April 30th, Making Progress

Making Progress, Exactly What Progress I Do Not Know

The last few days I have made some progress in the overall planning and some specifics. For me it takes a few side trips to get me back into the main road. My side trips were the re-writing of the letters to the archbishop and bishops that I left in Minnesota. With new thoughts and new information I have found since I have been here added to the letters. I went to print them this morning and we are out of paper. We are even out of used paper.

Micro Power Generation

The other night at the Internet Café I was looking for one thing and found another. I was looking for reference information on water pumps and found information on “The Micro-hydro Pelton Turbine Manual: Design, manufacture and installation for small-scale hydropower”. This is when you have a relatively small amount of water and relatively high elevation difference. You use the water pressure created by the high elevation difference to shoot a jet stream of water against a turbine. The turbine can be locally welded up and connected to the shaft of generator. Within a half a kilometer of here are probably close to a dozen generator repair shop that have generators with now engines. Depending on the water flow and elevation available you can produce a few hundred watts to several kilowatts. The reason this interest me is that the people of Kola have requested that we fix a broken borehole rather than the broken spring catchment system. They prefer the taste of the borehole water. So if we can convert the springs to micro-generation we could power an electric pump in the borehole to supply water to the village in greater quantities than the hand pump. When the tanks are full we can then use the power for fans in the school or other needs. The water after the turbine can be directed to drip irrigation systems or cattle trough or other uses other than drinking water. In college I studied Dam design and hydro power generation and in Haiti one project included small scale hydro-power.

Water for All Drilling System

I was able to download a slide presentation from Water For All. Tom Waller was in Bolivia many years ago and he combined a cable tool drill with a bailer and created a reverse flow mud percussion drilling method that works up to 50 meters. I showed the slide show to Adams and he said “We could do that. That will be good for small remote villages.” With some small modification it could also be used to clean out boreholes that have become clogged with fine sand and clays more quickly than with a bailer and without he cost of renting an air compressor.

NEPA and Cooking

National Electric Power Agency. NEPA is the nickname for the power company. They actually changed their name a few years ago but everyone still calls them NEPA. They are back working again here in Jimeta. Today we have power from around midnight to sometime before a woke up. Then we had power from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM. The country cannot generate enough power for everyone to have power at the same time. They rotate power use. Every day seems different. Other than most days we it worked at all it ran from Midnight to early morning. I have the refrigerator running better now. I cleaned the coils on the back, opened the windows in the kitchen and set the ceiling fan medium speed. A thin layer of ice actually formed in the freezer. I keep a few quarts of orange juice, a bottle of water and a bottle of sun-tea in the freezer. So when the power goes off they hold the cold for a while longer.

Today is a sunny day, high thin clouds. I opened a small coconut and put the liquid in my rice pot with ½ cup of rice and some hot water. At 12:30 the rice was done and I had coconut rice for lunch. Not a lot of nutrition but it was filling and tasty.

May Day and Saturday and Sunday

Tomorrow is May Day and a national worker holiday. Banks and government offices are closed. Saturday they were going to drill at Pella Bible College (Air Hammer through weathered basement to 35 meters is the estimate). We planned to drive up there in the morning and come back in the afternoon. The driller is not going to be available. The Lutheran National Choir Competition starts today here at Jimeta and the finals are Saturday evening. Sunday is the special offering for the Bali Project. I have scanned our check and enlarged to about 30 inches with the amount converted to Naira and the account numbers changed. After they have their collection I will present the large and small checks to them.

Check Cashing

I have found out more about cashing foreign checks in Nigeria. They have two kinds of bank accounts. One can only work in Naira. The other can do foreign currency. Not many people have the foreign currency type. If you do not make a transaction at least every four months they close your account and you have to keep a minimum balance. The Bali account is a regular account. Checks are driven to Jos where an American businessman cashes them through his business account and gives the church Naira. Of course there are fees involved. Now I know the whole story. I guess we can make deposits into the US bank account for the business man and he can transfer it to his Nigerian account. It sure would be simpler if the LCCN would get an account for transferring of funds and cut out the middleman.