Banjiram Last Visit During This Trip

Crowd at school taps before we added the 3" pipes.

 These are the before pictures. The borehole and tank are at a government secondary school. This is what it was like at the 10 water taps at the school everyday at 3PM when the water was turned on. There are 16 remote taps closer to the home. The flow at the remote taps is very little and does not last long. Most people walk the extra 200 meters to get in line. In a previous blog I discussed my redesign of the distribution system to try to get more water into the system each day and get it out to the village at the remote taps. Those who have followed my since 2009 have heard my three water priorities.

Crowd waiting at the ten taps at the school.

1. Have enough water to live.
2. Have the water close to home so you do not spend as much time fetching.
3. Have good quality of water.

On Thurday and Friday May 3 and 4 we went back to Banjiram to bring them the pipes and parts to improve the performance of the distribution system. The modeling for the re-design of the system starts to work with adding 270 meters of 2-½ inch pipe. It works better with 3 inch. Due to supply and demand currently the 3 inch pipe is cheaper than the 2-½ . I had been told that the buried pipes going out to the remote tap stands were 1-½ inch pipes. We only purchased fittings that would connect the 3 inch to the 1-½ inch. It took most of the morning to get the right pipes and the right lengths onto a truck to transport it out to Banjiram. The 6 meter long pipes that shop was selling were actually 4.92 meters long. We had to measure the pipes and recalculate how much we needed. We now needed 78 of the 4.92 meter pipe and they were still cheaper than the 2-½ inch pipe .

They did not have 1-½ inch tees so they sent out some boys to their other shop to get them. They finally, came back and tossed them in the bag of parts. I should have looked at them. They were 2 inch tees. It really did not matter because the pipe in the ground was actually 1-¼ inch. It also took a long time to get the 78 pipes from his other warehouse and loaded onto a truck. We made sure the driver knew where to go and we headed out at a little after 11. Our trucks had been parked facing each other. He went one way and we headed in the opposite. We had to get fuel and make a stop in Numan to deliver some paperwork to the Health Board Director. We did not know that the truck driver was headed to his house to get a second rack for his truck. He did not like the way the pipes were hanging on back of his truck with only one rack. The pipes showed up about two hours after we got to Banjiram. While we were waiting for him we had the people start digging a wider trench for the pipes and explained to the plumber what we were going to do. He was unconvinced that it would work, The pump in the borehole was only a 1-¼ inch pipe so he reasoned that it was too small to push water through a 3 inch pipe. I tried to explain to him. He just shook his head. He was being paid he will make the connections.

We off loaded the pipes by the tower and when the plumber was ready the men, women and kids all grabbed pipes and took them to the trench. On Thursday we connected assembled and buried all the 3 inch pieces and decided on what parts we needed to finish the work on Friday. We also looked at the existing leaks in the system and made a list of repair parts. We rushed back to Yola and started searching for the parts just before sundown. The shops were trying to close and get home before dark. Most of what we needed were found at the third shop we tried.

Friday morning, Yakubu could not come with us so I was the driver. Adams and I located the final parts and were on the road to Banjiram by 9. We arrived and called the plumber to drive down from Guyuk about 15 kilometers further up the road. Everything went smoothly until we started trying to repair the 20 year old valves and coupling that were leaking. I have to give the plumber credit. He was able to hammer and force these old rusted fittings loose. The leaks were because of the misalignment of the pipes as much as the age of the parts. Some of the old buried pipes had to be moved a few inches. We had hoped to be finished by noon so we could pump some water during peak solar power. We were finally able to get the leaks down to a few minor drips at just after 2 pm. 

Everyone stepped back to let me get a picture of the water.

