Monday, Dec 10th: Day 1 of Drilling

*This is a long one folks!*

This morning we sang "He Is Mighty To Save" (which is now my theme song this week) and read and excerpt from the book "The Hole In Our Gospel". This is what we read (I will shorten it for the sake of space): "Most of you began this morning with a hot, clean shower. You brushed your teeth, filled a glass of water, and took a few vitamins..And each day you run your washing machines and dishwashers and take your toilets for granted..If you have children, they probably haven't spent even one hour of their lives fetching water for the family to drink or to bathe with. And I'll wager that neither you nor your children have ever had a sick day due to unclean water..I want you to imagine for a moment that when you wake up tomorrow, all of the water-related fixtures and appliances have been removed from your home..You would wake up wanting to use the toilet, take your hot shower, brush your teeth, swallow those vitamins, and fix breakfast-but you can't. What would you do? At first, you would be irritated by the minor inconvenience of having no showers, toilets, dishwasher, or washing machine-until it started to dawn on you that this is far more serious-a threat, actually, to your health, your family, even your survival. Finding a way to get water would begin to consume your life..Where I live, we are fortunate to have a wonderful lake just about two miles away, so if I knew I was going to be without water, I could begin to plan ahead to organize some water fetching. On foot, it would take about two hours round-trip to go fetch water to use for drinking and some rudimentary bathing, but thirty gallons of water weighs about 250 pounds. I checked my water bill and learned that my family uses about three hundred gallons a day. That would weigh more than a ton and would require fifty round-trips to the lake each day..Now, if you had to work this routine into your schedule every day and still get everyone off to work or school on time, you would have to begin your treks in the wee hours of the morning. Washing your clothes and dishes, let alone your own body, would become an overwhelming task..Now, this little imaginary dilemma I took you through may sound a bit amusing as you think about how absolutely dependent you and your family are on water, but let me add a more sinister dimension. Imagine that the water you fetched from the lake was teeming with deadly bacteria, parasites, and waterborne diseases-that are literally killing you. This is the grim reality for about 1.2 billion people in our world today. As many as 5 million people die every year of water-related illnesses. A child dies every fifteen seconds of a waterborne disease. This creates a no-win situation for millions of parents in our world today-they can watch helplessly as their children die for lack of water, or they can watch them die from diarrhea, because the only water they have is tainted."

I hope you don't feel guilty after reading that. Just wanted to put into perspective what we were walking into that week. I know that was long so I won't talk much more about today. Just some pictures and some thoughts from Kent Grubb, one of our drillers.

 

This is what 'el bano' looked like in the village, and yes, we did use it.

First impressions of the children here. This is Katarin and her little sister Rosa. They were first to greet us every morning-their house is right next to the drill site.

A little glimpse of what we did hundreds of times a day..use anti-bacterial wipes.

This is Juan Carlo. He was my buddy for the week. He holds a special place in my heart.

Jim, Deanna and Emily mixing the bentonite.

This is what a typical kitchen looks like.



When the hygiene girls arrived, we visited the homes around the area and invited the moms to come to the classes.

Some houses were made of concrete, some were wrapped in tin and plastic.

Every other day, those who pay for water, receive it from the city. Unfortunately, it is unclean water and when the city runs out, well, there is no water for anything.

We started with a craft. The children made name tags..and they absolutely loved it!

Little Erick

After making the name tags, Lauren started her lesson, which was an introduction to Living Water and us and Jesus as the "living water". I agreed to act out Lauren's skit, but didn't know I would be risking my life! LOL! I was supposed to go grab the cup, which was supposed to be empty, and pretend I was taking a drink. Only, the cup wasn't empty, and I got a mouthful of water...unclean water. I almost threw up as the water hit my mouth, and the kids thought I was hilarious! Only I wasn't acting that part! Glad to know we are off to a great start with the kids!

My lesson came next, germs and handwashing. I had to teach each child how to wash their hands with clean water, soap in one bowl with a little water for washing and rinsing in another bowl. I also had to stress the importance of dumping the water out after each person because it was now dirty. This took a long time with 20 kids! Karen helped out by being Ana, the puppet. Theresa had a fun time making her the night before!

 This was probably the first time ever for many of the kids to wash their hands. Very sad realization.

This is a hand dug well. The water is contaminated with bacteria and parasites that seep into the ground and into the water source.

The kids loved to have their picture taken and then see it back on the camera!

 At the end our our day we pulled out the balls, jump ropes, frisbees, and bubbles and the kids went wild! Definitely the hardest part of the day!

From Kent Grubb: 

Drilling began today a bit after 10:00. Our driller, Adrian, was delayed obtaining necessary items for drilling. We had a target time of 9:00 to start but the pause gave us the opportunity to walk back to the home where we had enjoyed the church gathering the day before. There we spoke briefly with the sister whose house it was, and she allowed us to use the latrine behind the house. She was doing laundry outside her house on a concrete sink and wash board.

At 10 Adrian began teaching us the rudiments of drilling a water well. The first stage is digging several small trenches leading to a pair of pits. Three men of the village church had dug the two five foot pits in an hour. We took some lengthier period to hack out our several shallow trenches of a half foot depth and several feet in length.

As some of us dug, Emily, Deanna, and Jim mixed Bentonite, a slick oatmeal-like substance - once it is mixed. They muscled 40 lbs sacks onto the lip of 55 gallon drums, then sifted the Bentonite powder slowly into the drums. At the same time time they shot water into the barrels from compressor powered pumps. Inevitably, the slurry erupted at moments, splattering the three of them. Undeterred, they finished up three 55 gallon drums. The Bentonite is critical for mud drilling as it lifts the cuttings to the surface.

We then dumped the Bentonite into the pits and began drilling. This is fairly physical labor, requiring lifting 5ft sections of pipe to be joined to the drillhead as the drill works further into the ground.

Adrian taught each member of the drill crew how to operate the drill. Some were naturals, others felt a conviction for other callings.

We are just inside the Pacific coastal area of Nicaragua. Jorge, the local Living Water director, warned us that the sun would be quite draining. We were very blessed today to have nice cloud cover as well as a very pleasant breeze.

At lunch, we had a sandwich, some chips, and Gatorade. Several pigs trotted by, with an eye toward anything that might have been dropped. Several showed mild irritation earlier in the day in their wallows along the road threading through the middle of the pueblo.

When the drill bit stalled about an hour after lunch, Adrian had us pull all 115ft of pipe from the hole. This requires breaking the grip of the threads on the successive lengths of pipe with a three foot pipe wrench. Each section must be reloaded into the trailer so it is ready to be reused. Once the entire pipe length was out, Adrian attached a new bit, while Jorge cleared the bit. As each length came off, water shot from the joint in the pipe saturating the three or four drill crew working to break loose the pipe.

At the end of the day, the hole was 115 ft. Adrian tells us we will likely have good water at 160.