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[News Letters / Events ][Annual Report]By
Relief Network Ministries, Inc.
Updated December 13, 2010
The well projects listed are in priority order based on age of request, survey reports / difficulty of project, size or demographics of the community, and related logistic constraints.
Majority are projected to be deep wells ranging from 320 (IKWUANO #2) feet to about 750 feet (EGEDE).
The others in the Northern States are generally below 200 feet deep but in basement formations where small quantities of water are found in weathered rock fractures, and limited sandy formations.
Egede is near the 9th Mile corner North of Enugu
(coal city) and South of Nsukka in
The population is about 3500 + lots of livestock. The main occupation of Egede people is farming. Since it is in the Ajali / Nsukka formations, there is hardly good nearby surface water. The distance to nearest good water source – another bore hole is about 50 to 60 minutes of brisk walking, approximately 6 miles, which is much further for 70% of the population.
The Ajali formation, also called the false-bedded sandstone consists of a great thickness of friable, poorly sorted sandstone typically pure white in color but sometimes iron stained. The sandstone is soft and cross bedded. The sand grains are sub angular with sparse cement and whitish clay. Coarse and very coarse loosely cemented sands comprise 80% of the rock.
The community has on its own raise about $9000 towards a
water well project from taxing themselves and levying almost every adult in the
community to help raise the funds for a good estimated to cost a little over
$36,000 USD. As a result, RNM is
assisting with the fundraising campaign and believes it could be done a little
lower than this estimate now that our drilling rig has been equipped with
additional drill rods of 400 feet (to to go up to a depth of approx. 800 feet
deep). The aquifer is approx. 720 feet deep, and said to be part of the
saturated zone in the Ajali formation. This will need a big rig and a lot of
drilling chemicals to complete.
The Egede people have some things in common with
the Fulani – they rear animals& farm. Their children are allowed to attend
school more often than the Fulani in West Kogi State. In the two communities, it
is the daily chore of women and children to fetch water and fire wood for
cooking. Young girls are especially in danger of being raped by the men from
nearby communities as they come home from fetching water or fire wood,
especially if they don’t go in small groups at odd hours.
Spring protection at Otutolu - limited water source serving a whole village of over 1500 people plus the 230 at the Otutolu Orphanage of CERI
The water shortage or needs have been lamented by our co-laboring organization – Friends of the Poor based in California. We saw it ourselves when LWI and RNM visited the orphanage in October of 2009. Orphanage is in the suburb of Anyangba town in East Kogi State near Dekina, Benue State.
Photo left: shows our team with some orphans &
their care givers. Right: Water tank that collects rain water from the roof
gutters is their main supply of free water. They buy water to cope with the
daily demand.
The people living nearby the Orphanage at this Anyangba Community do not have access to potable water. They rely on rain water from their roofs, or water from the river / nearby streams. The river water is often polluted due to poor management and of course due to the inflow other natural contaminants. The cycle of poverty continues to have a toll on people here, particularly heavy on children and women who have lost husbands, or kids who have become orphans from one misfortune or the other. There is a general feeling of desperation among the people and no sense of security and stability to plan their life or provide for basic necessity such as water and food for themselves and their children. It is said that one out of four children dies before the age of 5. While others are disease ridden or so sickly due to lack of potable water. Women and children especially walk several miles daily in search of dirty, contaminated water for domestic uses from polluted streams, gutters / drainages or rivers. The nearby public school at the border with the Orphanage does not have access to any water that we could see.
Photo
of some orphan kids with their head care-giver / Manager, Sister Mary Joe Okoro
Umuelele & Umuegbe are two rural communities that are a spread out and split into 4 distinct segments and sandwiched between other communities due to fights over land ownerships. They are about 2.5 to 3 miles apart. Their populations are 3750, and 2500, respectively. The natives live in typical rural dwellings made out of mud or cement blocks and tatched roofs or zinc / corrugated metal sheets. In the dry season and during holidays, the population swells to over 5000 people in each of those villages as a result returning relatives coming back from the cities for holidays to the remote village. The chief occupation is cash-crop farming, palm-oil produce, raising livestock – goats, sheep, pigs and chickens. The livestock population is well over 3000 (estimated from the average of 6 per family for approx. 750 family units).
Many Umuelele & Umunnam men are also palm wine tapers and need water to dilute their wine daily before selling in the local markets. It is part of the impoverished greater Ogberuru Community of nearly 28,000 people.
