Mama Oliver helping a little with the digging.
The urgency of getting the first well drilled and installing a pump has been gently pressing in on me.
We loaded up the camping equipment and the digging equipment, with a new 500 litre tank filled with water, and headed out to Ruhatwe.
A roadway had been cleared several months ago to mark the edge of the church property, but it had overgrown so we had to slash the regrowth down again and look for sharp objects which could destroy our tyres.
We found a suitable spot for the tent and soon Annine and Andrieka were adding the finishing touches to our campsite.
I got the drilling equipment together and started digging.
The dry season presents a tough challenge for hand digging and I soon discovered that my digging head needed improvement. The Baptist Method of digging that we are employing uses water to mix the clay into a runny soup, and a valve inside the digging head helps lift the mixture to the top where it gets dumped outside the well. The clay settles out and the water flows back into the hole.
We stayed for two days but only managed to get down to 5 feet.
On the next trip I went alone with a modified dilling head and left Annine and Andrieka at home so that their schooling schedule wouldn't be disrupted.
We made good progress until about 12 feet where we began to encounter some fine gravel. At 14 feet we had to stop because the gravel was becoming too much for the bit and kept jamming the valve.
The drilling head.
I will get back to the drawing board to see what can be done to make a bit for overcoming the challenge of the gravel.
This will be shared in the next post...
Renewed Urgency
In June we lost a very dear friend. Kitu had been battling with illness for several months. We saw him occasionally at the marketplace and still made use of his services as a Bajaji driver. Andrieka was especially fond of riding up front and chatting non stop until we got to our destination. We were on our way to help a young student with housing challenges when we found a very large crowd gathered outside Kitu's house.
We learnt that he had passed away and
everyone had come to pay their respects to the family.
His passing has driven us to take bolder steps in reaching out to so many who are in need of salvation.
The water project has this focus as its core value. My prayer is that we may not only dig holes in the ground for water, but that we will dig deep into the hearts of people so that they can be filled with the Living Water.
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