Mali Water Pump Project

Before heading to the village, we went to Air France so Sam and Jason could get early check-in. We were eager to get to the village because the drilling would be finished this afternoon. When we arrived at the village they had already drilled to 58 meters. At 52 meters, a small water pocket was hit and because the rock they were drilling through at that point was fractured granite, we were very hopeful to hit a bigger source of water, one large enough to sustain a water pump. However, after the water pocket the rock formation changed back to hard rock.

We began our day by taking Asha and Dr. Carter's luggage to the Air France terminal in downtown Bamako. The Bamako airport gets very hectic, so Air France has their passengers check their luggage earlier in the day, so they don't have to do it at the airport. Once we actually got to the village, we finished installing the see-saw, now that the cement had hardened and the paint had dried over night. When the see-saw was finished, all of the kids wanted to play on it at once, so we finally got them in two lines, and every ten seconds they would switch to the next set of kids.

Today we worked in the village on smaller side projects while the surveyor surveyed the new site. We assembled seesaw hardware and supports and poured the cement to anchor them in the ground. We also painted the seesaw board red, and we will attach it to the supports tomorrow. Soon the children will have a new toy to play with!

Unfortunately, we awoke to the news that the drilling team did not hit water at the indicated depth of 70 meters. They drilled to 72 meters and decided to stop. The rock was very hard and not “giving” as they put it. The rock would give, break, and would not be difficult to drill through if we were going to hit water. Therefore, the drilling ceased and this morning we met with the owner of the drilling company, looked at all of our options, and created a new plan.

Today the team finally began drilling. When we arrived at the village this morning, we began removing all of the material from the storage unit and moving it to the drill site. We ended up loading about 350 feet of small steel piping, 350 feet of large steel piping, the pump, and all of the linkage system including a 13 foot I-beam. After we loaded it all onto our full sized van, we returned to bring the wood box used to store all the materials. Getting the 4'x4'x18' box onto the top of the van was quite a process, but we finally got it up there and to the drill site.

We think this was about his eleventh lollipop!

Today we woke up and got ready for church...and waited. And waited. And waited. Our ride to church was 2.5 hours late. Patience is definitely a virtue in west Africa!

The day started with a meeting with Jean, the representative from the drilling company. Later the night before we found out the drilling would not begin on Saturday, so Jean came over a little after 9:00 a.m. to talk with us. He told us they could not begin the drilling because they were having a small mechanical problem that would be fixed later that day. However, this was not the main reason they would not start. The main reason was they had not received the money. We guaranteed him the money would be there and offered a cash advance in good faith.

Since the drilling company is unable to bring their equipment to the village to start the work until Saturday, we decided to be tourists for the day. First, we went to the National Museum of Mali. They have an area where many artifacts are displayed, an area showing the different textiles of Mali through the years, and also replicas of mosques. This is also the first time some of us have seen grass in Mali! Then we went to Amadines for lunch. It is a restaurant that not only has pizza, but has ice cream too! At over 100 degrees outside, any ice cream is delicious.

Jason, Asha, and Pete (one of the people who runs the misssion house) went to two different villages today. Asha had raised money and school supplies from her work to donate to a school in N'Darala, one of the villages that Pete visits frequently. In the first village, Pete had to change the bandages on a man that was involved in a motorcycle accident, but wasn't properly taken care of. After he took the bandages off and gave us a warning we were able to see his leg.