During the Nigeria-Biafra Civil war (1967-1970), many of the IGBOs and other Sothern Nigeria ethnic groups living in Northern Nigeria and major Southern cities had to flee to rural villages to hide in bushes and forests for fear of uncivilized military terrorist activities. Major city municipal water systems in the South were destroyed by mostly Islamic leaders in the then Nigerian military by bomb attacks. Most Southern Nigeria cities were deserted. I was forced to live in this village with my parents (who were living in the city of Enugu prior to the civil war). While living in Umunneme, I joined other village kids to walk the nearly 5.5 miles each day about 3 to 4 times to bring water home for domestic purposes. Each trip would mean that I would carry a bucket or jerry can (plastic container) of water of about 25 to 50 liters, which is about 6.5 to 8 gallons on my head.
With the water, my mother, as other women in homes would be able to cook, soak cassava or corn for fermentation processing (to be used for our meals in the next 3 to 4 days); wash plates, a few small essential clothes she does not want us to wash in the stream or river, and use some for bathing for the adults. Children and many women often would bath in the same river / surface water we fetched from to take home for drinking and cooking. In many homes, the concept of boiling drinking water and cooling was too foreign and seen to consume a lot of firewood and time. As a result, most of the families just drank the water as it comes from the stream with all kinds of unknown contaminants or water borne diseases. Many people frequently fell ill, or suffer from diarrheal diseases, river blindness, tape worm infestation, etc. In the rainy season, many families relied on the water collected from roofs for drinking without any filtration. Others would directly gather water out of ponds by the road side and even use that for cleaning food, washing clothes, or bathing.
Left:
Ogberuru kids waiting for WASH lesson & candies.
Right: a Kolong child in Taraba
State with our hydrologist – Ademola Banjoko
Left:
Girl cleaning bread fruit for family’s dinner with erosion water in a run-off
gutter. Right: Girl fetching water
from excavated holes on dry river bed during dry season (5 months of no
rainfall).
In 2001, we decided to a deep hand-dug well and found some water at about 120 feet. It was a big blessing for the village for the time. It was equipped with a 1.5 HP submersible pump powered from a small generator. However, the water volume around the pump was not sufficient and the pump was not well screened and positioned by the diggers that helped us go down the hole at that depth. It required frequent pull-out, cleaning out of sand clogs around pump and other maintenance costs. It was virtually abandoned because of these difficulties for nearly 3 years now. As a result, we have started raising funds with the village and have so far come up with about 33% of what is necessary to do a new drilled well that is more sanitary and less maintenance trouble. Most of the beneficiary community members have had to revert back to walking miles looking for domestic water, or waiting for the rain to do laundry, etc. The need remains very pressing for this village community, especially for the elderly with no children to help them walk the miles for water.
Additional challenges include crossing two gulley erosion ravines with the water on your head, or straddled to the back to cross back into the village dwelling areas; climbing a hilly winding bush path if you fetched water from a spring in the lower Umunneme – Iheoma boundary, an alternate and better water source which is much further for 70% of the population.
Ikembara River – Ikeduru is a typical River /
Streams used for washing, drinking, bathing, etc.
Loren – LWI: doing a short WASH – water
sanitation and hygiene lecture to a group of High school kids in Aba, Abia State
where LWI-RNM drilled a well the previous year.
Market survey we’ve done shows that other drillers charge close to $25000.00 to drill a deep bore hole in these locations in order to avoid contaminant salt water in the area or iron water. Okagwe will then share its water with the other 9 villages that RNM has surveyed but have shown to not have any reasonable underground water within reach down to about 500 feet.
We have acquired both portable and heavy duty drilling equipment for use in drilling all kinds of wells in Nigeria. We estimate that it will cost us about 85% of that price to do the same bore hole with our own equipment and have it fitted with a small jet or submersible pump. In the future, we shall be looking for solar powered alternatives for running new community wells. The savings becomes very substantial when this approach is used to do 10 or more wells in several settlements or villages and schools.
Boys returning home from Nwangele River (3 miles
from home) at dusk with heavy jerry cans of water
Delah is one of 11 Northern Nigeria villages we visited and
identified as having acute water shortages, especially during the dry season.
Delah is on the rolling hills of Zing in Eastern part of Taraba State towards
Yola on the West boarder of Adamawa State. The population is approximately 2000
people. Their chief occupation is farming, and crafts. Many of their men train
at home or elsewhere in Nigeria to acquire skills for livelihood. In their
village, the majority of people live on less than $1 per day. Their dwellings as
in most other Northern villages are in thatch round houses. They have a few hand
dug wells that they also manage for water supply including the penalty they pay
for use of such open wells.
