dumne although it does not work continuously. They have to stop pumping and wait "one hour" to recharge. Few of the women have watches and almost every pump that is slow to recharge the women have told me they have to wait "one hour". Adams is considering adding some more pipes to the pump to increase the amount of water pumped before recharging and decrease the recharge time. However, the problem may actually be similar to Sabon Gari where they are stopping because the pumping is getting harder because the water level drops as they pump and they have to lift a heavier column of water further up the riser pipe.


3. We got to know the water situation in Dumne better by visiting all 13 boreholes. Only a small area of the town is involved in this project. The exact boundaries need to be better determined.

4. The bailer I designed in 2010 was finally tested and worked. This could be a useful tool for future work.

5. I was able to help Yakubu on several non-water related projects he needed help on.

6. I have a better idea on how to build a machine to deepen these slow recharge boreholes without spending $3500 to $5000 to drill a new borehole.

7. I am more convinced than ever that we can produce fire wood from waste paper and sawdust as a revenue producing project for the urban poor. I was able to design two different prototypes and hope to build and test them over the summer.

8. I am encouraged that the Women's Fellowship may become the vehicle for implementing the Sanitation and Hygiene parts of the WASH Program even without a formal funded program from the LCCN.

9. I got to visit two villages in the Jos mission field and seen that there is as big of a need here as in Adamawa.

10. I got more practice driving on roads where drivers pay no attention to rules.

Negatives:
1. There has been little movement toward the LCCN forming a WASH Program.
 
2. I was not able to meet with the Archbishop. He was traveling to the USA and several other countries and returns as I leave.

3. I was not able to travel to Taraba State to visit the Bali Project Mission Field to start a water evaluation.

4. I was not able to return to the Abuja Diocese for my first meeting with Bishop Ben and to fix a couple pumps and discuss the future of WASH in the Abuja Diocese.

4. The School pump at Dumne works as good as when we arrived. Once Adams "fishes" out the 7 pipes and 8 rods we dropped down the hole they will have a slow recharge pump at the school. Which is better than no water.

Disappointing Day in Dumne

Today was a disappointing day in Dumne. Yakubu, Adams and I drove to Dumne for our third trip there. We planned on re-installing the pump, tank and cylinder I fixed over the weekend. When I tore apart the cylinder I could understand why they say they used to pump and pump and get little water. The foot valve gasket was worn through and the piston cups worn. Today we discovered leaks in the pipes also. Water was leaking out almost as fast as it was being pumped. Our hope was to get this the pump at the school working as a slow recharge pump. This is a pump where you get three or four buckets of water and then wait for water to come back into the borehole. That is the best this borehole at the school will ever do until it is either deepened or replaced. While we are in Dumne we also will check on the status of the Danish Borehole we got working last Friday.

At the edge of the village just before Dumne I saw someone standing by the side of the road up ahead. It turned out to be a straw man near the Primary School. You can see Dumne in the background. The road to the right goes to the Market we went to Friday and to the left goes into the main part of Dumne, (See last Blog).

When we left last week the plumber and driller we hired to work with us had disassembled the borehole by the school and due to a broken head, the tank being stuck to a pipe, and a bad cylinder we decided not to re-install it. We had stored 3 new pipes and the 9 pipes we had removed at the Pastor's house next to the borehole and took the broken parts back to Yola for repair.

Mistake number 1. I ASSUMED that the plumber, being the paid "expert", had inspected the pipes as they removed them and we did not need more pipes. Wrong. Disappointment number 1. Almost all of the pipes that were removed needed replacing. The threads on most had rusted through. As we were re-installing the pipes I realized the mistake. We had left a few pipes stored up the hill near the Danish borehole last week. Yakubu and Adams drove up there and got three better pipes. At the same time they asked the women at the borehole if is had a constant flow. Disappointment number 2. The borehole is slow to recharge and after they have been pumping for a while the water runs out and they go wait in the shade. We will have to bring more pipe and rods from Yola and lower the cylinder another 9 meters. This will put the cylinder at just beyond the maximum depth recommended for this pump. It also makes it doubtful that the borehole will be able to support a solar pump and tank.

