Garaha Larh (10°24'30.55"N,12°50'49.23"E)
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| Map Jimeta to Garaha Larh Click to Enlarge |
Garaha is a relatively large village about 30 minutes into
the bush from Hong. Hong is a little
under a 2 hour drive from Jimeta depending on how many military or police check
points you hit. A Larh in the Kilba language is the place in the bush where
they store their grain before thrashing it and bring back to the village. A
village has grown up at Garaha’s Lahr and they have named it Garaha Larh.
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| Click to enlarge |
We visited Garaha Larh last year when we surveyed the town
and talked with the village elders about the LCCN WASH Program (Lutheran Church
of Christ in Nigeria Water and Sanitation / Hygiene Program). They had two
drilled boreholes. One never worked but had a good sign congratulating all
agencies and contractors involved in drilling it. I wonder what the Honorable Haskee Hananiya would think if he knew it did not work.The other borehole worked but only
during the wet season and some of the dry. They had several hand dug wells most
are also seasonal. There is a dry stream less than 1/2 kilometer from the village where they dig holes in the sand in the low areas and scoop out the muddy water that collects. These are what I classify as traditional sources.
Since our initial visit last year Bulama has made several
more visits. Garaha Larh has formed a water committee and had collected enough
money to use matching funds from Global Health Ministries (GHM) to drill a
borehole and install a pump. The drill hired by the LCCN WASH Program had a
break in his schedule and drilled the borehole over the weekend. They drilled
through a foot of topsoil into hardpan. After hitting water they drilled an
additional 10 meters and ended about 1 ½ meters into the granite bedrock.
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| Locations of new and repaired boreholes. |
While they were drilling the villagers told them about the
borehole that never worked. The previous “so called” driller used the mud rotary
drilling method. A bentonite clay (main ingredient in kitty litter) and
water drilling fluid is pumped into the borehole during the drilling. The thick
fluid carries the drill cutting to the surface. This form of drilling is good
in soft formations like clay or sandstone but very slow in granite. Most mud rotary driller will stop drilling at
bedrock. I doubt that many have a carbide bit to slowly drill in granite. The
driller hit over 10 meters of water and continued drilling until bedrock. But
he said he had a machinery problem and could not wash the drill mud out of the hole. He
installed the pump into the mud and told the people he would come back as soon
as his equipment was fixed. That was 3 years ago. It is the same story we heard in Mayo Belwa.
After our driller finished drilling the new borehole they
took their compressor to the non-functional borehole. They pulled up the
pipes and pump and found them to be caked with drilling mud. Then they took
their compressor and cleaned out the borehole.
On Monday, we knew that we had a newly drilled borehole and
a cleaned out borehole that had the blue pipe plastic pipe with a mud packed
cylinder and pipes. Adams had been at the drilling site but did not remember if the
cylinder was a Mark III of Mark II. On Tuesday, the framing wood for the platform was being
brought from WAKKA where a pump was recently installed back to Jimeta. Adams
and I went through the remaining tools to see what needed to be bought. (The
tools had been stored in my house. The house had been used by a group from the Health Services Board for meeting, the keys and been given out to have the house cleaned and small kids had been caught crawling through
the bars in the widows. One complete tool kit was missing and many of the other
tools from the second kit were gone. These tools have been here for several
years and were donated by my organization.)
Bulama and Adams went to the market
to buy the tools needed for the job. I did not go with them to avoid the Bature
price. Bature is white man or European depending on who defines the word. When
a Bature is involved with a purchase the price always goes up. Sometimes
double. I am pretty good at bargaining down. But not as good as Adams and
Buluma who start at a lower price level.
While they were out I collect the other tools and a
selection of replair parts to repair their cylinder if it was either a Mark II
or II. I decided to bring along the used Mark III cylinder that I bought last
year for the class on pump repair. Later that evening Bulama and I went to the
market to pick up the pump stand that was already purchased for this project.
