Ganye, Dashen and Mayo Belwa June 9

Tuesday we drove to Ganye to add a simple ball valve to a pipe at the Bonotem Diocese Secretariat, sample their borehole, and then chlorinate it. On our way back we sampled the water from the new pump at Dashen and then stopped at Mayo Belwa to sample the new borehole near the Sabon Gari “B” Church.

The people are thrilled with the muddy water they are getting from their new borehole. They no longer have to walk a few kilometers to get muddy water from a hand dug well or further to a poorly performing borehole. They do not know that the flow is low and the pump will only last a few months before it breaks. I am sad to say the Community Water Committee has been stolen from again. We got there and saw that they had bought an India Mark II pump rather than use the AFRIDEV pump they already owned. The contractor convinced them that they needed a new pump. Unfortunately, “Buyer be Aware” is a good motto to live by here. They drove to Jimeta and bought a pump tank and pump head from a dealer that is only a kilometer from where I am living. I walk by his shop on my way to the internet café and we bought the pump and bad pipes for Pela from him. He gave them a pump head that I do not think was new. It is hard to tell because the contractor that installed it may have messed it up. The pump handle was installed completely wrong. It is scrapping on one side of the casing, missing the washers, missing the spacer and has no lock nuts. The chain looked like it had been re-welded and had no grease on it at all. The original contractor had not properly installed the base. The base should be buried in a large mass of concrete, especially for a deep AFRIDEV pump. It was buried in rocks then a thin slab was poured around it. The first pump of the new pump broke the slab.

The new contractor had problems lining up the connecting rods. Instead of fixing the base problem they cut out the guide bushing and made a larger hole in the pump head for the pump rod. Now that the contractor has taken a cutting torch to the bad pump head it cannot be returned. The contractor flushed the borehole for 40 minutes. I had told Linus of the water committee that flushing should take several hours due to the high amount of mud in the borehole.

The pathoscreen test has gone more than 48 hours and has not shown the presence of potentially pathogenic bacteria. Both the Secretariat borehole and the Dashen well had turned black in less than 18 hours. We decided not to spend the $30 to have a laboratory run a fecal coliform test on the water until after the next flushing and chlorination. I have written an action plan for them that includes removing the entire platform and pump base, buying a new pump base and pump head, reinstall the base and building a new platform with Adams supervising the work. Five days later Adams will return with a compressor to surge and flush the borehole until the water is clear. Then he will add the chlorine and supervise the installation of the pump. All of this is at an estimated cost of 100,000 Naira. They spent almost that much on the last contractor. I wanted to take a picture of the newly installed hand pump for the blog and to use to show work that has been accomplished by a water committee but I was so disappointed in the work that I will get the picture when we have a quality product.