Adams decided that only 3 of the 4 pipes stored the Danish borehole could be used. The school borehole was installed by a Chinese driller and the casings were not installed straight. They also used too thin of pipe and when threaded the threads almost went all the way through the pipe. Due to corrosion, they now go all the way through. We decided on the nine pipe to install. From the 5th pipe on the misaligned casing started to cause us problems. We were using a pipe clamp that was bolted to the pump stand. It is suppose to center the pipe over the center of the borehole. That works when the pump base is installed with the casing centered in the pump base. Unfortunately, the pump base was not centered over the borehole. The pipes were going down the side of the borehole and the cylinder was carching at each casing joint. We had to open the clamp all the way and remove the pipe from the clamp at each joint, get it past the joint and put it back into the clamp. Until we were installing the 8th of the 9 pipes we were going to install. We could not get it past the joint with the clamp attached to the pump base. So we told the boys who had the lifting tool (C-wrenches) to hold the pipe while we removed the clamp. Mistake number 2. We did not watch the boys while Yakubu was taking the bolts off that held the clamp to the base. They relaxed. Someone touched the clamp release bar just enough to loosen the clamp from the bar. The  eight 3 meter long pipes quick slide down the borehole. I yelled. The clamp did its job and stopped the pipe when the top coupling hit the clamp. No one was hurt.

Now mistake number 3. This mistake probably prevented a serious injury. We had not installed the T-handle on the 8th rod sticking up out of the 8th pipe. We looked at the pipe now flush with the clamp and someone said where is the rod. The rod was no longer sticking out the top of the pipe. That means that a pipe joint in the borehole had broken. The fall never hurts you. It is the sudden stop at the bottom. The sudden stop had ripped the eighth pipe out of the coupling from the lower seven pipes. If the T handle had been installed. It may have caught the lower seven pipes and we would not have 7 pipes and 8 rods at the bottom on a 9 1/2 pipe deep borehole. On the other hand. Yakubu had leaned over the pipe clamp to unloosen the bolts and if the tee handle had hit him with the weight of 8 pipes falling three meters the T handle would have caused him serious injury. Safety, Safety, Safety. We get so focused on the task at hand we do not step back and look at the whole picture. We had too many people around the work site. It is good to learn lessons when no one is hurt. As we used to say at Home Depot. Many of the safety rules were made after blood was on the floor.

On Friday we arrived with a non-functional borehole and left with a non-functional borehole. Today we are leaving with a non-functional borehole with a cylinder, 7 pipes and eight rods resting on the bottom. Adams will return after I leave with a "Fishing Tool" that can be lowered into the pipe and catch onto the rod that is about 5 meters down. They can then lift the string of pipes and rods out. They will bring along new pipes for this borehole and a few more pipes for the Danish borehole. We will lower the pump cylinder to the maximum recommended depth on the Danish borehole and the women should be able to pump more water with less stopping each day.

On good thing happened today. The bailer I built and brought last year got it first use today. We successfully demonstrated that we can pull the mud out of the bottom of a borehole without a compressor.To have completely removed the mud from this borehole we would have had to bail for several hours. We did not have that much time. We quit after four 5 gallon buckets. We got most of the sand and grit out but the fine mud just mixes with the water. The common way to remove mud and sediment is to hire a compressor at around 40,000 to 60,000 naira depending on how far from Yola the work site is. We could hire local labor at 1000 naira per day in most villages (in a town the size of Dumne we would have to pay more.) If we hired 4 young men per day we could have them bail for five days for 1/2 the price of a compressor and it put money into the village rather than a Yola based contractor's pocket. I also sent the video camera down the hole. The water was clearer than other boreholes but the focus changed once under water and I could not see the any detail of the pipe or screens (assuming the Chinese contractor installed any screens.)

On our way out we stopped at the straw man for more pictures.
this will be my new Facebook Profile Picture. When we stopped in the village the women who we resting under the a large Neem tree broke out on clapping and laughing when they realized that  Bature (White Man) was stopping to get his picture taken with the School Crossing Guard. They told us that when the Primary School is in session they put up this straw man to tell people to slow down.

Dumne Second Trip, Fixed One Pump, Started Second, looked at 11 More.

Teaser. What does fish have to do with Dumne.

   On Thursday, Cinco de Mayo (May 5^th) we prepared to go back to Dumne to complete the repairs of the Danish borehole, to start work on the borehole closer to the church and school and to look at the borehole scheduled to be replaced. Yakubu has meetings all day so Adams and I will buy the parts we need. I have the Toyota Hilux pick-up. We need new rods, new pipes, a new pump tank, a new pump head assembly, and two new pump cylinders There are several dealers that sell the pump parts and pipes. There is only one dealer that sells the correct pipe, of the correct length and correct thickness. I parked the truck short of the area where the pump and pipe dealers are so that Adams can go and negotiate without the “White Man” pricing. The prices go up if they see a white man. The dealer with the best pipe had raised his price from 2500 to 3000 naira per pipe and he only had 4 pipes left. Adams did not want to pay that much for the pipe. He found another dealer who said he could get the pipe from his warehouse in Yola Town. The dealer originally wanted 92,000 but this included the pump base which we did not need. So we asked for a price without the base and he said 60,000. Adams said deal quickly because he knew the base cost much less than 32,000 naira.