The plan was that Adams, Gamekasa, Yakubu (the pump
repairman, Not Yakubu Bulama), would meet at my house at 7AM to load the truck and leave for
Garaha Larh. We would pick the Rubin up along the way. This is
an opportunity for the pump repairman we trained last year repair a Mark IV. Bulama cannot come due
to a conflict in schedule so I am driving and we have room for everyone. At
7:30 Adams, Yakubu and I had the truck packed but Gamekasa was not here yet. He
was coming from Numan. Normally, only a 45 minute drive. With the current
emergency law in force there are a series of check points between Numan and
Jimeta. He had not allowed enough time for the check points. The check points at the
Jimeta Gate and at the airport/Air Force Base are very long this time of the morning. We called him and he said he was at the Jimeta Gate. It was 8:30 before he
arrived.
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| From the truck it looks like the trail becomes a motorcycle trail. |
We traveled out of Jimeta North across the Benue River, past the
Federal University of Technology Yola (FUTY), through Song, Gombi, and on to Hong. After we crossed the Benue we stopped to pick up Rubin near the top of
the hill on the north side of the Benue. On our drive we were lucky that the
various police and military check points were not long. The longest was
probably around 10 minutes. After over 2 hours on the road we turn onto a rough
gravel road at Hong and head into the bush. It is not long that the gravel road
become dirt and the dirt road turned to bush road. After we went through the
town of Garaha we made a wrong turn somewhere. When we got to a wide dry
stream crossing where some school boys were on their way home, we stopped and
asked how to get Garaha Larh. They said there were two ways. Go back Garaha and
turn at the junction we missed or go on to their village and follow a bush
trail from their village to Garaha Larh. The piled into the back of the truck
and one in the cab and we headed down a bush road to their village. They showed
us the trail to Garaha Larh. We
continued down this motorcycle trail several kilometers until it made a sharp
turn down a steep bank to cross the dry stream bed. But at this location there
was a deep cut and thin passage. From where I stopped it looked like a motorcycle
only trail. We all got out and walked up to the turn. It was
passable. Everyone walked across and waited for me on the other side. It was a little tight but gravity help take me down.
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| Hole dug for Pump Stand to be concreted into. |
We arrived at Garaha Larh and went directly to the new borehole to unload the framing material.
Adams told me they had gravel packed it to the top. I asked why it was not
grouted and he told me the drillers did not have grouting in their contract. We
had not planned on grouting the borehole and had not brought enough cement to
make the concrete pump platform. The gravel pack had settled considerably. Before I could drop a tape down to measure the depth, the local mason started digging and plugged the area between the 4 inch casing and
the 8 inch boring.
I took a rebar and tried to break through the bridge of
soil. Others joined in but they were just compacting the soil bridge. It took a
while to explain what I was trying to do, that we were trying to remove or
knock the soil down the boring on top of the gravel pack. With the addition of
some water and a lot of pound and wriggling of re-bar we finally made progress.
When they started framed up the pad they realized that all of the
framing material was not brought back from Wakka. With a little local resources and compromise in the design they were able to make an acceptable pad frame.
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| Click image to enlarge |
When we were satisfied with the pad building work we left
Yakubu to supervise the installation of the pump base and the pad. The rest of
us went to the pump to see what we could do there. This is when I looked at my office worker
hands and saw that the skin was gone from the blisters that had formed on my little
and ring finger on my left hand and my little finger on my right hand. I had
not brought work gloves. They were pretty ugly the next morning.
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| Click image to enlarge and see the mud in the cylinder. |
The pump cylinder was fully packed with drilling mud. We
found the borehole be 6.5 meters deep to the static water level from the pump stand top and about 18.1 meters to the bottom of the hole. The "so called" driller had put in 18 meters of pipe. The
inlet to the pump cylinder would be at the bottom of the hole. The team cleaned
the cylinder, plunger and installed new seals in the plunger. The foot valve
seal was poor and we did not have a replacement. As we were reassembling the plunger
parts and tried to connect the foot valve to the plunger assembly we realized
that the screw threads that screw into the foot valve were missing from the
plunger assembly. I suggested we replace the complete cylinder with the used
but functional one I brought along. The
next problem was that we did not know it the “so called” driller had properly
cut the operating rod and the pump chain was stuck on the rod. With great
effort and the use of the 36 inch pipe wrench we sheared off the chain rod
making the chain useless. But when we tested the rod length it was about 6
inches short. At the top of the pump stroke the plunger would be out of the
cylinder.
