In the spring of this year (2008), our team was involved in contributing two
wells to the Fulani community of Teppe, Niger. As they have begun to keep
gardens, they have been digging new wells each year. The problem has been
that their simple dug wells would cave in each year when the rains came. It
made for a lot of extra work. We helped out by renting the equipment to install
steel reinforced concrete rings down to a level at which they will find water
throughout the year. We also provided cement and re-bar for the construction
of the rings. Extra rings with bottoms built in were placed on either
side of the well for collecting water to spread out on the garden. Eventually
the well will be connected to several other rings each at a distance of 20
meters that will serve to bring the water closer to the distant parts of
the garden.
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Caved In Every year this village redigs several wells for watering cattle and watering gardens. That can change now.
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Precarious A precarious beginning as the first well, already at a depth of around 8 meters is cleaned out and enlarged to fit the rings.
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Digging The second well was begun from scratch.
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Kids Dig This is a community work in a community garden. Even the children helped out. The well would eventually go to eight (8) meters.
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Lisa Digging Lisa grabbed the shovel and did a bit of earth moving too.
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Molds Arrive The molds, rented from local Catholic mission, arrive. The Impacting Niger Team plans to purchase a set of molds as well to give to the CHE committee of Teppe so that they can do more of this kind of well reinforcement.
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Mold Assembly Under the direction of a man who has been installing these wells for years, the youth of the community begin to put together the molds.
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More Assembly The mold continues to come together. These young men become specialists who will be able to help other villages install wells. One of the goals of our team is to transmit knowledge so that everyone is able to perform a wide variety of activities that will pull the community toward sustainable development.
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Getting Done Assembling The final connection!
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Mixing Cement is mixed on the ground. Who needs a mixer?
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Mixing Concrete No water on tap. It is carried in 20 litre containers.
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Rebar Install Rebar is placed in the mold.
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Pouring The pouring process begins.
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More Pouring Rebar has been installed to make these rings last a good while.
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Community Work The rings, each one 50 cm in height and 160 cm in diameter begin to collect.
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Concrete Rings To go down eight (8) meters will take 16 rings.
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Installing Rings The rigging that permits the placement of the rings.
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RingsInstall1 A come along is used to drop each ring into place. Probably more risks are taken in Africa than are accepted in Canada.
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Rings Installed The rings are placed in the well. It is interesting that the dirt on the bottom could be taken out and the pile of rings would just continue to sink down maintaining their placement. Strange but very helpful!
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A Well To Last A well that won't cave in every year and need to be redug!
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End Product The almost finished project - well and troughs
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Rouga Test Rouga gives it a test run.
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Extra Rings Two extra rings will eventually be placed each at approximately 20 meters from the well and connected by pipes. They will then be filled from the original well site eliminating a lot of carrying of water back and forth.
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Lady Pouring A woman at the well.
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Rouga Every Fulani community has a ROUGA. He is the community peacemaker whose responsibility it is to make peace with neighboring farmers whose crops may be damaged by the Fulani herds. This is our Rouga.
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LisaFriends The work in Teppe was started by Barry Newman. Barry moved to other ministries in Mali and Lisa Rohrick took over. As she finished her Fulfulde language study, she gave much of her time to building relationships with the people of Teppe. These two women, Isobel (left) and Fay (right) are her very good friends. Lisa's work in Teppe has brought us to the point where we are and we believe God has great things for this excellent community!
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