  When we went to pick them up I read the specs on the side of the pipe and found that they were 5.8 meters long. They had cut the pipe in half and threaded them. With the coupling they end up being about 2.91 meters long. Three inches short of the 3 meters. This is why we have been having trouble with the connections of the pipes and the connecting rods being misaligned. We plan on installing a total of 14 rods. The connection for the connecting rods will be 39 inches up the riser pipe from pipe joint. We had no choice at this point but take the pipe and make due.

   Friday we returned to Dumne with a plumber and a drilling mechanic so we could make two crews, grab some young men to help lift and remove pipes and repair both pumps at once. As we approached Dumne there was a police check point. Then we realized it was market day in Dumne. Whenever a village has their market day the police and army will set up check points on either side of the town to keep the market safe and collect naira from the drivers. The police saw the “White Man” and the pipes and waved us through without asking for money. Vehicles without a foreign visitor will need to pay 20 naira or more to pass. Dumne road splits just outside Dumne with one road to the market and one road to the old part of town. The Army check point was set up after the split on the market road. We avoided that check point.

   We will have trouble finding help on market day, so we opted to do one borehole at a time. The old Danish borehole near the living quarters for the students at the LCCN Bible School was first. This is the pump that we thought we broke a rod while reassembling it a few weeks ago. We removed the head and pulled all the rods including the cylinder rod out of the riser pipes. The rod had pulled out of the piston. Without the misalignment of the rods and pipe to worry about we removed the pipes quickly. We reconnected the rod to the piston with a generous portion of Teflon tape and reassembled the pump. At 11 AM we tested the pump and had a strong flow of water. We packed up the tools and headed down hill. The women in the area had already formed a line for water and others were headed to their houses for their buckets.

   We were told a Chinese contractor came in drilled two boreholes and installed the pumps and built platforms and all in one day. This pump was reported to have a low flow, slow recharge and was hard to pump. The pump had a new problem since we last visited. The axle for the handle was missing. The Pastor showed up and told us the axle had come loose so he removed it to keep it safe. One of the bearings was in the head but was full of sand. The other bearing was not found.

   We removed the head and tried to remove the tank from the first riser pipe and could not do it. So decided that remove the first pipe with the tank attached. To our surprise the first pipe was only 1 ½ meters long. This was not our only surprise. We removed 9 ½ pipes from the borehole. The Chinese contractor had done a terrible job of casing and installing the pump. The pump stand was not close to being centered over the casing. The casing sections were not aligned properly when they were glued together. The one joint I could see down the casing was cock-eyed. We dropped a weighted tape measure down to find the water level but it kept jamming. We finally found that the water was about 49.5 down. I could not get the weighted tape measure to go to the bottom and switched to a string and the axle the pastor brought back. With a lot of frustration and many attempts I finally hit bottom at 94 feet. The bottom felt soft and the axle came back up muddy. The pump cylinder was only about 4 feet from the mud.With all the problems this pump has we decided to not try to fix it today. We would take the head back to fix it at Yola and consider bringing a compressor out to blow the mud out of the bottom. The mud could be an inch deep or several meters deep. We have no way of knowing since there are no records from when it was drilled. We decided to head over to the third pump that was proposed to be replaced rather than fixed.

   This pump was across the road and was working. It had a line of buckets waiting to be filled and some young women pumping but little water coming out. They say that they have to stop and wait for the borehole to recharge before they continue. By this time we had a crowd of people following use. I asked how many good pumps they have in Dumne. A young man said only one. Another man said three and another man said 5. I asked how many pumps that are poor like this one and how many that do not work at all. This started quite an argument. After watching them for a while I choose the two men with the highest numbers and the man that said only one good pump and asked them to take me to all the boreholes in town. The two men with the highest numbers turned out to be the local manager for the State Water Board in charge of providing water to all the people and one of his employees. 

We visited 10 more boreholes. Two we classified as good boreholes that had pumps and never ran out of water. Two were industrial boreholes with submersible pumps and diesel generators, that are run by the State Water Board. I asked how often they ran. The manager said every day from 6 to 9 am and from 4 to 6 pm. I asked when was the last time the powered pumps were run. The manager said “recently”. When further questioned, he admitted that one had run one day last week and the other is broken and has not worked for a long time.  It turns out that the operational budget does not make it from the State Government through the State Water Board and down to the local level. There is no money for fuel except when someone donates it. Currently, diesel fuel has spiked up to over $5 per gallon. The Hilux has a diesel engine.

