Friday, July 29, 2016
They turn off the power at 8 AM
here at the Capitol. Unfortunately I had
just woken up. That means I got a good
sleep for once, but also means I had to get ready in very dim light. I thought I heard Jim in the shower, but it
was the rain that I was listening to. He
was at breakfast. So I hurriedly dressed,
and put my mirror up to the window while trying to put on makeup, knowing it
wouldn’t be very good. No matter, we’ll
just be driving around in the mud anyway.
Shortly thereafter I got what
they call here, ‘running tummy.’ I
thought about my meal last night that was supposed to be a chicken burger, but
they had put in it instead a flat piece of meat that tasted like a hot
dog. I thought at first that this might
have been the problem; then I remembered that Jim had the same problem last
night and that we had found in one of our ‘clean’ water bottles, some floating
debris—it almost looked like slices of white onion. So, I think we got our problem from the same
source. Jim had taken a Lomatil last
night and one again this morning, so he was okay. I took one but still felt a slight queasiness
and it was time to go. I decided to stay
back. It is hard enough to use a
‘toilet’ in the bush anyway, but for this I could not take a chance. So I made sandwiches for the team and sent
Jim off with instructions to be sure to take a picture of each well with his
phone camera. This gives us a good
record to go along with his notes. When they
left it was still raining.
All of this took so long that
their departure time of 9 AM ended up being closer to 10 AM. After a while you begin to adopt the African way—their African standard time is
worse than Mormon standard time—they are typically later than we are! While going to the NGO meeting the other day we
were a little late, but everyone else was even later. It began at least 30 minutes later than
scheduled.
While I was doing the
wash, the team was traveling to the wells in Kenema District that they are
re-training; they purposely went to those that were not working for whatever
reason, but there were not many of those, thankfully. This one is typical of other NGO’s. They come in and fix a broken well that we
constructed and fix it, most times for a small amount of money. Then they paint their sign on it as if they
had provided the well in the first place.
This does not make us happy!
The Internet service had become
so slow the last couple of days that I decided to add some time to my modem
that we had purchased years ago; back then they never had Internet here in
Kenema or in Bo so we had to go to an Internet café and there it took 30
minutes just to get our e-mail; we usually picked up bugs besides. So we bought
the portable modem. We’d apparently changed the chip to Kenya when we went
there a couple of years ago, so it didn’t work here. Happily, Amarachi’s brother specializes in
doing computer work for others, so she sent him here to help me. He bought the needed chips, the one for
Sierra Leone and put some time on it. It
will use up the time quickly since I will be working with pictures, but it will
work when the hotel Internet will not. I
tried to get her brother to give me a price for his time, but he refused. He knows all that we have done for his sister
and her family, but I hope to get someone to tell me what is fair to pay
him. He is now married and has a little
boy and is on his own and in his own place.
I was worried that the lack of
power would soon keep me from working on my computer but luckily city power
came on at times during the day, keeping things charged up. By mid-afternoon it
was pounding rain and I wondered how our travelers were faring on the muddy
roads.
While they were gone I was happy
to get a day to catch up on the wash. We
are too tired when we travel about and there isn’t much time to do everything
each evening. I spent an hour washing,
and the rest of the time using my blow dryer to move it along. It is too humid for things to dry well this
time of year. I also spent time doing
work on my computer. By the time they
returned I was still not quite done with everything.
This is a school
well. They assessed the children a
little bit of money to keep the well working.
The only problem was that the headmaster said that the teachers took it
for themselves. Others say that the
headmaster took it for himself. The
result was a broken well that they apparently are not going to fix.
When I joined Jim and
the Cobinah’s, Jonathan and Amarachi, I could tell that Amarachi was not
happy. That is because it was the day to
check on the wells that they knew were not working. They are in there re-training, and this can
be discouraging, to know that you are not always successful—no matter how much
they need it, they don’t care enough to take care of it. But the majority of these wells do work.
Some were so poorly
taken care of that weeds are growing in them.
That is why today (Saturday) was
such a great day. Jim wanted to see how
the Kenema City wells project had fared after all these years—these were
constructed in 2009. It was also the
first project where we had added hygiene training to our work. Besides the ones we saw, which were many,
there were others that they could tell us about so that we could just ask them
if they were working or not. Apparently
the water resources people check all wells in Kenema City and District every
three months so they know what is going on.
Almost every well we went to was
still working!! You can’t believe how wonderful it made us feel. Sometimes the concrete aprons were crumbling
or they would not be all that clean, or maybe the pump handle was a little
wobbly, but in almost every case they were still working and all of them had
obviously been repaired in the meantime, at least two times or more. I wanted to do a little happy dance. Sierra Leone is the most discouraging place
to work in, so this was a very pleasant surprise!
Among the old but
working wells, this one had a crumbling apron, but still had a fence around
it. Even though we care about the other
things, the most important thing is that they are still getting clean water out
of this well!
The only problem was that in 3
communities where our earlier security cages were not as good, the pump heads
had been stolen. Each of these wells was
working and providing water to large communities. That is why we hope Elder Carley will use
these as an area initiative to fix only the ones that were doing well before
the theft. But today was a wonderful
day. And the first look-see day was good
also since so many of those were also working.
Many of the wells go dry for 1-2 months during the dry season, but that
is not their fault. We are just so very,
very happy! We only saw one that was not
working because of a bad community.
I remembered many of the well
sites since I had driven the hygiene training team to each of these sites
myself. When we stopped briefly at one
well, they said a woman remembered me.
This was 7 years ago. What a
great day! If we fix the 3 that pumps
were stolen, we will have 80% working—this is amazing and a rare statistic for
any NGO after 7 years!
This well had been re-plastered
by the community!
This well was one that got its
pump stolen; hopefully we can replace it.
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