All about water.

Water.  Such an important ingredient for life.  It seems that the last couple of months of my life have been dominated by thinking about water.  Fixing the community well.  Watering my trees and garden.  Struggling to get my water tanks filled.  Thinking about how to improve the well to get water to the community in a more convenient way.  Today I have hopes that some of those worries will be relieved for a little while.  Hopes, not certainties, but hope is enough for me at the moment. 

As for the well fixing, after some struggle I finally managed to get a technician to arrive very early on a Saturday morning to help us figure out how to fix the community well.  Fortunately, he managed to fish out the illusive part that had broken off into the bottom of it.  That meant a much easier and quicker fix than we had anticipated.  It required a bit of search for a welder in town and a few spots of welding on the bolt so it will not break again for a while.  That part at least.  Who knows what other things can go wrong.  Just to be sure, I again sourced some spares in Nairobi last week when I had a quick there and back again dash for some business and meetings.  If one can call a 1300 km round trip a dash.  Ha.  Anyway, the community well is in use again for now.  I have hope it will work a long time again.

In relation to community wells and hope, there is another wonderful development over this past week.  In July a certain project had come to drill another big community well with plans to put in an electric pump, a big tank and distribute water far and wide to parts of the underserved community areas around Ngurunit.  We were very happy and anticipating being able to improve the water system at the tourist camp also.  After reaching a depth of 150 meters and finding a lot of water, they suddenly stopped, pulled out all the pipes and left!  I asked why and was told that the prescribed depth was 160 meters and they had hit rock too hard to go deeper at 150, but that wasn’t deep enough as per their instructions so told to stop.  What craziness.  I thought 10 meters makes no difference if the water is there already.  Other people thought that way too and the matter was taken to the project management.   In the end, it was decided that 150 meters would work.  So last week the drilling rig returned and the hole is being redone and pipes returned.  Hope has returned that this big community well project will be a reality soon. 

Amidst all this worry of wells and finding water, on Saturday it finally rained significantly for the first time in months!!! Wow.  It was a beautiful sight.  I sat on the verandah for hours watching the rain roll in across the valley.  It rained steady all afternoon and through the night.  A gentle soaking rain.  It is a beginning.  It cleared up on Sunday but I still have hope of more rain.  The heat is building up and today clouds too are starting to form over the mountains again.  Praying this is the start of the short rainy season – early and hopefully for longer than usual, with more rain.  With the failure of the long rains this year, we could really use a good prolific rainy season now.  Let is rain.  Let it rain!!  Hope abounds….