   After visiting all 13 borehole in town they now have 3 that are working “good” (including the Danish borehole we fixed), 2 that are working poorly, 1 that works when someone donates money for diesel fuel and 3 that have had their parts removed for some future repair, 3 that only works in the rainy season and the one with a broken generator and submersible pump.

   Now sunburned and tired I find out we are heading to the market. Things in Yola can cost twice as much as the same item in a local market. Yakubu wanted ground nuts (peanuts are a staple in Nigerian cooking) and everyone else wanted something. I wanted cold water, shade and a shower. I walked around the market and took pictures. Near the exit a man was selling slices of watermelon and there was some shade. I waited until we got back for the shower.

 

Solar Cooker, Canned Hot Dogs and Tomorrow to Dumne

 Hot dogs come in a can here. Refrigeration is not reliable except if you live where you have a good supply of electricity. Those places are few and far between. Since I do not have a regular kitchen I eat a lot of stuff from cans. They sell small cans of baked beans. I cut up a couple of the hotdogs and have beans and winnies. They sell a canned vegetable salad that I mix with a can of tuna fish and make a tuna fish salad sandwiches. It make about three sandwiches. The vegetables include potatoes, carrots, peas and other things. It is a different kind of tuna salad sandwich.

This year I took one box that large water bottles came in and opened it up and taped on some aluminum foil to make my solar cooker. In 2009 I took couple  boxes and cut out an intricate design from the internet for a solar cooker, carefully glued on the foil and it work pretty good. This year I took the simple route and about 15 minutes and made a cooker that may actually work better. The sunniest days have been when we were out somewhere cooking ourselves. Today the sun came out and I decided to move the cooker outside at 2 pm with some Ramon noodle like stuff in it. When I checked it at 3 the noodles were fully cooked and the water was gone I added more water and the spices. Adams showed up and it was time to drive to the shop that was making riser pipes for us to use tomorrow. I brought the cooker inside and later in the evening I had warm noodles.

Tomorrow we head back to Dumne with two vehicles and two pump teams. We are going to try to fix two pumps. The Danish pump that we worked on two weeks ago and did not get it done and the pump that is hard to pump and has little flow. It we are lucky we will get both pumps fixed and will be able to go see the third pump that has been recommended to be replaced.

We spent much of today trying to buy parts for the repair. There are few parts available. Most of the dealers had access to pumps and rods but the riser pipe was hard to find. The dealer we used most often has raised his price to 3000 naira per pipe ($20). Adams is not used to paying this much. His pipe appears to be schedule 40 and is actually 3 meters long. He did not have 10 pipes; Adams made a deal with another dealer and we saved around 20,000 naira. The problem is that he was making his rising main by cutting some lighter weight 6 meter pipe in half and adding threads. When I looked at the pipe I figured out why we have been having trouble with the 3 meter rod joint not matching the 3 meter pipe joints. The 6 meter pipe they are cutting in half to make 3 meter riser pipes are actually 5.8 meters long. So each section of pipe is about 2 inches shorter than the rods. When you get to 10 pipes the rod joint is more than 20 inches up into the pipe. We plan of putting in 14 pipes at the Danish borehole at Dumne. This means the last rod will be misaligned by over 2 feet.. We have a rod that has had about a foot cut off of it that we will use as we reinstall the pipes. We may have to cut the end off of another rod and cut new threads onto the rod. This will make the job a lot harder. in the future we should not use this substandard pipe. We the extra couple bucks to get the right stuff and make the work easier for us and for future repair people.

It is after 8 pm and they just shut down the generator. all the bugs that were flying around the light are on on my laptop screen, in my hair and otherwise being pests. I will not review this post. Until later this weekend, I have 8 days left before I return to Minnesota.

Yola Diocese Combined Choir Practice

This evening the Yola Diocese Combined Choir was practicing out my front door. Background music while I eat my tuna salad sandwich. They are practicing for a choir convention in Lagos this weekend.

Return to Banjiram and Visa Application

Today has been a long day. It started hot and now it is cool. We had a good storm this evening that cooled the place off. Unfortunately, it has also effected the mobile internet. It is now at the slowest mode (GSM) which is too slow to even log onto. We started the day at just after 7 AM loading up the Land-ota. (Land Rover that has had its V6 replaced with a Toyota 4 cylinder The engine mount has already broken a couple time and tonight it sounds like it is broken again.)

