Of Making Holes in Stone

Mazalo (her name means "Saturday," after her birthday) says that her community's water source may not be much, "but at least it's not very far." We walked with her for about 20 minutes down an incline to the river, which in the dry season lies stagnet over its bedrock base. Mosquito larva wrigled in the semi-murky water that she scooped into her broad aluminum basin. Then we walked back, she with 15 to 20 gallons on her head, for another 20 minutes uphill. At least it's not very far.

Her community, Kaacade (pronouced KA-cha-de), needs water. According to my host David Reeves, its members came because the Togolese government took their for environmental conservation and gave them titles to the land they occupy now.

Thus the village has very little infrustracture, especially where water is concerned. The village has one central well which, in the dry season, holds less than one foot of water and a large frog. Tadpoles frequently accompany the innertube rubber bags used to pull up water. This well is also about 20 minutes from Mazalo's home.

Our first attempts were on Mazalo's land. Afer a week of crooked holes, hitting rock at five feet every time, experimenting with new bit designs, collapsing sand and gravel and the hassels of teaching a new crew how to drill, we had four holes no more than 10 feet deep.

The bit head broke off in two of the holes, one became unusable after too much sand and gravel collapsed, and another had rock beginning at arm's length, so we abandoned it at once. We put a pump in the last well, which was closest to the house and about 10 feet deep.

Mazalo's husband, Iyabane, assured us there would be water at that depth during the rainy season, but I cannot in good conscience call it a well, rainy season or otherwise.

Determined to make a well in the area, we tried again near the central community well in order to provide a more plentiful, cleaner water source. Rock appeared within the first few feet of every pilot hole we started, so it wasn't until our fifth try or so that we found a spot void of shallow rock at which to set up our rig.

After some difficulty keeping our hole straight, we finally arrived at a depth of 14 feet, the hand-dug well's water level. At the end of that day, we took out the pipe, and just to show a newcomer the depth of our well, we stuck a plastic pipe down the hole and it did not go as deep as we had hoped. In fact, it only went down about five feet. Rock had sealed off our hole.

It took some time to convince the drillers that this was not the product of witchcraft or the devil, or that if it was, then said powers of darkness used a perfectly natural method for their supernatural malevolence, i.e., a rock had slid over or else we drilled through a layer of collapseable rock, as we theorized to have encountered in some areas of Ethiopia.

We tried to break through the rock the next day and our bit broke off because the hole was wide at the top so our hits were crooked on the rock. Since the bit was near the top, we chose to dig down five feet to get the bit and remove the obstrusive stone. As we suspected, a single stone from a layer full of grapefruit-sized single stones had slid into our hole.

Thus we continued, until our bit broke off at the bottom of the hole. And then we reemed. And the reemer bit broke off at the bottom of the hole because we put it down with a cracked pipe attachment piece (a flimsy, cast iron reducer, more specifically).

Yet our problem hasn't been drilling through rock, or at least not that alone. The problem has been drilling crookedly through the rock. If the hole is not straight, the bits strike the rock at an angle, inducing the sideways stress that bends and smashes off the bit. In clay the side of the hole can be worn down and straightened, but stone is less forgiving.

So we finished our hole at 17 feet, and we're still developing it. We think it's producing about half a liter every 10 minutes. We're hoping for five liters every minute, at least. If one pumps this water out regularly, new water channels may open up and the well could produce more water than one can pump out. Having left the residents of Kaacade developing the well, we went back Friday and the recharge hadn't improved, so the well may not be workable.

After some rest on a weekend safari, as described in the previous post, we began and finished another well at Lassa Tchou, where we made our first well. We had planned to return, regardless of what would happen in Kaacade, with hopes of having the crew there make several wells in their village so that they will be sufficiently trained on basics and fundamentals to try out the technique in other areas on their own.

New logistical difficulties soon arose. Early rains have come, understandably prompting many who would help us drill to work their fields instead, so help is harder to find, although we've found enough to keep working. The village residents are also busy repairing their homes after the occasional hail and wind storms.