Five hours of pumping had been missed for the day. The sun was past it peak and there was no water in the tank. Usually the tank is half full when the system is opened. At 2:30 we turned on the water to the distribution system. It now had to fill 260 meters of 3 inch pipes. The North Pipe stand that used to have only 2 of the 8 taps working had good flow at all 8 taps after taking 30 minutes to fill the lines. The South tap stand that usually had 5 taps flowing only had two. We had the women at the North Tap Stand singing and dancing and the women at the South Tap Stand looking for a rope to hang me with. Finally, Adams checked a valve that the operator had told us was wide open and found it was closed. A few minutes after he opened it the South Tap Stand had 4 of the 8 working. It was not late in the day and past the peak solar time. Adams explained to the women that the pump had been off all day as we worked on the system and there was not water in the tank. He told them it will be better tomorrow. (When we would be safely back in Yola.)

The next day as I sat in the LCCN Cathedral in Yola at a wedding ceremony for 5 couples a lady came and sat down next to me. She said "I am from Banjiram. You are a brother of Banjiram." She must live near the North Tap Stand.

Line for water at the artesian flow while we worked.

Night Flow Tank: Before the sun get high enough in the sky to start the pump and after it gets to low for the pump to operate the water in the borehole flows out of a 2 inch pipe welded to the casing. This artesian flow it collected by women from early in the morning until the pump starts and after the pump stops they are fetching late into the night. The operator asked me if there was any way to pipe this flow into the distribution system. I tried to explain to him that the forces underground that is forcing the water up to the surface is barely enough to get it to the surface and since the borehole is at the lowest place in Banjiram the force is not enough to move the water up to the taps. He would come back and ask again and again. I told him that since water only flows by gravity down-hill the water would have to flow into a tank and then be pumped out. We did not time the water flow but estimated it to be 10 liters per minute. For the 16 hours of  no solar power the artesian flow will be around 9600 liters. I have asked some of my geologist and engineer friends to calculate what he flow would be if we could lower the outlet by 4 feet. The first estimate is that it could add as much as 50%. The second response was that it would not be significant. Both from geologist. The civil engineers and mechanical engineers who specialize in fluid flow have not responded yet. I think it is somewhere between. I will have to wait to get to my fluid mechanics books at home. My gut feeling is that it is closer to the Neal’s estimate of 50%. If we can achieve 15 liters per minute we could build a 15, 000 liter underground tank. Purchase a small pump than will lift the water up into the elevated tank every morning and we would have nearly twice as much water to feed the distribution system. Currently, the system is opened only once per day at 3PM until the tank is empty and the pump stops pumping. With the addition of the overnight water the system might be able to be opened twice a day. The other option is to have a hand pump on the overnight tank and people could pump the water anytime they want to.

Concept of the Night Flow Tank

Night Flow with lowered inlet.

Hong, Large concrete tank on rock outcrop on the right and small red tank.

This week has been busy. Monday and Tuesday was planning for Thursday and Friday. We were suppose to get all the parts needed for Thursday to install the improvements I designed for Banjiram. But we ran into problems and got nothing actually purchased. Wednesday we headed to Hong and Pella up north and east of Jimeta. I wanted to cancel the trip and concentrate on getting ready for Banjiram. I am now glad we did not.

Adams showing Gamakesa the old hand dug well

Hong. Hong is the seat of the Hong Local Government Area. The Government Secondary School PTA has asked us to advise them on improving the water from their borehole and improve their distribution system. Adams has gone up and flushed the borehole and had the electric pump repaired and tested. Yakubu now wants to see the distribution system. They assume it is no good after being in the ground for forty years.Nobody knows where the pipes are, sizes or anything other than there are two tanks. The original tank was  built by the Lutherans up on a large rock outcropping on the side of the hill. It was filled from a large hand dug well. The hand dug well was in a building that has now fallen down. Adams and the drillers thought it was an old borehole until they started digging it out and discovered the old well. A smaller tank was built when the borehole was added. Most of the teachers and principals are new and have little information.

Gamakesa on top of old concrete tank

This is a little unusual project. It is for improvements to a government facility. But many of the students are Christians and Lutherans. Also Gary Sande who works as the Nigerian Coordinator for Global Health Ministries was the missionary that started the school back in the 1960’s. People still talk about Mr. Gary and his Volkswagen Beetle bouncing down the roads. (I claim literary license on the validity of these statements about Gary and his Beetle.)

