Rick Gregory, Writer

Translating Messages From Heads To Hearts

Ronald & Melba’s well

It’s Sunday morning and I’m pretty well recovered from 3 straight days of digging. The amount of work required to dig a hole to a depth of 165 feet or so is amazing. We dug through about 130 feet of hard clay and rock, along with another 35 feet or so of hard-packed sand. The hole is only about 3” wide at the bottom and maybe 6” – 8” at the top. The 1” diameter drill stem, filled with mud and water gets really heavy, especially once you get to a depth of over 100 feet. Now, to get a bit of a picture of how this works, you can see from the WFA website (http://waterforallinternational.org/default.aspx) that the drill stem is lifted by either a group of 4 “rowers” or occasionally by a motor driven rig; then the person holding the drill literally drives it into the hole so the drill bit can cut a bit more. The water displacement process brings the cuttings up through the drill stem and out the “cachucha” pipe at the top.

We’re drilling now where Melba and Ronald live as caretakers for the property owner, and will finish their well this coming Monday or Tuesday. They have 6 children and live in a “house” (about 10 ‘ x 20’) with a dirt floor, no doors on the 2 door openings, one bed and one platform on which all the kids sleep. The entire house is constructed of a single course of 1” x 8” boards, with pretty large gaps. A blue tarp covers the openings at night and when it gets really cold. The corrugated roof is full of holes, so I can’t imagine they don’t get wet when it rains.
All the cooking is done outside over an open fire, but let me tell you . . . Melba can cook! Other than at Terry’s house, I had the best food yet from Melba’s “kitchen!” We had meals of wild tapir (like a wild pig), which one of their dogs killed the previous night; another meal of fresh “tattoo,” which is very much like a Texas armadillo. I drank my first tamarind “refresco,” made from the tamarind tree in their yard.

The best part of the whole deal though, is making life-giving water available to Melba and Ronald (some of the poorest of the poor) in Jesus’ Name, so they don’t have “wheelbarrow-in” their water in jerry cans from another nearby property. Possibly for the first time in their lives, they will have sufficient water available to bathe regularly, for drinking and cooking – and to irrigate a family garden. This well will transform the way Ronald and Melba and their kids live! And I got to be a part of it!

By the way, these are photos of Hugo and Katarina’s completed well, and my new friend, Enrique!

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