Trip Summary

I was asked to write a Reader's Digest version of my last 2 1/2 months in Nigeria for a newsletter. I figured I would write a summary blog on my last day here. I am mostly packed and ready to head to the airport in about 5 hours. In all this was a successful trip. There were some frustrations. I had delayed my trip a few weeks so I would arrive after the Health Board had there two weeks of administrative training. Their training got delayed two weeks. At the end of the trip there was problems with transferring money to a driller and that delayed the drilling of the Waya borehole to the very end of the trip.

I should introduce myself for those who do not know me. I am Jay Johnson. I am a professional engineer. I am a retired Lt. Colonel from the US Army and Army Reserve. I have traveled extensively in my military and professional careers. Since 2006 I have been traveling to Nigeria annually. The first two trips were short two week visits with the Minneapolis Areas Synod / Global Health Ministries Public Health Evaluation Team. Starting in 2008 I visited by myself for visits of 6 week to 10 weeks. In 2008 my purpose was to start learning the people and culture. I visited all the Dioceses of the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria and over 100 villages. This is when I composed my three priorities for village water. 1. A village wants to have enough water to survive. 2. They want the water as close to their village as possible. 3. They want safe water.

The Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria is based out of Adamawa State. Adamawa is a rural state in the northeast part of Nigeria on the border with Cameroon. It is mostly savannah. Deforestation is almost complete except in a few preserves and hillsides too steep to farm. They have two seasons. Dry season is from October to June. Rainy season is from June to October. In the southern part of the state the rainy season is longer and in the northern area it is even shorter. In the capital Yola the annual rainfall is about the same as Minneapolis. Except it is concentrated in a short period of time. Farming is mainly a rainy season business. We have had several rainfalls and the countryside is turning green. The vacant farm fields are now busy with people with hoes, or cattle pulling plows and tractors plowing. The sorghum has sprouted in some areas and the maize is being planted. On weekends the people from the cities head to their villages and plant their crops.

My original purpose in coming to Nigeria was to start my retirement career as a non-denominational water, sanitation and development consultant. All of my trips have been centered on clean water and sanitation, but have included work in community development. The three main organizations I work with are the LCCN Health Board Water and Sanitation/Hygiene (WASH) Team, the LCCN Deaf Centre and Spring of Hope HIV/AIDS Support Group. Over 90 percent of my efforts are with clean water.

This trip had a slow start as my main contact Yakubu Bulama the Water Coordinator for the Health Board and Projects Coordinator for the LCCN was working with the Health Board Administrative training for the first two full weeks I was in the country. I spent these weeks setting household in the old mission house on the LCCN Compound and visiting with the Deaf Centre. The guards at the Cathedral Church in the adjoining compound called my house the "falling down house."

 My travels this 10 weeks has probably totaled around 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) by road in public transportation and in LCCN owned vehicles. This was the most dangerous part of my time. Many of the drivers are not licensed. Some went from riding bikes to driving cars. Others drove motorbikes and drive their cars the same way. Few know the rules of the road. When I got my license I paid an extra 1,500 Naira ($10) so I did not have to talk to the driving examiner. The manager just gave me my license and told me that was what the extra money was for. 

Water accomplishments: There are more accomplishments than disappointments. Some of the disappointments are actually accomplishments (or steps towards accomplishments.)  The main two accomplishments were fixing the water distribution system at Banjiram and drilling two productive boreholes at Waya and a third at Polchi. (Waya and Polchi are in Bauchi State and are mission villages of the LCCN churches in Jos, Plateau State). We also were able to go to Timbukum, in the southern part of Adamawa State to start the review of the non-functional solar powered borehole that the Nigerian Government with money from the US Government had installed and never worked. We found that the pump was installed at the very top of the water table. The next phase which will do done after I leave will be to determine if the borehole is deep enough to lower the pump to under the water. We be a preliminary survey of the broken water system at the Government Secondary School in Hong that the PTA had asked for our assistance. In Pella we got to review the large hand dug well near the LCCN Maternity Clinic to determine the possibility and estimated cost to clean out the bottom of the well, cover the well and add a hand or powered pump. This is a highly productive well that has had continuous water for several decades. The water was over 6 feet deep. The hardest part of this project will be to find pumps capable of de-watering the well so the well diggers can enter and remove the several decades of debris that has accumulated.

Disappointments: We performed a geophysical survey of two points in the community around the Sabon Gari B District Church on the edge of Mayo Belwa. The survey indicated that there was not a significant amount of groundwater for a productive borehole at the two locations surveyed. However, there are several productive motorized boreholes operating in the area. The next thing for the community to do is to go to the owners of the productive boreholes and find out how deep they are and if possible measure the static and dynamic water levels. Likewise, the geophysical survey of the area where they want to install a borehole at Gada Biyu in Bauchi State found very little indication of groundwater. We have asked the geologist if an improved hand dug well might be possible. This village may require some more innovative system for obtaining water during the dry season.

Other Work: LCCN Deaf Centre is moving towards being able to serve more of the Deaf Community of Adamawa. Last week the Yola Bishop requested that the paperwork for the Ordination of Ruth Ulea as the first deaf pastor in the LCCN be forwarded to the Jimeta District Church. By tradition a candidate's home district is suppose to call pastors.Ruth's home church is in Arewa Diocese in Hong. They have sat on her application because she does not serve their community and for some other reasons. The LCCN Constitution on specifies that a District Church will call a pastor. In Ruth's case she provides Sunday School and church services in Jimeta and several other locations in the Yola Diocese. We fixed most of the roof leaks in the patio area where Ruth holds Sunday Services and I bought 7 sets of jewelry and some bracelets that some of the women make to support the Centre. They normally sell them for 300 naira in the local market. I talked them into sell them to me for 500 naira. I will be putting them up for bid on a website for a minimum of $10 (1,570 naira) with the profits going back to the Centre. I have started work on some concept designs for improvements to the LCCN Deaf Centre and improvements to the location that Church services are held at until a new church can be located, designed, financed and built. I was able to attend a meeting of the Spring of Hope HIV/AIDS Support Group. A part of the group has been trained in soap making. They only need $400 to buy the molds and ingredients for their first batch of soap. They have test marketed some of the soaps in their home villages and found that market to be more viable than in the more competitive Yola market. I hope to raise the $400 as a micro-loan when I get back to the US. I have made progress on fixing my "falling down house". The main opening that rats and mosquitoes come in through has been screened. There are two major roof problems that are washing away some of the mud bricks in the kitchen wing that will need attention soon or the kitchen wing will fall down. For the first time in the last three trips I have been able to stop and shop at Women of Hope store in Jos. I will be leaving the country broke but I purchased 71,000 naira of their merchandise. It will be for sale at the Mount Calvary Annual Fair Trade Fair the first weekend of November. I have a great tan from the elbows down and since I have driving the last month the left arm is now balanced with my right arm.


I almost forgot. After three years of sitting in Gaye Guyton's living room. The boxes of books that were collected for the Remi Foundation, the books I collected for the Bronnum Lutheran Seminary and the LCCN Deaf Centre arrived in Jos and I picked them up Saturday when we were there for the Waya borehole drilling. They were all distributed on Monday. The Deaf Centre library went from about a dozen books to almost 100. They are considering allowing the students to take some of the books home to read overnight. I have been in locked libraries at schools. Most schools to not have a library at all. The Jimeta Cathedral school has a room in their new expansion designated for a library but does not have books. The culture of reading is very small. Most students only read text books and some have workbooks.

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.