For three days in a row, after six hours of scorching sun, the evening unleashed towering thunderheads, sweeping them over the mountains and letting loose their avalanches of rain, hail, lightning and wind that tore tin roofs from houses, fell trees and rendered everything beyond 100 feet invisible amid the torrents. Fortunately such storms have let up for the time being, along with the eight-hour power blackouts that accompany them.

And they did not stop us from completing our well at 30 feet! Who knows? With more than a full week left, we may get another well in yet.

Of Safari

After two weeks of drilling in Kaacade, before we returned again to our first location, Matt Miller, his daughter Abby, the Kennell family (all with the Church of Christ Kabiye team) and I went on a weekend safari. We went to the Pendjari gamepark, three and a half hours away, in the neighboring country of Benin.

I've had the pleasure of African safari before, but never under the guidence of Mr. Miller. He has mastered the art of approaching a herd of elephants as they cross the road, and backing up towards them until they charge the vehicle. "The trick is to have plenty of open road in front of you," he says about enticing elephant rampages.

I captured an instance on video. In the background, one of the Kennell's gradeschool-age daughters gives instructions about her will as the elephants approach, growling and trumpeting. No, I did not know that elephants could growl either.

Such moments were reminiscent of the Jurassic Park scene wherein the Tyrannosaur chased a jeep. While the jeep sped away to safety in the film, I have no doubt that Mr. Miller would've at least driven slowly to lengthen the pursuit, if he did not back up to restart the chase entirely.

The heat was brutal during the afternoons, 104 in the shade, but fortunately, we were staying in lodges. Unfortunately for some of our friends still arriving, their car broke down seven miles from the lodge within the gamepark. No animals harrassed them, but they stayed stranded in the blistering night heat until the next morning when a tourist vehicle found them and took them and their luggage the rest of the way.

On our return trip we visited among the most spectacular waterfalls I've ever seen, also in Benin. Children who lived in the area glided easily across rocks slick with moss and helped the members of our party hike to and from the falls. A vast pool spread out at the base of the waterfall, and the Benin children jumped into it from their 20-foot climb up the cascade's rock wall.

I'm in gratefully indebted to the Kabiye team for the awe-inspiring experience, as well as the much needed rest. I'm happy that we were able to put it to good use with the completed well in the week that followed.

Of a Man Who Was Disembowled by a Warthog

I met a man at our new drill site whom a warthog disembowled. The beast attacked him in his fields, tearing into his belly with tusks and teeth. He should not be alive today according to my missionary host David Reeves, the hospital doctor who attended the victim, and the victim himself, who in telling the story regularly says, "I should not be alive today."

He became a Christian some time after the accident. Unfortunately, he cannot regularly attend his local church because he has a wife in another village, and he takes care of both spouses. Somewhat naturally therefore, he speaks against polygamy. He tells the youth not to make his mistake. Polygamy is too hard, he says, and God does not approve of it. He relishes this opportunity to testify against multi-spouse lifestyles as an insider, while at the same time carrying out the responsibilities of a twice-committed husband.

"It is clear to me now," he tells people. "God kept me alive to do this work in his kingdom."

Often God's purposes are clear only in hindsight, and no doubt even all that we realize in this life will not be clear until the next, when we do not look through the glass darkly, if it will be fathomable at all. Who can declare God's purposes? And who would have been so presumptuous to venture to the victim in surgery that the God he did not yet know had spared him to warn against polygamy? It's our double joy that death did not take him then and that he has such a strong testimony now.

Seeing Providence unfold like that is a blessing to which I can presently attest. Almost daily I praise God that we did not start our first well where we are drilling now. It was a toss up as to where we would begin, and nothing would have been so discouraging as to have begun in this village where the rock begins four feet below the surface, even after digging three pilot holes in the same area before settling on the one we have now.

We're taking a couple days to repair a bit that was broken at the new site, to make one or two bits specifically for the rock, to straighten our nine-foot steel pipe, and then double or even triple-weight said pipe to make a glorified rock bar. After two days, after 20 hours of smashing pipe into the ground, we have advanced five feet. It looks like a hard week ahead of us. Praise God for the providential first success behind us.