Of Our First Well in Togo

After four days, we finished drilling, not knowing if we had water.

We made a make-shift pump to empty the water from the hole, to see if it would recharge. The water came out cloudy, then clear, then cloudy, then clear - signals that new water channels were opening below. After half an hour, we still had not been able to pump our 28.5-foot well dry. And the water became colder, as one would expect water hidden from the sun to be.

Slowly smiles spread across the faces of the village drillers. Children began laughing and playing with the water. A few women started to clap in rhythm and sing bits of a song. But I wouldn't say it was a well, cautious as I am, pessimistic as I was.

Generally one pumps the well dry, and lets it recharge, then pumps it dry, then lets it recharge until enough new channels of water open up so that one cannot pump it dry again. The process can take weeks.

After 1.5 hours, we were never able to pump our hole dry. We had a well.

I came to Togo dubious about whether or not we could succeed, considering our three dry holes in Ethiopia. And when I saw gargantuan chunks of granite protruding from the ground at every turn, my morale dropped deeper I've ever drilled. Rock had been our demise at the new work area in Awashbuni, and I was nearly certain it would undo us here.

My fears were not eased by shopping for materials. One shop owner (whom we had not told about our well-making intent) told us that the pulleys we sought were in short supply because their most frequent buyers used them for hand-digging wells, and no one was digging wells anymore because they continually reached rock and could go no further.

"Please, come to my village," one chief said to me, according to my translators at a church retreat. "We have no water because there is too much rock."

However, the situation at least seemed hopeful when we surveyed our first drill site on Tuesday. The village had a large, hand-dug well which would provide us the water necessary to drill. Its water started at 18 feet, and those who drilled the well said it was "dirt" all the way down to the water.

We soon discovered said dirt to be gravel held together by sandy soil. This is problematic because gravel cannot squeeze through our drill-tip valve. Neither can the gravel be ground into smaller sediment because the arrow-head point cannot get a solid hit on individual pieces.

By Wednesday's end, we hadn't reached 10 feet because gravel continually fell into the hole, and our hole had beveled out to where we had no way of ensuring a straight hole. We moved our tools and derrick and prepared to start again the next day.

Thursday we sharpened a steel coupling, attached it to some of our plastic drill stem pipe and jabbed it into the ground, slightly moistening the ground with water. Thus we stuffed dirt into our pipe, took it out and cleaned it until we were 10 feet down. Then we attached our steel pipe and drill bit and began again.

After some trouble with the pulley, and after some experimentation with a piece of large plastic pipe to keep gravel from falling into our hole, we were on our way. We were on our way - until we hit another layer of gravel.

For this new layer, we removed the bit, put on the sharp steel coupling and used our hand to make a one-way valve at the top of the drill pipe. We covered the top of our pipe on the way up and uncovered it on the way down, thereby lifting the column of water on the way up, and flinging the rig down fast enough so that the water spewed out. The method is also known as Chinese sludging, a 3,000-year-old technique.

Once we were through that layer of gravel, we hit rock. For the remainder of the day, we pounded the layer and made a bit progress. Then we put on new pipe - plastic pipe instead of more steal pipe, which we had been using to force our way through the rock – and the plastic pipe came apart where we had glued on couplings. We tried a piece of pipe on which we used different glue, and we got the same result. So we pulled out the rig for the day and we saw that the sharp teeth of our coupling had been pounded back inside the coupling.

We spent the first half of Friday buying and threading cheap galvanized pipe to replace our plastic pipe, hoping that our drilling rig wouldn't be too hard to pull. And we also brought a drill bit made specifically for rock. We drilled the rest of the day, progressed through the rock, two feet of it (I'm assuming it was a fractured rock; I don't believe we could've drilled so quickly through granite), and then through a foot of sand.

We drilled hard again half of the next day, Saturday, without incident until we were at a total of 28.5 feet. The workers, to my encouragement, wanted to continue to 36 feet, but I insisted that we stop where we were. We started at a lower level than the hand-dug well, and that the water table started around 18 feet, and we were in sand that should, theoretically, make a good aquifer. We didn't need to be pushing our luck.

So we reamed the hole wide enough for our casing (the wall of the well, in essence), put in our casing, poured buckets of water down the casing that stuck up a meter above ground level so as to flush out dirty water, and then tried to pump the well dry using a quickly thrown together inertia pump. As aforementioned, we could not pump it dry, and we had our well.

Once we were sure it was a well, we put gravel, then sand, then clay around the casing to create essentially a giant bio-sand filter to keep surface water from contaminating the aquifer.

We'll spend this next week installing a nice, steal pump since the entire village will use it and it will hold up better than the standard plastic pump we put together for individual families. I hope to have a ridiculous amount of pictures posted by that time.

