The Birth of a Well

As usual, I am an early riser, and on the morning of our second day in the bush I awoke to the sound of metal clanging against metal (not what I was expecting—drums maybe, wild creatures maybe, but not metal on metal). I followed the noise and found that the drilling crew had driven back to civilization during the night, obtained the needed part for the drilling rig, and were now back in the village making the necessary repairs. In no time, they cranked the rig on and began drilling.

While it is possible to dig shallow wells by hand, there is a layer of bedrock that runs under the ground that prevents most hand dug wells from getting deep enough to where the larger water supplies are. Most hand dug wells in Burkina Faso are unable to produce water year round. Dry Tears goal is to be able to provide a year round source of water for a village.

We were all now standing about 50 feet away watching the drill do its thing when all of a sudden the workers started yelling and sure enough SPLOOSH!!!! Spraying 50-70 feet in the air came water!!! We were all running around whooping and hollering and high fiving all over the place. It was sooo exciting!

The disappointment of the previous night, at learning that the well was not finished, completely evaporated as we witnessed a Dry Tears well come to life. Honestly, it was much more fun to witness this than to have just pulled up and seen an already working well.

I expected to see beautiful crystal clear water come spewing out of the well but it was very muddy (actually it looked like more mud than water). I learned that once a well has hit water, they need to let it “bubble out” for about 4 hours which means get all of the mud out of the pipes as it was being dug.

Here is the great news, not only did we see a Dry Tears well come to life, but it was also a gusher. A gusher has so much water that it can serve not only as a well, but they can actually us use it for irrigation and possibly even a water tower type application.

Conner and Logan filmed some footage for their website www.drytears.org as the water continued to spray in the air behind them.

As we left, the pastors all came to send us off with a gift. It was a handmade ceremonial outfit that was beautiful (pants, shirt, and hat). We had not seen anyone wearing one as nice as this and it looked like it took a long time to make. Logan and Conner gave each of the pastors a Dry Tears bracelet and we were off.

It is simply amazing to see how something we take for granted (WATER) can have such a profound effect on a community. This is so much fun!

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