I had brought a spare used chain on the trip. It was not
perfect but will work fine for a few years. While Rubin cut and threaded a
replacement rod, I went back to the new borehole to see how that was coming
along. When I got back they had finished and were ready to assemble the pump
head. I asked Rubin if he has set the foot valve and unscrewed the plunger
assembly from the foot valve. He assured me he had done it. In reality he had
set the foot valve and tightened the plunger to the foot valve. When they finished assembly and pumped we got
no water. The foot valve which is suppose to be fixed to the bottom of the
cylinder was still attached to the plunger and going up and down. We attempted
to set the foot valve but could not unscrew it from the plunger. In the attempt
to do it we disconnected the operating rod from the plunger. We then had to
pull the riser pipes to retrieve the plunger.
After a lot of looking like we did not know what we were
doing. We got the pump reassembled and pumping brown water. Some of the riser pipe had been coated inside with mud and had not been cleaned very well. We probably had disturbed
gravel pack (assuming that the “so called” driller had installed a gravel pack)
when installing, removing and re-installing the riser pipes. After a while the water was cleaner. By
the time we left the water was much clearer than the water from their hand dug
wells or from the holes they had been digging in the stream bed for water.
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| First water in 3 years. |
We only re-installed 5 of the 6 pipes that had originally
been installed. This should give a large 3 meter area below the pump for any
remaining sediment to settle. The pump inlet is still 9 meters below the static
water table. They should get long service before the sediment builds back up.
We went back to the new borehole and saw that it was completed and signed by the mason. Next week we will return with the pipe and the rest of the pump to complete the installation after the concrete has cured.
We made it out of the Bush to Hong as the sun set by the
more direct route than we took in. Somewhere along the way as we bounced
through ruts, gullys and holes the spare tire that was wired to the bottom of
the truck broke off. I man on a motorcycle came along side and tried to yell at
me to stop. I thought he wanted to pass so I gave him room. Then he
disappeared. The loud diesel engine made it impossible to hear. As we reached
Hong he was chasing us again with our tire tied to the back of his motorcycle. We gave him a 1000 Naira for his honesty.
We made it back to Yola by 8 pm. Dodging potholes and areas
where there is no pavement at all in the daylight is hard enough. Two hour of
night driving with miss aligned headlights, facing traffic with high beams on or
one light and some with no lights, people on bicycles, walking, or slow motor
cycles with up to four people and a broken fuel gauge with a bit of a tense
ride home. One trick I learned was to find someone driving about the same speed
and follow them so when they bounced or swerved I could slow down or avoid the pothole.
Some of their potholes here will fit a small car and can be up to a foot deep.
Global Health Ministries provided a trailer mounted air compressor to be y\used for cleaning a re-developing boreholes (drilled water wells). However, the Toyota Hilux truck they bought for the Pump Repair Team does not have a hitch. During my last trip we spent many hours trying to find a tow bar in Yola. Unlike Minnesota nobody have a boat that they trailer. There are no camping trailers and no trailer parks. There is no market for tow bars. We found that Toyota South Africa lists a tow bar as an accessory on its internet site but there is no information about the size or capacity.
The other major project I will be working on while in Nigeria will be the construction of the LCCN's first church for the Deaf. Construction started just before my last trip. The foundation, floors and walls are complete. I will be making a wire transfer of $9,360 to the Deaf Church Construction account before I leave. Along with what they have in their bank account, they should be enough to construct the roof. So far over $20,000 has been raised for this project from the United States and Denmark. I have coordinated grants totally $7,000 from the Mill Neck Foundation, the Mount Calvary Foundation, and the Evangelical Lutheran Deaf Association. Bread of Life Deaf Church has made two contributions and First Lutheran Church of Crystal had made two contributions. One member of Mount Calvary has donated $2,000 and a family donated $500. A Dioconal Minister who has traveled to Nigeria many times has raised $1,000 through her sales of products purchased from Women of Hope of Jos, Nigeria. I have even had one ELCA Pastor donate. Most most of my brothers, sister, cousins in-laws, friend of relatives and a few Facebook friends have donated. 