80% of children in many rural villages in
Northern Nigeria have worm infestation as evidenced by their distended abdomens.
The incidence is lower in the South due to better literacy levels. This is a
result of drinking contaminated water.
Mampalli Village in Zing, Taraba State is
typical of many village kindred dwellings in Northern Nigeria. They have several
round huts for families of 4 to 5 persons. The more well off families would have
about 2 or 3 such huts within a fenced compound shared with others. Bathrooms
are fenced off sections within the compound, usually attached to the thatch
fence. There are no toilets. That business is done anywhere in the nearby bush.
Their water source use to be mostly from the river and it’s dry bed in the dry
season. RNM-Living Water Int’l in collaboration with VALLEY SPRINGS PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH, ROSEVILLE, CALIFORNIA gave them a well in 2008.
Typical hand-dug wells in Northern Nigeria are
now being replaced by drilled wells that are sealed up and fitted with hand
pumps in most cases, like the 5 we did in Zing area of Taraba State in 2008.
Delah Village is one such village still in dare need of a new water well as they
still drink with their animals by digging up small pits on the dry river beds
during the dry seasons
The population of Akpu is approximately 10000 people with
at least 3000 animals. Akpu is in Orumba Local Government Area (LGA) of
The nearest surface water source is a river during the rainy season when the ravines / gullies overflow their banks. It becomes a small stream through out the dry season.They generally walk or travel a minimum of 3.5 to 5 miles daily to find some water for domestic purposes. Children bear the burden of fetch the water, and under no circumstances should a child come home to take his or her bath, or wash clothes at home. These chores must be done at the stream or river in order to conserve the water that has arrived in their homes.
A chat with some members of this community indicates they would be willing to contribute whatever they could to see that the project is done successfully.
By
mid-2007, we’ve had some 55 success stories including this school well. By end
of 2009, we’ve recorded approx. 150 successful projects in our 9 years of
operation.
We became aware of the water shortage that has plagued this village in 2004 and set out to raise some funds to assist them. Meanwhile, there was also other needs in Abia State that were so pressing that we turned attention to providing those short-term aids, which kept us from solving this problem for Egyam.
However, to date, $1000 USD has been raised to help with this project needing a balance of $4500 to complete. The project seeks to remove the broken mechanical Indian Mark II pump (installed by Unicef) and to replace it with a better manual pump such as the Vignette/ Foot pump or a deep well Jet pump capable of picking over 15 gallons / minute from a depth of up to 120 feet.
Location wise, Ikwuano is about 10 miles on Uzuakoli Road North West of Umuahia in the Central part of Abia State. It has a population of over 13500 people round the year with a swell during the holiday seasons.
Ikwuano has two elementary schools, a High School, and a Junior Secondary School for the population and its surrounding villages. The demand for clean water is high as can be seen from our first well completed in one of Ikwuano’s villages. People line up early in the morning and about 3 to 6 pm to fetch water. The high rise tower is filled from the well and a submersible pump to provide enough ration for the days use. The community is generally supposed to be accessed a small fee by their family units to help with the run and maintain of the generator, and future pump service. However, one of their indigenes living in the USA is underwriting that cost annually to see that all their villages get clean water for free. He does this through his linkage with the village head.
Photo
above:
Ikwuano stream – Small River is the village main source of water before the
first well – they 3 more high capacity wells for their population and schools
Umuduruagurushi is a mid-sized community in the Amaigbo,
part of Isu Local Government area of Imo State, with a population of over 34,000
people and no water supply system or good road infrastructure. Like Umunneme,
the population’s chief occupation is farming and palm produce related business.
The nearest water source is the
During the Nigerian Civil War, my wife and her parents
lived in this village after relocating from the city of
Dr. Samson Otuwa of the University Medical
Center in Las Vegas, volunteers at one of RNM’s medical outreach to treat river
blindness & other water-borne tropical diseases
Women and Children bear the brunt of fetching water and walking the miles bare-footed, causing feet to get calloused, frequent heads and neck injuries / pains, especially during the scotching heat of the harmattan / dry season. The road ways from this village to Nwangele is particularly dusty and dry during that period.
Through our fundraising efforts, we have helped raise about $1250 for this community to have a sanitary well for portable water. We have also gotten some of the locals to donate / pledge for the construction of the overhead water distribution tank and power supply plant house.
