Drill Baby, Drill!

On Friday, Mohamed Ali, our drilling contractor arrived with his equipment and set up the drilling rig on the second borehole location which was expected to hold the greatest prospects for water. They began to drill immediately. Watching the drillers finally break ground was one of the most exciting and satisfying moments of the project thus far, and the whole team was in good spirits.

For most of the travel team, it was our first experience to witness a drilling process. As we arrived at our site on Friday morning, we saw the towering drilling rig surrounded by different types of rods, pipes, and other equipment that the drillers had brought. The drilling team was composed of 6 experienced men who had worked with other successful boreholes in the past. The rig used an air rotary drill that was powered by a diesel engine. They also needed to inject water into the drill to keep the drill bit cool or for certain types of rock. Every so often, the driller would release all of the debris from the hole, letting mud and rock spill out of the hole in a dramatic burst. Samples were taken from the debris every 2 meters to analyze what type of rock the drill bit was going through.

The drilling rig was new and still had a shiny coat of paint

Everyone from the nearby community, especially children had gathered to see the workers drilling. As the drilling commenced, the workers started collecting soil samples at different depth. We have so far drilled 92m deep. We hope to finish the drilling today and find water, in abundance, to serve the community with clean drinking water.

Although the drillers were doing good work, progress was severely delayed a number of times when the drillers ran out of water for drilling and had to wait for more. When they stopped drilling on Friday, they had gone down only to 18 m. Fortunately, some ground was made up when they were able to reach 98 m by the end of Saturday, the second day of drilling.

We continued to survey throughout the weekend while the drilling continued. By Saturday, we had accumulated a total of 53 households surveyed, which surpassed our target of 50 samples. This information will be valuable for establishing the water fee, the demand model, and to better understand the community we wish to serve.

Today, we hope to reach the target 160 m and find water.

Here is an album with pictures from the past two days.