All in all, we praise God for Togolese villager's hard work and for David Reeves' long hours put to finding all of our materials, and for all of his communications work, and always for your prayers. We fought hard and won a victory. May it be the first of many.

Of What the Children Know

Last night it rained on the missionary children's Easter egg hunt, and I've never seen children more happy about a drenched holiday activity.

All day it had been hot, the intense heat that squeezes the moisture out of every last corner and lifts it into the clouds.

We felt it build slowly, especially throughout the all-church retreat, where evangelical congregations had been gathered all weekend for singing and teaching from missionaries and their own members, culminating in the Easter service. Between preachers, mildly chaotic offerings, and a Lord's Supper that used homemade bread and millet beer from a single cup, a couple lead songs from their seats. The call-and-response hymns followed the beat of clapping, drums, cowbells (of which we need more) and an assortment of homemade percussion instruments. Near the end several ladies left to prepare the meal - fish, rice and spicy peanut sauce - that we enjoyed at the end of the service. We ate underneath a mango tree, hiding from said building heat.

Late afternoon, the missionaries gathered at one of their homes for a capella singing, Scripture reading, supper and the Easter Egg hunt. We finished the service, and one of the kids reported large, dark clouds building overhead. Yesterday we had the same phenomena, but they had blow away without leaving anything behind. Not this time. After a thick, sweet smelling gust, a drizzle fell and grew into fat drops over the course of the next hour. The children were ecstatic. They twirled in the remaining rain after the egg hunt.

Growing up in Togo, they know the value of dry-season rain.

At the moment most of the wells are dry. Only a few springs and water laden areas remain. We saw one hand-dug well with water about 36 feet from the surface. It might be a good place to start drilling, now that we have most of our rig!

We need a few more purchases and extra materials to be well prepared (it's impossible to avoid potential puns; my apologies) - we need a bit specifically designed for the layer of rock we're sure to go through, and a tool to extract the pipe if our fittings become unglued from the drill stem, for example - but otherwise we're ready to begin. Last post I said that if we were ready to go by now it would be a miracle. How appropriate then that we're ready on the anniversary of our redemption and the greatest miracle of all!

Of Every-Day Miracles and Togo

Too often I ignore daily miracles: rising suns, falling stars, waning moons, and all of those things which happen very often yet don’t have to happen at all. To paraphrase a man (G.K. Chesterton) whom I paraphrase too much: all the things that make celestial patterns happen, all of our “Laws of Physics” and anything else that science notes, are merely records of what usually happens.

There is nothing that says gravity on earth must continue to operate at 9.8 meters per second squared. Nothing prevents it from vanishing altogether. “Laws,” after all, are only as good as the One who enforces them, and it's His purpose they serve.

That same subtle miraculousness is true of travel, another one of Chesterton’s example. At times mass transit works so well that one is surprised when something does not arrive or leave on time. Such routine gives the impression of dead, monotonous systems, cogs whirring impersonally. Thus one forgets the tremendous amount of life behind such valuable systems that sustain the routine, resulting in ingratitude.

Here the frequent traveler to the developing world should have an advantage in resisting ingratitude, because anything that goes right in the third world is unquestionably the result of a miracle. Thus I praise God from the abundant Providence that has taken me from Ethiopia, to Ghana, and finally to Togo. Here we hope to drill a test well, and if it is successful, to thoroughly teach a group of Church of Christ missionary families how to drill and establish a long-term water program for the Kabiye (Literally, "Rock Pilers") people of northern Togo.

David Reeves and Mark Kennell of the Kabiye team met me in Accra, Ghana’s capital because the flight was cheaper than anything directly to Lome, Togo’s capital. And we had heard that some very essential drilling mud could be found in Accra, whereas it was not in Lome, or anywhere else in Togo.

For two days we meticulously called every business in the Accra directory and searched every hub of commerce on the social rung: from the high-scale, Western-style malls and supermarkets that might stave off even Wal-Mart, to the classic markets littered with a few blocks of hardware stores next to a few blocks of cloth vendors next to a few blocks of produce stands. The city rivals Nairobi in its development, serving as a commercial hub for much of West Africa.

Near the end of our Accra trip, we had found a few key items but not the most needed item, the drilling mud. We were became semi-desperate, hoping that maybe one of dozens of people perpetually wandering the streets with either water, milk or fruit on their head, or electric hair clippers and pens from Nigeria in their hands would bring several bags of bentonite (which we usually use for drilling mud) right to the window of our vehicle, ready to bargain the price for half an hour so that we could buy the blasted stuff for a few dollars cheaper.