Hong GSS borehole

We found the 6 inch borehole with steel casing to be 77 feet deep with water at 19 feet. It was reported the when the pump runs the borehole will run out of water. They you have to stop the pump and wait for the water to return. But, no one that was there had been at the school when the pump was running.Everyone is assuming that the existing pipes in the ground are leaking. No one has been at the school since the pump quit working a long time ago. The pipe could be good. One problem is that it is all galvanized. Which means that zinc can leach out. A part of me is hoping that when a leak test is run that it will show leaks and we can install some heavy duty PVC pipe. When I started asking question about how they wanted to improve the system they had not yet thought about what they want to do with the water when the rebuilt pump is installed. I asked a few leading questions to get them thinking. I will need to sit and think a while to determine the series of questions that they need to consider before a distribution system is designed. 

Maspalma Samson explaining resistance survey.

After we had finished I decided to go back to the borehole and see how much my altimeter on my new GPS and changed in the hour since I took the first reading (2 meters). While I was taking the reading a young man in a red vest came up and introduced himself. Maspalma Samson is a geologist with the Nigerian Geological Survey who was from Pella and has lived in Hong. He has mapped and entered the geology of the area in GIS systems. He was here collecting water samples for his Masters in Environmental Science. He had heard we were coming to the area when he had been in Pella collecting samples. I called to Yakubu and Adams to come back under the tree. They were headed back to the Admin Building to have a look at the pump and were in a hurry to get finished and on the next task. I introduced them and after a half hour of conversations, exchanges of emails and phone numbers we were on our way to find old people.

Mølgaard's cook with wife, son and daughter, approx. 1977

Picture: Elisabeth Holtegaard, whose car we had borrowed to make this trip, had given us a picture of a man and his wife who was believed to have lived in Hong. The man had been a cook for various Danish Missionaries. When Elisabeth had told them she had meet the wife a few years ago at the LCCN Annual Convention they wanted to thank her for all the help she and her husband provided many years ago. They collected some money and gave it to Elisabeth to give to her or if she had passed on to her family. I thought we were on a Fool’s Errand. We found man who knew where some of the elders sit under a Neem tree in the afternoon. None of them recognized the picture. 

Pella: Our mission in Pella is to estimate the cost to clean out, cover and install a hand pump on the old hand dug well near the Maternity clinic. We had brought Gamakesa with us. He is the expert on well digging. As we drove into town on the new road we decided to first go to the Bible College where we had installed a pump in 2009. They were happy to see us and told us the pump was working good. We pumped the handle once and water started flowing. They had planted a little garden at the end of the waste trough to use the spilled water. When we went back to the car I saw this motorcycle wheel with some strips of tire tubing going to a little wheel in a mud housing. I asked what was? It is the blower for the forge for the black smith. They had taken a fan wheel out of something and formed a fan housing out of clay. It was still wet but they spun the wheel and air blew out of the little hole by the ground. This is the smallest forge I have ever seen.

Blower for the Blacksmith forge.

They gave us some groundnuts (peanuts) for a snack. Gamakesa told me they did not have a NAFDAC number. I guess most of the white people he had been working with only ate things approved by the Nigerian version of our FDA. At first the joke as lost on me. I had been eating local food for several years now. We thanked them for the snack and went back to the main part of town.

It only took us a few minutes to determine that the 4 foot diameter well was 21.85 meters down to the water and the water was 2.3 meters deep. As far and anyone knew well has never been cleaned. There could be another 2 meters of buckets, bags, rocks kids tossed in and whatever from last 40 years. Gamakesa thinks it will take 7 days to get cleaned out if he can find pumps powerful enough keep the water pumped down so the workers can dig.