We headed back to Banjiram to see it the newest solar pump was in working order and to see if the other borehole we found was actually clogged with roots or just sticks and cornstalks the kids had thrown down

.

We arrived at the school to find that he Principal had gone to Yola for a meeting and he had the only key for the room where the pump is stored. We got the cables from another area and found that one of the wires was loose on the cable. Eventually, we decided to go work with the other borehole while the school staff worked on getting the pump. 

The other borehole appears to be as old as the village. Late 1980’s. It used to be a MonoLift progressive cavity pump spun by a diesel engine. The pump usually, outlast the diesel engine. In this case both were gone and  we found a Afridev hand pump had replaced the MonoLift and it had be converted inside to a India Mark II. I have been told of this conversion but never seen one. Basically, I am told no one here knows how to work on the AfriDev so they take the riser pipe out by cutting it up as they remove it and replace the down hole parts with Mark II parts. The problem is that the AfriDev pump stroke is 225 mm long and the Mark II cylinder is made for a 125 mm pump stroke. The Afridev have a heavy duty pump handle that can put a lot of force onto the connecting rods. There was a rod and cylinder sitting near the borehole. The rod was bent in a couple of directions.

We had made a grappler out of some wire and two connecting rods. The camera last week had stopped at 10 feet down and showed sticks and corn stalks. The homemade grappler was much smaller and went down to 20 feet before hitting a pretty solid barrier. With a little work it seemed to penetrate into the obstruction but did not grab anything to bring to the surface. We decided to add the rod that was on site. We were pounding hard with the three rods, when a man came up and confirmed that it was roots and probably a layer of rocks, sticks and other things. He had been working with a driller that was hired to drill another borehole on the edge of town. He lost his drill bit down the hole . The rig is sitting there by the village but driller has left. The man explained that the driller brought his compressor over to blow out the hole. He got past the blockage and hit water at 8 meters. Lots of roots came up out of the hole. We wish we had talked to him last week. The borehole appears to have a 6-inch steel casing. If we are able to cut the roots out think we might be able to insert a 4-inch steel casing inside the 6-inch casing past the roots and then use a cement groat to seal the area between the casings. This way we may be able to get this borehole working at a fraction of the cost of a new borehole. We will need to make a root cutter and have the men of the town use it to cut the roots.

View from the top of the water tank.

We went back to the school. They had been able to get the door open and get the pump out. It did not look promising. The underwater electrical connection looked corroded and had been taped up with electrical tape. After not being able to get it to start with the existing solar panels we decided to take to the repair shop in Yola and see if it is repairable.(picture is from the top of the elevated tank. The line for water extends another 10 or fifteen feet out of the picture. The wait for someone arriving now is about 4 hours.There seems to be a constant argument going at the water point.

Leaving Banjiram no worse than they were when we arrived we headed back to Yola about 1 PM. We stopped in Numan for a late lunch at a Mama Safayia Memorial Restaurant.  They only serve Nigerian here and only had a fish today. I had fish with pounded corn and a green soup (sauce). This is the same soup as I had when I eat with the Easter Campers at the Deaf Centre. The difference was this was better. It had less potash in it. It tasted like spinach.

When we got back to Yola it was only 2:30 PM but I was hot and tired. I took a quick ½ bucket shower and changed into a tee shirt. At 3:00 we drove to City Internet Café as the raid approached. For the next almost 5 hours we did what would have take less than an hour in the US. We completed the online Visa application for Yakubu to come to the US. We had started the application the previous day and had spent 3 hours at another Café and were almost finished. The storm affected both the Zain mobile internet and the internet at the Café. We jumped back and forth between the Zain modem and the wireless internet depending on what was working. The system had a time-out security feature. If you did not complete a section in the required time you had to log back in and start the section over. I could not even guess how many time we logged back in. Finally, we finished the application and started on the online Visa Interview Appointment process. We got to the point of entering the information of the bank receipt for the $140 application fee. Here we are stuck. The bank receipt is almost a year old and is good for one year. The US Embassy had now switched banks from UBA Bank to GT Bank. GT has an online system that registers your receipt. Our receipt was not found. It was too late to contact the Embassy so we went to the Feedback page and left a message explaining our problem and we emailed the website. We hope to hear back by Friday and finish the Visa Interview Appointment Request. 

Power came on at midnight and the modem is working slowly. So I have edited this post a little and uploaded some pictures.