As soon as we have the desired matching funds raised, we plan to implement this project to save the people of Umuduruagurushi from their water scarcity.
As in
It is also not uncommon to see a lot of malnourished children with distended abdomens on skinny bodies with the rib cage clearly showing its contours. This is a sure sign of worm diseases – tape or hook worms for drinking contaminated water.
Can’t believe you still have to
look for water in the most cities in Nigeria – no plumbing or “dry plumbing”
syndrome because cities can’t manage their water supply schemes – Sunny helps 2
school kids ferry water home before they can be allowed to prepare for school
early one morning during one our trips to Nigeria.
Our very first well was hand dug / cemented down
the hole (Umunneme); Rt: Gully Erosion
(Hand dug wells are not very sanitary, and are
difficult to maintain as we have experienced)
The boreholes above will generally be drilled with mud or air rotary drilling method, reamed to the right hole diameter before casing the holes with 5” or 6” PVC Casing of appropriate gauge / pressure.
In addition, a well perforated screen would be added to the casing or go before it down the hole.
Thereafter, riser pipes are installed with the submersible pump at the appropriate level based on the dynamic / static water levels determined during well development.
The water drawn from the pump depth is then pushed into a ground level settling tank or tanks for upward pumping to higher elevated tanks, or for direct use and supply to ground spigots from where the beneficiaries fetch water.
Where major reticulation & distribution is imperative to longer distances away from the well site, it would then be mandatory to raise appropriate funds or get them matched by a government program that may consider assisting the community with the extra cost of this infrastructure. Typically, a 3000 to 4000 gallon overhead tank steel structure would need to be erected to build up pressure for gravity feed to the pipes that supply homes or access taps up to 3 miles away from the well with reasonable pressure head.
Given the support or assistance it seeks, Relief Network Ministries, Inc. believes it would be able to assist as many communities as possible get their desired water needs met and be able to improve their livelihood, farming, and raise more healthy children.
RNM has also devised a means of equipping local teams with low cost manual rigs in areas where wells can be drilled fairly inexpensively for about $2500 to $3500.
In these types of locations, the water table is often from 80 to 200 feet. The cost of such manual rigs will range from $6500 to about $8500 with a life expectancy of approximately 10 to 15 water wells before wear and tear takes a toll on its water swivel and drill rod sections, or cheap Taiwanese mud-pump. The team is usually made up of 4 young men employed to run the operation with their manual labor and low maintenance cost. Thus, for every new well they drill, they expect to earn between $300 to $500. Their work boosts the farming economy, improves life style and health, while providing an income to another set of 4 young adults. The same team will eventually be taught how to remove and repair damaged pumps, especially, mechanical pumps – many of which were installed by Unicef in many 3rd world countries with no one left to maintain or manage them shortly after they are installed and damages.
It is also a part of our sustainability model to drill a few private / commercial wells in order to raise funds for supporting field staff as well as for the maintenance of our big trucks / rig operations.
The formula for sustainability calls for 1 new free community / church or school project for every 2 or 3 private / commercial wells done by the big rig, or the small drilling teams using our leased out manual rotary rigs.
We have attached a few photos here that support the proposal and help tell the story, and
look forward to hearing from you soon on getting some assistance.
A
small water Delivery / Distribution with low or high Overhead Tank Assembly
Manual Rotary Drilling by water Jetting for Shallow wells (a low cost
alternative)
Our
first Big Rig – Schramm – T64, acquired in 2006, just getting commissioned in
Nigeria
Ebenezer I – our first truck mounted
heavy duty Rig acquired in 2006
Our
First Water Truck
Shaun actually went to Africa and down the river to fetch water for his in-laws in a village near Umuahia, Abia State
Plus do laundry…He has since helped drill a well
for this village near Umahia
Our first mechanical portable rig – the LS-200
This rig was commissioned in 2002 and assigned
to the Anglican Bishop’s Foundation, Owerri
–
Nigeria for wells under 200 feet
Completing our first LS-200 Rig Drilled Well in
Nigeria (June 2002)
First successful LS-200 drilled well at Uzi
Foundation’s Center / Primary School
Acknowledgements: On behalf of our Board of Directors, I wish to gratefully acknowledge with many thanks - all the sponsors, donors and volunteers / partners that make our work possible and easy.
Your gifts and prayers are deeply appreciated.
May the good Lord of Heaven keep you safe in the palm of His Hands. A. Sunny & Florence Ochi-Okorie for RNM, Inc.
www.relief-networks.org . Praise the Lord!