As we were about to leave Helena the Nurse Mid-Wife in charge of the maternity clinic talked us into staying and having some coffee. She said the water was hot and ready. We sat under a mango tree and I commented that it was too bad that the ripe mangos were so high. A little while later we saw some kids with a long stick knocking down the few remaining ripe mango. They brought over a pot filled with mangos. Helena washed them with salt water and we ate fresh mangos. We showed Helena and others the picture of the couple we were looking for and she and everyone else said they did not know her. About then the local Pastor came up to great us. We offered him a mango but he was on his way to meet with the chief at his palace. We showed him the picture. He took one look and said he had been with them when he was in Jos. She is now a member at the Gombi Cathedral. They will be able to find her there. She is old but still very lively. Amazed we thanked him and Helena and headed for Gombi which on our way back to Jimeta anyway.

Cook's wife at Gombi Cathedral

Gombi. Gombi is the home of the Shall Holma Diocese. The Gombi Church is now there Cathedral. It is only a kilometer out of our way. We parked outside the gate because the Boy Brigade was practicing and no cars were allowed in. I told them I would guard the car so they can go into and ask questions without having to explain why they have a white man with them. As I was sitting on a large tree root an older lady walked up and went through the gate. It was the lady they were looking for. She was coming for Wednesday evening bible study. Yakubu explained to her that Elisabeth Holtegaard wanted to see her and gave her money to come to Jimeta. If we had not stopped for coffee with Helena we would not have met the pastor and the lady. If I had not decided to go back to the borehole for a second measurement we would not have met the geologist with knowledge to the area that could be of great help to us in the future.

Cook's wife and her son in Jimeta

On Thursday while we were in Bamjiram the lady came to Jimeta to visit Elisabeth with her son that is shown in the picture. She brought along pictures of all her children for Elisabeth to take back to her friends in Denmark

Sabon Gari District Church in Mayo Belwa

Goggle Earth Image from 2006. VES 1 is by the church VES 2 further up hill past the exist broken borehole.

I do not know how many times I have been to the area around the Sabon Gari District Church since 2008. The community is on the edge of the town of Mayo Belwa. But it is not in the Mayo Belwa Local Government Area. They are in Furfore Local Government Area. Across the highway and down the road a little way is the Secretariat for the Mayo Belwa Local Government. An easy walk from this community. But they do not get any services from Mayo Belwa. Furfore where their local government is located is about an hour by car south of Jimeta and they are about two hours north and east of Jimeta. Fufore LGA does not give them much services either.

The community got organized and hired a “so called driller” to drill them a borehole. He did not have a very strong rig and he did not charge a lot. He drilled down to his limit and had barely hit water. The people talked him into drilling deeper. After he drilled a little deeper he told them that his mud pump was not powerful enough to pump the mud out of the hole so he installed the casing and screen into the drilling mud and left. Long story short, they went through several “so called drillers” before they finally agreed to work with the LCCN WASH program and got the pump working. It did not last long as the pump stand and casing are misaligned and people pump on it from morning into the night.Today they told us that they hired someone from Jalingo in Taraba State to come and repair the pump and it is broken again. Adams and I agree that the rod is probably disconnected from the piston. I am going to figure the cost to put a small borehole pump into the casing that does not matter if it is misaligned. To give them the same amount of water flow as the hand pump which as about all this borehole will produce will probably be the smallest borehole pump made. Since the pump will probably cycle on and off as the water level drops it would waste a lot of expensive fuel to use a generator. A small solar system will make more sense for a daily operating costs. 

We were not in the area today to fix the pump.The community is interested in a second borehole and we had brought a geologist from the Upper Benue River Authority to do the geophysical survey to find a good spot for the new borehole. It had rained the night before and remained overcast to the weather was nice for working. Julius started by dowsing the area using two wires. If they opened up the water was getting less and if they closed the water was increasing. He first worked the area around the Sabon Gari church and decided on a spot. We set his equipment to do a resistance survey to determine the apparent depth to the water. 

