Well, well, well...

I blogged last year about some of the challenges we had with water at our compound and it seems that this year the problems continue. Yesterday we realised that there had been no water coming in from the city for two days and that our underground tanks were nearly empty.

It is not unusual for the water to be off but it usually comes back again fairly quickly (the city authorities seem better at keeping the water flowing than the electricity, which is frequently off for days at a time). There is a lot of road construction taking place in our neighbourhood and we have heard of others nearby who have lost their water supply as a result so it seems as if it was only a matter of time until it happened to us.

Fortunately (although it didn't seem like it at the time) we had noticed an underground leak and so had called in Silas the plumber to take a look. When we told him that we currently had no water he suggested we should put in a well and offered to do the work today. The price he was asking didn't seem unreasonable and he said it would all be done in a day. As this would not only solve our short-term problem but also be a long-term investment for the compound I gave him the go-ahead and he set off to organise the equipment and the labour.

At 9.00 a.m. this morning seven men arrived in a battered Peugeot pick-up and started work. It seems that to find water you need to have water and so they first dug a large pit and a trench leading to the place where the well will be. They then took water from the kid's swimming pool and poured it into these holes. The only piece of mechanical equipment they have is a pump through which they pass this water in order to create the required pressure for the drilling. However, they turn the drill by hand - four men passing it round in a circle at high speed, whilst another holds the water pipe and the other two keep shoveling away the dirt that is being removed.

It's a long, hard days work in the hot sun as they drill down 45 metres before inserting the pipes and attaching the pump that will bring the water up from underground.

I have been reminded of my first assignment with Medair, when our teams of water engineers spent months drilling for water in South Sudan. They worked in a number of villages, drilling deep into the ground but each time failing to find water. We were starting to think we would have to change our strategy and find a different way to bring clean water to these communities when we finally struck water. The villagers were so excited that they killed a cow in honour of the Medair team and held a big celebration.

I don't think there will be any cow-killing going on at MAF today when the workmen are finished but we will certainly be relieved to have the water flowing again.