Sabon Gari B District Church (N9.05679, E12.06749)

Sunday May 17th Bishop Abba, Kristian and I went Sunday service at the Sabon Gari “B” District church (aka LCCN #3 Mayo Belwa). The community is across the highway from Mayo Belwa in the Furfore Local Government. Last year I had visited the area to look at the water situation. They were one of the few communities that had organized and were trying to solve their own problems. I thought that this was good and that they deserved help because they did not ask. The profit from the 2008 Fair Trade Fair were donated to them. 136,000 naira ($800 converted on the black market). The Todi Diocese Pastors’ Wives were holding their meeting at the Church that weekend and were also guest at the service. The tradition is for guest to stand and introduce themselves. The leaders talked for several minutes each and then each of the over 30 wives stood and introduced themselves. They also had a song for the church. Because the Bishop and guest from American and Denmark were also at the service all of the singing groups had special numbers they had rehearsed. The pastor told them to only sing one verse and he will stop them because things had taken so long and there was a lot left to do. He cut his sermon very short. Pretty much a summary. We skipped the fourth hymn. Then the offerings started. It is traditional to have an offering for the guest when a group is at your church. They had also scheduled an offering for the church construction fund. The do a “one by one” offering where each person walks (or dances) to the front and put their offering into a container while the youth band plays. With the third offering they have a competition for different parts of the community. The Bishop got involved in encouraging people and he danced to the front and held the bucket and got the crowd moving. By the third offering the young boy on the drums was dripping with sweat. I got a hand fan from a girl that was singing but was under a ceiling fan and went over an started to fan the boy. I think I may have clipped his head once or twice. When I did that some women came over with cloth and wiped his brow and helped with the fanning. All in all we got out of the service at 1:00.

After a little lunch we met with their water committee. Again it took a lot of talking to get them to tell me the whole story. Last year I was not able to talk to any member of the water committee. I was left with the impression that they had a good borehole, had paid for it themselves and they were collecting more money to build an elevated storage tank and pump. This year the story is different. They told me there is no water in the borehole. After a lot of questions they told me that they hired a contractor to drill the borehole for a couple hundred thousand naira (This is really cheap). He drilled to 40 meters and said he needed more money to go deeper. They got him to go to 48 meters. He said his equipment cannot flush a hole this deep so he installed the screen and casing into the drilling mud and left. I asked “how do you know that there is no water in the borehole”. They told me another driller told them that they need to go to 80 meters and they can break-up the concrete platform, pull the casing and drill deeper. That is why they are sure there is no water. I summarized it for them. They asked someone who make money drilling to tell them what to do and he suggested that they drill. I compared this to taking your car to a transmission repair man for a noise and he tells you that your need a new transmission. Of course driller in Nigeria will always tell you that the answer is to drill more. They had decided to drill deeper and were in the process of collecting a 1000 naira from each of the 100 families in the area to pay the driller to go deeper. With the 136,000 naira that they received from my organization they would be able to pay for the drilling. The chairman’s mind was set on doing the work. We continued the discussion using an independent person to flush the borehole and determine if there is any water in it. It took a while but a woman on the committee realized what I was trying to say. She tried to explain it to the chairman. The concept of an independent consultant is not part of the culture. They thought the second driller had better equipment so his opinion would be better. Our consultant does not have any equipment so how can he be good. The chairman finally consented to have Adams come out at flush and test the borehole. I told them my schedule and that we will call them when we figure out what the cost to flush the borehole.