I was first introduced to dowsing in the mid 1980’s when investigating a grain elevator explosion in southwest Minnesota. A local farmer informed me that there were old drain tiles running from the building that exploded out to a creek about a mile away. He grabbed some wire from the rubble and bent them into an L shape and proceeded to dowse for the pipe. He marked where the pipe was. I thanked him. Later that evening I took the wires and crossed back and forth where he said the pipe was and got the same reactions. I figured it was just my subconscious controlling the wires where the farmer had shown me. I continued doing cross sections out into the fields and found the outlet of the pipe about a mile away. Since then I have dowsed for wires and pipes, but I have never tried it for water. For me there was water everywhere and some areas where they diverged indicating less water. I would rather review aerial photographs and geological maps. But in built up areas like this the land has been disturbed and geological features have been obscured. I have an open mind. I still think there are some clues your mind is seeing in the area that makes you manipulate the wires.

After the finished the resistance test at the church site, Julius set out around the community looking for more areas that his wires told him there was water. He did not get much of an indication and decided on the second test area after about a half hour of walking around the area. This spot happened to be near the house of the man that was showing him around. This has already created talk about “why at his house. Why not at my house”. The second site is up hill and in from the dirt road that leads through the area. Its main advantage is that it is up hill. So when you walk to the site with your empty containers you are walking uphill and then downhill with the full containers. Most of the community will not have to walk uphill with their full water containers.The church site will be downhill for almost the whole community. 

After we finished the resistance surveys of both sites Julius choose we were invited by the Water Committee Treasurer to go to Twin Sisters Restaurant for lunch. They had four tables inside and two on the outside. The twin sisters are the Treasurer's sisters. I had my regular, rice with soup (red sauce, spicey, with two pieces of beef). Today they just had rice or pounded rice and soup.The area behind the sisters in where the food is dished up. I think the actual cooking is done out the behind the building where they can hand the food in through the window.

 As I was typing this into the computer, I was at my desk in the middle of the room under the ceiling fan. A young boy maybe 10 years old yelled from the street "White Man, How are you?" He was more polite than most of the street kids that yell through the fence. I noticed he was selling sachets of cool water. So I walked out to the fence and bought two sachets from him. The water in my frig was colder. so I put his in to cool down and went back to work.

Timbukum Another Government Project That Does Not Work

Timbukum

Our day started early. Yakubu Bulama showed up at a little after 6 AM. He is driving his old Toyota van today. The Health Board is using the Hi-Lux to visit one of the Community Based Public Health Care (CBPHC) sites. They are doing community surveys of the villages around the Bingia and need the four wheel drive truck. We will be headed south to the village of Timbukum. It will be several hours of pothole dodging. The section of road from Mayo Belwa to Ganye is one of the worst in Adamawa. Not as bad as the Lamurda road but much longer. Each way will be nearly 4 hours. Our original plan was to drive down the night before, stop at Dashen Bible College to look at their pump problem. Stay overnight in Ganye and meet with the Bishop in the morning before driving the last hour down to Timbukum. We found out that the Bible College did not have a problem and the Bishop was going to Yola for a meeting. So we decided to make it a long day trip.

Roadside Food Stand

I was up at 5 to shower and make some breakfast. We stopped and got gas, cool water to drink and some engine coolant at a station on the edge of Yola and headed out of town. Yakubu and Adams had not had breakfast. So we stopped at the first village outside of Yola to buy some roadside eats. The lady had fried yams, fried sweat potatoes and bean cakes. We got a small bag of the combination of all three and headed on. Yams here are a large tubular without a lot of taste. 

Yakubu’s van is 16 years old. As you go up hill the temperature rises and as you go down is lowers. We had to stop once on the way there and once on the way back to let it cool down. The mechanics here do not believe in thermostats. Most vehicles have had them removed. They also do not add coolant just straight water. I told Yakubu that the coolant helps the radiator from boiling over. He had purchased some coolant when we stopped for fuel. He added it to the radiator when we stopped the first time. The engine is behind the front seat and the radiator and fan is between the driver and passenger seats

 We passed the Bonotem Bishop in Jada as we were finishing the bad part of the road and he was headed into it. We arrived in Timbukum around 10:15. I went to look at the old pump that was slow to recharge back in 2008 when I last visited here and found it was still slower now. When you stop pumping you can hear the water leaking out of the riser pipes. Yakubu could not find the church chairman but a white man walking around the village drew a crowd. We spent about a half hour talking to the people about the hand pump. Then we got directions to get to the solar powered borehole.

