Here is news of three recent wells that Myra’s Wells drilled during one week in Burkina Faso.
1st April – Start of the week in Burkina Faso
Eddie and Jeremy had been to a village called Villy on 16th March. This is Eddie’s diary entry about the village:
“Later we visited the village of Villy. This was something else that was hastily arranged after a visit from a pastor on Monday. Here they had a very poor open well, which a young boy had fallen into and died a few days previously. We took an instant decision to drill a well here.”
People falling into wells is a situation which arises quite frequently. Some of the open wells are positively dangerous to use. People have to stand on slippery stones to use them – no barriers to prevent them falling in.
These photos help to explain why the decision was so easy.
The drilling contractors arrived on 1st April. However, there was no April Fool’s joke about the news! Drilling was successful at Villy! The supply of water is good – plenty for the whole village. We have just received photos of the finished well and the training session that always follows completion.
7th April – End of the week in Burkina Faso
We had previously agreed to drill two wells south of Ouagadougou.
The first was Toanga.
What we knew about this village is that the nearest pump had a long waiting time. As a consequence, the people went to one of two small reservoirs about 4 km away to fetch water.
The first attempt here failed to produce clean water. There was water in the borehole but it was dirty. The drill had not encountered rock. Unless the borehole goes through rock, the water will almost certainly be dirty.
In the goodness of God, the second borehole was good and produced clean water. We know that the people here are grateful because a Muslim man rang Christine to say “Thank you.” Christine passed the message to us like this:
“He is very happy and he said that the village people have asked him to call and say “Thank you”. He is a Muslim but he mentioned that in the Bible it said that if someone gives a cup of water to someone else God will bless him. Tell all your partners that they have greetings from Toanga.”
Sampogretenga
Later in the day, there was more good news to come.
After capping the well at Toanga (we have to send a sample for testing before completing the pump), the drilling contractors went to Sampogretenga. 1200 people live here. The ladies and children had to make a round trip of 6 km to fetch water. Often, they had to wait up to 3 or 4 hours for their turns to fill their containers.
So we are very happy to be able to report that the borehole here was also successful.
These three wells brought the total to 206 wells. The full list is available on the web site – click here to see it.
