Winging It, Out of Control

With the Chief

The other day I had some unexpected visitors stop by. The chief of Miltou, a village south of here that can take hours or days to get to depending on the road conditions, and his assistant to the chief and a local teacher of Arabic came to speak with me. I remember this area. We did 5 wells in the area. One was for a community of refugees who had fled fighting in Central African Republic. One of the women giving a testimony about how the well impacted her life said, “We have not been accepted by the local community here because we come from a different tribe. We have been neglected by everyone. No one has thought of us, but today God has remembered us.” I would like to note here that while I do believe that God was behind this, the local chief is the one who told us to give one of the bore holes to their community, and that was a generous gesture. I do acknowledge that the refugees have felt rejected, neglected, and alone. Their access to water is a huge encouragement to them.

So the chief and his entourage stopped by, and I braced myself for the usual requests for schools, hospitals, etc, and while we did discuss their need for medical facilities in the area, that was not what they came by for. “We just wanted to say thank you! We knew we needed to stop by your office and thank you for your help while we are in N’Djamena. There is a notable improvement in our lives after the water project. We have clean water to drink. It tastes good. Thank you!”

Me, Assistant to the Chief, Arabic Teacher, Nesie, Chief

A refugee woman from CAR in front her new pump

I have had people thank us before for our projects. I’ve had communities send letters and I’ve had visits. It’s not rare that it happens, but it isn’t the norm. So it is appreciated when it does. And it does encourage the team and me when we are struggling. But on the flip side, I had to go to visit a government office today, a task that I usually avoid when possible. As usual, said official started off nice, but he was looking for a chance to prove how powerful he was, trying to find a way to insult my colleague and make him nervous that we hadn’t followed rules the guy just made up on the spot. This type of thing often happens in government meetings. I tend to lose my temper internally, say something heated in return, then recognize that I have lost my temper and the continued presence of our work in Chad is becoming precarious, and then focus the rest of my attention on not rolling my eyes, fixing my smile in place and talking until the situation calms down, the guy gets annoyed by my stumbling French, and he ends the meeting.

Posing for Claire in my new culturally appropriate work outfit

I’m trying to focus on the people who are grateful for what we are doing and the fact that we are actually making a difference here even if we didn’t follow a “developmental” protocol made up by a government official so he could get more money from us. On the other hand, the people who are doing their jobs for financial and personal gain, while pretending to care about their countrymen are not unique to Chad. I know plenty of them in other countries, and I have admitted here that my motivations in doing my work are not entirely or even always mostly about helping others—I really do like the adventure of life out here. I’ve never pretended I’m making a big sacrifice for staying here, but I do think that the more that I know what the needs are and the more I know what helps and hurts, the less I want to do anything else. For me, it would be a waste of the weird excitement God has given me for living in the hard and/or dangerous places. It would be a waste of the hard-earned knowledge I’ve gained through stupid mistakes I’ve made.

Here is a stupid mistake I made recently: I got up at 3am to drive Leif to the airport. When I got home,
I noticed that I had been wearing two different shoes. A few hours later, I drove 100km to Dourbali.

Last week I spent a couple days in Dourbali with Pastor Moussa, face to face with some of my mistakes. He reminded me about how our water project started. From my side, I had gotten a call from the Head Office in the US giving me the go ahead for a few trial bore holes in Chad. I knew about Pastor Moussa and I had met him before and heard about his work. A Swiss missionary had also called me and mentioned I should look into doing a well for him if I could. He gave me his phone number. I had a certain number of wells that I could do, and his area fell in the region where we were working so I called him up. We agreed when I would go visit, and from my side, that was the beginning of our project with him.

Right after I smashed my phone, right before driving 100km to Dourbali

From Pastor Moussa’s side, he had recently moved to that area, with a heart to serve the nomad community in the area. He had the taxi driver drop him off on his land by a big tree. That was all that was there. The taxi driver thought he was crazy. He and his family started setting up camp. This was their new home. But it was not an easy place. The nearest water source was in town. They had to buy the water from local merchants. But they didn’t have a consistent source of income, so this was difficult.  One day he was at the end of his rope, begging God for help, begging Him to provide for the needs of his family, specifically water. And a few hours later, I called him. 

A photo from Pastor Moussa's Facebook of his family setting up camp their first day in Dourbali,
captioned simply "It takes courage to be a missionary."