Timbukum is a village north of Toungo in the south end of Adamawa State. At the request of the local church through the Bonotem Bishop the village has requested assistance in finding out why the Millennium Development Goal solar powered borehole and tank does not deliver water. This is one of the government projects that the village did not know about until the driller showed up and started drilling. The borehole, tank and tap stand are located at the government Dispensary. If you click on the picture you will get a larger picture you can see better.

Upon arrival at the pump we could hear the distinctive sound of the pump trying to pump water and air. The people present reported that in the morning they get one or two buckets of water then it only drips all day. It appears that the pump is set at the water table rather than below. We found water at 70 feet with the water level indicator. We shut down the pump and waited a half hour. There was no significant recharge. Also, indicating the pump is set at the top of the water. We decided to pull the pump but discovered that the power cable does not have any slack. It enters the borehole through the cap and is cemented into the concrete base. To lift the cap and pull or add pipes to the pump will require the cable to be cut and additional cable spliced on. We did not have the additional cable or tools to do this work. We could not determine the depth of the borehole without removing the pump.

After listening to the pump I climbed the tower to see how the solar panels were connected to the pump. The wiring job was very professional, with all loose wires secured. The circuit breaker that I turned off at the top of the tank had never been switched off since it was installed in 2008. After switching off the pump I laid under the solar panels waiting to see if there was any recharge. After they determined that there was no significant recharge we decided to pull the pump. As I swung around to climb down the steel ladder I smashed my right shin on something. I climbed on down and then we discovered that we could not pull the pump. So I went back up to turn the pump back on. It did not want to turn back on. Yakubu climbed up with a screw driver and I disassembled the case and cleaned out are the wasp nests and mud wasps nests and still could not get the circuit breaker to stay in the on position. I removed one of the two plastic bars that were holding the two switches together and pushed as hard as I could and it finally clicked into position. We will be leaving with the pump working the same as before. No worse and no better.

Best Case: The best case for this project is that the borehole was drilled to over 100 feet deep and the pump can be lowered into the water by three or more pipe lengths (30 or more feet). Lowering the pump will provide more water above the pump to be pulled into the pump. The pump will draw the water down in the borehole causing the water in the ground to flow into the borehole. Pumps will operate best at a minimum of 3 pipes under the water table in an aquifer that is quick to recharge. In slower recharging aquifers the pump will need to be much deeper. There are indications from the other water sources in the area that this will be a slower recharging aquifer. If the pump can be lowered then a water level probe needs to be added to the pump to switch the pump off when the water level starts to reach the inlet to the pump. This will create a non continuous flow but will increase the pump life. Pumping air is not good for a pump.

Worst Case: The borehole is drilled to less than 100 feet and less than three pipes can be added. A new borehole will need to be drilled. The first step in this process will be to perform a geophysical survey of the area to determine the apparent depth to water and the thickness of the water. Unfortunately, the location of the tank tends to restrict the location of the borehole to a reasonable distance to the tank for pumping and electrical wiring. Based on a short review of the general geology of the area it is anticipated that the borehole will be drilled through a shallow layer of overburden and into weathered and hopefully fractured basalt or other volcanic formation. The area is shown on some maps as recent volcanic activity. Recent in geological time scale. If this is true than it is possible that below the volcanic formation can be layers of formations which could be contain significant water. Drilling through the assumed volcanic layer will be quite costly. The geophysical survey will provide a more accurate estimation of the hydrogeology of the area. Since the village never requested or were not consulted about the borehole they do not feel it is their borehole. They may not be willing to spend much money to fix the situation.

We left Timbukum around 1 pm and headed to Dashen Bible College. Earlier as we had crossed a bridge we saw some boys in the middle of the walkway of the bridge selling mangos. We stopped and bought mangos. The were selling them at 10 Naira each. Fresh and tree ripened. We each washed one off and eat as we drove to the Bible College.

