June 14, 2016
I wanted to start with “And one is done!” but here in Malawi nothing is taken for granted and nothing is programmable. After a wake up call at 7, with Agostino and Kamamba we immediately went to the village of Majawa where the auger was waiting for us to start the work. Just enough time to take a tour of the village and realize the real need of the well. Currently the 55 families who live there have two alternatives to get water: to walk about 2.5 km on a road that even with the jeep from bother there are many ups and downs or at about 800m there is a river from the water unwatchable (see photo). Typically they choose the second one … The auger immediately got to work and, after about three hours of excavation, luck seemed to wink at us: soft ground, almost immediately sandy and wet. In Malawi this means one thing: Masi or… water!
Not even the time to be happy that the problems immediately arrived, in order: rock. Stop everything, change tip and start again. A lost hour.
Broken the rock we found the water, hurra! We therefore started to drop the pipes as we had already done last year but after a while … everything collapses! I found that soft ground has this little side effect … The initial part of the hole, the deepest part, has collapsed.
We therefore had to pick up the pipes, which in the meantime we had glued, sawing them. It was then necessary to open the hole with a larger probe but by now it had become dark and there was no more time. We took the probe and looked for a welder who “added” rods to the tip to enlarge it. It does not take long to start soldering that, as often happens here, the current goes out across the country. Every other day. Today was yes. Nothing, today unlucky day, tomorrow will be better by force, except for the alarm clock at 6 to go to the welder…. good night!