One of the things that our team is involved in is the reinforcement of dug wells. In the Fulani community of Teppe, Niger, and in surrounding villages, we have been doing this for the last 3 years. As the villages 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. At first 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 have contributed molds to the main village so that they can do the work with their equipment. We provide cement and re-bar for the construction
of the rings. Extra rings with bottoms built in are placed on either
side of the well for collecting water to spread out on the garden or in the case of wells for watering animals, as watering troughs. Eventually
the well can be connected to several other rings, each at a distance of 20
meters, that will serve as a rudimentary irrigation aid, 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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KidsDig 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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LisaDigging Miriama grabs the shovel and does a bit of earth moving too.
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MoldsArrive The molds, rented from local Catholic mission, arrive. Our team has built 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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MoldAssembly 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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Assembly2 The mold continues to come together. These young men have become specialists who have gone out to help other villages install around 30 wells so far. As they go, they train others to do the job as well. One of the goals of GDA 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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Assembly3 The final connection!
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Mixing2 Cement is mixed on the ground. Who needs a mixer?
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MixingConcrete No water on tap. It is carried in 20 litre containers.
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RebarInstall Rebar is placed in the mold.
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Pouring The pouring process begins.
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Pouring2 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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RingsInstall2 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. Many of our wells are now built by putting our mold down at the bottom of the well and working up. This eliminates a lot of the more dangerous aspects of this system. Some villages still rent the 50 cm molds for some wells.
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RingsInstall 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! If the well runs out of water in the very dryest months of the year, digging is done under the bottom rings and the whole column just moves on down. At first we thought we should wait until the very dryest months, either April or May, to do the wells. We were unaware of this great deepening process. Now wells can begin in January and when they need to be deepened, it is done with no complications. The result is a well that will have water right through the very dryest of dry months.
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EndProduct The finished project - well and troughs
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RougaTest Rouga gives it a test run.
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LadyPouring The ladies will help in the garden watering process as well.
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ExtraRings 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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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.
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LisaFriends The work in Teppe was started by another colleague. He moved to other work in Mali and Miriama 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 GDA to the point where we are and we believe the Almighty has great things for this excellent community!
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