Dashen Bible College provides education to Evangelist and Catechists and also has a Secondary School. They have posted some of the highest scores on their various levels of exams in all of Adamawa. Their PTA had raised money and drilled a borehole on the school grounds. They had not consulted with the WASH Team and hired a driller without doing any geophysical survey. The borehole was successful but they had some problems with the pump. Back in February the principal had asked Gary of Global Health Ministries for some help. This was the first chance that the WASH Team had to come down this way. In the mean time the pump had been repaired. 

 

After a short visit we headed back towards Jada. We drove around Jada looking for a place to eat. None of the spots we found looked to clean. We headed back out of town when I spotted a small spot with cooking pots out front. It was a two table restaurant. The kitchen is at entrance. That is Yakubu's van out parked outside. They had pounded rice with sauce or vegetables. I had the red sauce with a couple bits of beef and a almost cool Pepsi. The even had spoons, forks and knives in a basket at the table. We were not in Numan. (That is a story from last years blog. Eating at a restaurant in Numan we asked for a spoon and knife and the waitress said “This is Numan.” )

 We also had time to stop in Mayo Belwa to see the pump that we have been working with for the last three years. It appears to have a broken rod. There is a rather long story about this pump, bad driller, followed by bad driller, and then the water committee chairman making off with the funds. The use is so heavy on the pump that it tends to break a lot. There may be an alignment problem The second bad driller had trouble aligning the pump over the borehole and ended up taking a cutting torch to the tank to make it fit. Then kids through rocks through the opening and jammed the pump. This year the rod is broken. I would not be surprised to find debris in the pump again. I think they need a new tank and head. The profits from the 2008 fair trade sale at Mount Calvary were used to support this project. Part of the stolen money.

In all we had a successful day. I am fairly confident of our findings in Timbukum and it is now three days later and I have not gotten sick from the roadside meals. I no longer limp and the shin only hurts when I twist the knee.

Ngbekendiwe - New Water Source Proposal

Ngbekendiwe: Try to pronounce that three times fast.  The "Ng" is mostly silent. With my level of hearing loss it is silent. The name means “place where grains are stored”. The village asked the Todi Diocese for assistance and the Bishop referred the project to the Health Board WASH Program. This was the WASH Team’s third trip to the village (my first). The WASH Program emphasizes community participation. In many past projects the participation was limited to contributing a little labor and collect sands and gravels for the concrete. The WASH team has learned that this limited participation did not produce community ownership. Now they are requiring a minimum of 10% up-front cash. People get serious when Naira is involved. But they have never been asked by a church or the government to participate in this way. This is something new to them. The WASH Team tries to emphasize that they are not here to give a gift to the village but to help the village to build create a sustainable project that they will own and operate.

Small Store near the LCCN Church.

This is not a very poor village, but not a rich village either. It has small stores and other local conveniences.  The village structures are mostly made of mud brick and thatch. There are a scattering of concrete block buildings with aluminum roofs. It is a clean and well kept village. There are several clay pits in the village for making mud bricks. This will be mosquito breeding grounds in the rainy season. The village lies above a tributary to the Benue River. This whole area was alluvial at one time. The village is a linear village along a small ridge line.

Dry borehole. Tank and all pipes have been removed.

The government has sent “so called driller” to install boreholes in the village. Mostly, around election time. Of the four that they told us about only one ever produced any water and the water is “salty”. Here salty means hard not necessarily tasting like table salt. Many time the driller can go deeper and get better tasting water. The trouble is that here they drill will not seal the boring between upper layer of “salty” and lower layer of water. 

Ngbekendiwe was about 1.5 kilometers long in this 2007 Google Earth Image.

