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.