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.

 

Dumne Borehole, Camera Tests

Today April 11, Yakubu, Adams, and I drove to Dumne to see the progress of the water committee and to look at the two boreholes. First we stopped and talked to the LCCN Dispenser at the Dispensary. He had 5 patients this morning but now had time to work with us. The local water committee has done nothing in the way of planning for an improved sanitation in the area. I have the feeling they were told that they need to do it but not given any education on sanitation and the benefits of the Ventilated Improved Pit latrine or the need to have a latrine. The Dispensary and the Bible School do not have latrines. After we discussed sanitation we went to the borehole that has not worked for two years. It was originally, drilled by Danish missionaries.Between 30 to 40 years ago. No pump was attached for many years. A hand pump was later added. It broke and the local government fixed it . It then broke again. With only one pump of the handle I knew that a rod had broken so the handle was no longer connected to the pump. We decided to disassemble the pump to see what was wrong and to test my borehole camera.

We got some young men to come help us with the heavy work. We disassembled the head and tried to remove the tank we could not remove the tank. So we lifted the first pipe out of the bore hole with the tank attached. Then there was no rod joint found inside the pipe at the pipe joint. So there we stood holding a 3 meter pipe up in the air with the tank section of the pump still attached at the top. Where is my hardhat?  This picture shows us doing something you are not taught in pump repair school. We are cutting the rod. The rod joint was over a meter above the pipe joint. We could not hold the pipe high enough in the air to reach the rod joint. So we had to cut the first three or four until the joint was close enough to unscrew. When we pulled the second pipe we found the broken rod. It appears that the cylinder had become jammed and they pumped so hard that they broke the rod. It was not that hard, we managed to break a rod also. In total we removed 13 pipes for a total depth of 39 meters (128 feet). We found the water at only 27.5 feet from the base of the slab. An old man at the site said he was young when they drilled the hole. It filled quickly when they broke through a rock layer. The total depth of the bore hole was 200 feet. The water meter that someone donated to the LCCN did not work properly. We found the depth to water by watching the light of the borehole camera as I lowered it. When the light disappeared we pulled it out and measured the length to the water mark on the  camera housing.

The camera worked well above the water level. But the way I attached the rope caused it to scrap the sides of the iron casing and drop rust into the water. We also did a lot of scrapping while removing the pipes. when the camera went under water it was too cloudy to show much. The pictures of the pipe above the water were pretty good. Under water I could not see much. Initial conclusion. The camera may work better in dry bore holes or boreholes that have plastic casing instead of iron.

The governments last repair had used inferior pipes (they bent when we used a pipe wrench on them) and inferior rods. After sending three cameras down with three different lights, we decided to install the cylinder we brought with us and as many of the rods and pipes that we determined to be usable. This way the people in the area would have water until we returned with good pipes and rods. As we were installing the pump head I needed the young men to lift the rod and head a few inches so I could remove the rod clamp. Unfortunately, they lifted it up more than a few inches and snapped another rod. It was now after 4 PM and we did not have time to remove the nine rods we had installed. We cleaned up and left the community with the same problem they had when we arrived. Only now we know exactly what needs to be done to fix the pump. We arrived back in Jimeta/Yola at 6 PM. I was covered in rust, dirt, oil and whatever. I drank another liter of cold water showered with warm water and washed my hands about 4 times before making a sandwich for dinner. When I post this I will take another shower. (I pour a few liters of water over my head is what I call a shower.)