 At today’s meeting the WASH Team met with the Chairman (also the local Imam), the Secretary and one committee member of the local water committee and the pastor of the local church. The other four members could not be found. They reported that they have formed subcommittees in different wards of the village and they have gone to the Local Government and received the proper papers to be a recognized social agency and can now open a bank account. They did not know how much money has been committed to do the project. Yakubu encouraged them to get the subcommittees working and collect the money needed to meet the 10% minimum. Open an account at the nearest bank and deposit the money collected. Soon the rains will start and they will be busy planting their fields. 

Yakubu , Adams, Chairman, Secretary , Committee Member and the Pastor

In earlier meetings they had been told several options creating a new water source. They had chosen to have a motorized borehole with a generator, pump, tank and a distribution system. The cost estimates they were given were general in nature. Specific, design and detailed cost estimating have not been done. I currently, have my doubts that this project will happen this dry season. The road to the village looks like a stream bed in many places. If they get the funds together by the end of April the new borehole could be drilled before the main part of the rainy season begins in June.

Back to Banjiram

Goggle Earth Image of Banjiram and the location of the taps. At the end of the blog is a view wider view.

My idea of by-passing the tank and pressurizing the water line to get water to flow at the remote taps was a little off base We went back to Banjiram last week to check out some details. One of the main items was to find the specifics of the pump data from the pump box. The box is gone. Someone had a use for it so it was taken out of the storage room and the paperwork is gone. Another was to check the actual distances the water had to travel. I was told 75 meter to a junction and then 150 meters in two directions to the remote tap stands. Actually it is 160 meters and 200 meters. These lengths make my idea not feasible except if you wanted to take 10 minutes to fill a 20 liter container.

Tank outlet configuration

 The next thing was to see what was buried underground. Once we had finished digging up the connection of the tank outlet to the remote taps Yukubu showed me the picture he took when they buried them. This is the pipe coming down from the tank outlet. The 2 inch pipe has two elbows to get around the foundation and underground it has a Tee. The right side stays at  2 inches and only goes about 6 meters where it goes into the School Tap Stand.

School Tap Stand with school in background

The school does not want the people from the town coming to the school to fetch water. They have allowed their borehole and tank to be used to supply more people in the village but they built two remote tap stands closer to the homes.

The picture on the left is the North Tap Stand and on the right is the South Tap Stand. You can see the school and the tank in the background of the North Tap Stand. Notice there are pots only lined up at the end two taps at the North and a well worn path to the school. The South Tap Stand has  buckets at all of the taps but mostly on the north end where the water comes in. The North Tap Stand is actually up hill from the school and the south is slightly down hill. We did an experiment and turned off all the taps at the School Tap Stand and we opened the tank. All the taps at the South got water. Only a little water on the North. Based on my hand level I am guessing the North Tap Stand is 2.5 meters higher than the borehole.

The two remote taps stands get little flow when the school tap stand is open. Resulting in people walking to the school every afternoon to fetch water when the tank is opened at 3:30.

I spent much of the weekend and Monday doing manual mathematical modeling of the piping system trying to come up with a solution that will work. There are also village politics involved. My best solution would not work because the farmer who owns the field will only allow one trench through his field. He had to be convinced to even allow one. He has a tractor plow his field. The plastic pipe will not withstand a plow hit.

Here is the solution I am currently proposing. We will still use a new pipe to by-pass the tank and pressurize the pipes with the pump. This should add up to 2 more meters of water pressure. But the 2 1/2 inch by-pass pipe will now continue down the trench along side the existing 1 1/2 inch pipe and go all the way to the north end of the North Tap Stand and connect there. In my models this solution started to work at a 2 inch pipe. But there are several unknowns that I could not put into the model. The exact elevations is one and the capabilities of the pump and pump controller. This was the first time since college I have run mathematical models by hand. Fortunately, I found a website that would calculate pressure drops for me. I several liters of fuel in my little generator while doing it. I ran the calculations for around 10 different combinations of pipes. If someone like me shows up in the future and sees the way this is piped, they will wonder "What kinds of drugs was the this guy on, when he decided to run the pipes like this?".

Just tot he south of this Google Earth Image is the dry river bed where much of the town gets its water by digging.