There is much more to the story, including bits and pieces that I can’t really share on the Internet, but an important thing is that after we had done 12 wells in the area, I realized that we had several problems. All but 4 of these wells are in areas where the water table is quite low. This means that a hand pump will be too heavy to pump. Women and children will have to work in pairs to push the handle down and the pumps break down often because they are not made to work at water levels that deep. I did not realize this would be the case. I didn’t know I needed to ask that question. I’d been to the village. I’d seen hand pumps in other parts of the village that were working. I assumed it would be fine to do more, but I should have done more research to find that the reason most people get their water from the water merchants is that they have dug very deep bore holes and installed generator-powered pumps designed for these depths. But I just assumed they were a bunch of greedy jerks in it for a quick buck. I might still be right about that, but I could also be wrong. I’ve not actually spoken with them. I’ve never seen them around to talk to them. But I do know that a large number of people in the area, especially nomads, do not have the money to buy water. So they search for free options—easily breakable hand pumps and open ponds full of diseases.

Chatting with Victor, Pastor Moussa, and Benjamin about our project.
Victor is our indispensable solar pump expert who came in from Kenya to help us. 

Pastor Moussa's dog who loved me because I pet her and fed her some of my dinner.
I woke up in the middle of the night when I felt someone come and lie down by my bed.
In the morning I saw that it was the happy dog!

So we figured out a way to install solar-powered submersible pumps that will run for free on the powerful, nearly always present Chadian sun. But we had another problem: in Pastor Moussa’s pump and the pump nearest his house, there was a high iron content, making the water red and bad-tasting (health-wise it isn’t really a bit deal, but it does not encourage water consumption, which is important in a hot sweaty climate). That did not stop Leif from coming up with some ideas for filtration systems. We had a fun time looking up youtube videos of iron filtration systems and I read a few scholarly articles about oxidation of iron. Then people told me that if we had drilled to the deepest level where the merchants drilled, we would have hit the clean water without the iron contamination. And I was frustrated with myself again because they sounded so sure. And they are possibly right, but I started to pray about the water in that well.

Pastor Moussa on top of his water tower, smiling of course!

Fast-forward to this week when speaking with my solar pump installation team about the work in Dourbali. They showed me photos of the water at Pastor Moussa’s house running clear. Victor said, “There’s no more iron. The water tastes great.”

“What happened?” I said. “I thought the water was iron contaminated?” He said, “No, I think it was just a reaction with the galvanized pipes. But we had to remove them and install PVC pipes. Also, with solar pumps, there isn’t as much water just sitting in the hole reacting to the galvanized metal so with the PVC pipes and the solar pump, the water is now clean and iron-free.” So was it the water depth as the people said that caused the iron contamination or was it the galvanized pipes or was it something else? I don’t know. Not all the pumps had iron issues, but all of the pumps had galvanized pipes installed. But the water is clean and clear now. And I will check carefully for iron contamination in future projects because I read all those articles, and now I want to see if it’s possible to invent a low-cost filtration system that uses oxygen in the air to get rid of iron in the water and now I don’t get to/have to experiment in Dourbali.

The children at Pastor Moussa's house with the clean water!

The point that I am trying to make is that I am really screwing up here as I wing it. And if I were in this on my own, this whole thing would be a disaster. And these days as I’m realizing that I can’t do things on my own (and I never could even though I thought I could), I’m grateful that I’m not in control, and I’m not on my own. God had this plan for Dourbali way before I came into the picture. He led Pastor Moussa there. Pastor Moussa was praying for water. My “winging it” system was totally usable by God, thankfully. But now that I’m paying attention a bit more, it’s a lot more fun for me and a tiny bit less stressful. I can mess up small things, but the Big thing is going to go through no matter what I screw up. But it’s also good to learn from my mistakes—do more research before drilling!! Hanging out and having fun with people is great, but ask more and better questions!! When driving through mud, put the car in second gear and L2 and keep the acceleration steady. If the car gets stuck in 4WD, put it in reverse while pounding on the clutch and whispering bad words to yourself QUIETLY because people will sometimes ask you to translate English words you use that they’ve never heard before and that can be awkward.

What your window looks like after you drive through mud

What your face looks like while you're waiting for your colleagues to buy the watermelons already,
after you've had only a small amount of sleep two nights in a row and have driven all over the countryside.

Goats blocking our road! Can't go over them (too bad),
can't go through them, gonna have to herd them to one side
so you can go around them.

And now the Final Discussion. 

It’s toilet paper. Also it’s “new improved” so I guess the previous version of this toilet paper was just called “Discussion.” I’m also appreciating the lone camel silhouetted against the sunset. Possibly he is waiting for you to finish the Final Discussion so you can get back on and keep riding into said sunset…if your phone is charging and you need something to do in the bathroom, this toilet paper is for you.

Joe loves having company in the car when we are driving to work.
Denis and Jack are in from Uganda and Kenya to help us out in the office.
We are so grateful. We are loving us some East Africa here in Chad right now,
even if Denis and Jack say that I spoil Joe. Of course I do! Look at his face!