Then the day before we had to leave, someone who was staying at our guest house gave us an address to a pump supplies store, and the ladies at the pump supplies store gave us a bore-hole well-driller’s number, and the bore-hole well-driller gave us a ladies’ number, and the lady met us the next morning at 6 a.m. in front of a grocery store and handed us two containers of expensive white powder (dehydrated drilling mud) in a black plastic bag. And then we were ready to leave.

We crossed the boarder into Togo with little issue and spent the remainder of our nine-hour drive traversing forestal mountains and roaring past quiet villages. Every so often, the ruins of an ornate Catholic church would tower over a Togolese village, and the occasional roadside graveyard would pop out of the forest as we drove, both remnant features of Togo’s past as a French colony besides the country’s official French language.

We arrived that evening and settled into my apartment at the Reeves' household. For the rest of the week, David and I scoured Kara in search of the necessary materials. And I've already spent a couple of evenings beneath a shower of sparks, using a hand grinder to cut out bit pieces for our local welder.

Not all has been toil, however. Slowly I become acquainted with the other Kabiye team members through Thursday morning basketball games and men's prayer time; through mountain hikes with team members and their visiting, U.S. church supporters; and through Sunday evening worship, after Sunday morning worship with local village churches. And we've celebrated the birthday of now-nine-year-old Hannah Reeves, sibling to three younger brothers: Elijah, Gabriel and Caleb, the last an infant.

Tomorrow we continue our search for the final drilling rig materials, venturing to the capital city five hours away. If all goes well we should be able to drill by the middle of next week. Yet I recall that our schedule is in God's hands, that "all goes well" is a miracle to inspire utmost awe.

Of Tantalus and Togo

After some difficulty from drilling at our place in Awashbuni, we
decided to attempt a few easy wells instead of immediately embarking
on our third attempt. Joe had already drilled three wells in our area,
completing one per day. Those were down in the valley, a few miles
from our house. The further one moves from the road, from our home,
and further into the valley, the shallower the wells become. So we
drilled at the house of our good friend Haile "the School Teacher"
Faresa, hoping to avoid the large layer of rock directly beneath our
homestead. I don't know if we succeeded in avoiding said layer of
rock, but if so, we found an entirely new one which has caused us just
as much grief.

We lost the first rig to a foolish mistake which cost us the rig and
the hole, and then the bit broke off at the bottom of our second hole,
as it did at the bottom of the third hole, both of them the product of
poor welding. In an effort to make the best of our situation, we cased
and developed our third hole since it was fairly close to our intended
depth. No water thus far. We may be too shallow.

Camping at Haile's house, we could look out over wide fields of cut
straw and tall lines of swaying eucalyptus trees haphazardly dividing
properties, clustering occasionally around circular, thatch-roof
homes. Out there - out of earshot of our sloshing mud and our
whirring, clunking vehicle - water waited 30 feet below the land, not
60 feet and hiding beneath three feet of stone. 'Twas tantalizing, in
the purest sense of the word. In kinship with Tantalus: the water is
always just out of reach.

Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time at Haile's house. Everyday his
mother and sisters prepare the coffee ceremony for us and any other
neighbors who have dropped by. A few of his younger brothers (he has
17 siblings by two different mothers) help us with the labor. A couple
of the youngest set up tents in imitation of our campground, tents and
a cooking area set up behind a row of eucalyptus. We were sure to
provide the brothers with a thorough campout experience, including
smores one night. (May I recommend roasting marshmallows covered in
peanut butter; a gourmet roast). It was the least we could do after
the boys performed the coffee ceremony themselves at our campsite one
night, a particularly uplifting occasion since Jeremy and I had been
struggling alone with the drilling while Joe was in Uganda for a week
with a team from his home church, Christian Fellowship Church in
Evansville, Indiana.

They went to Uganda to survey an area where the church is supporting
several projects. The church team spent the previous week in Ethiopia
inspecting projects before leaving with Joe. Joe returned accompanied
by a friend, Cheryl, who was in Uganda while renewing her visa
to continue medical and agricultural work in Central Asia. She has
spent a few days of this past week with us at Haile's place, aiding us
in our drilling and such fiascoes as marshmallow roasting. Her
cheerful spirit and warm humor has been a blessing to us. She plans to
return to Afghanistan on Tuesday. Please keep her in your prayers.

Afterward, Joe and Jeremy will return to Haile's place and try to
develop the well in hopes that it will produce water. In the meantime,
I'm off to Togo in a matter of hours. Several Church of Christ
missionary families have raised funds and want to try out the
well-drilling technique in their area of northern Togo, so I'll be
with them for the next two months, returning to Ethiopia May 9 so that
I can return to the United States on May 12. Please pray that we'll be
able to drill wells there, that the water may be well within our
grasp.