Water is Life

One of the things that you get used to very quickly in Africa is how fast everything changes. The latest example of that was with our water. In the last two weeks we have struggled to get enough water. The first problem was the baboons. They chewed through a line that fed our station tanks and drained almost 9000 gallons of water in a night. We started pumping the next day and put several 1000 gallons more into the tank. When we went up to look after two days, we were empty again. Why? The lines had sucked some trash into them and the float valves were not closing in our tanks. We had just pumped the well out into the bushes. We then decided that while the water was so low that we would go into the main tank and clean it and seal a couple of areas that looked like they were still leaking a little bit. After two days of cleaning and working on the tank we tried to fill it again (14,000. gallons). After a couple of days of pumping we went to look into the tank and found it still empty. OK! Now What? For three days Travis and his Father Larry looked and measured everything. The finial verdict is that the pump is working fine, but the water table has dropped almost 8 feet. That means our well has only 14 inches of water above the pump. Once we have pumped down to that level, the pump shuts off. We then wait for 5 hours and pump again. This has caused us to start pumping in shifts. We pump one hour every eight hours. Slowly the big tank is starting to fill. This is normal life in Kenya. In the midst of daily devotions, Sunday services, literacy classes, a truck rebuild, visiting the new dentists, helping David, we run into water problems and have to switch directions. It is what makes life exciting, and awful at the same time. It was a blessing that Larry and Travis chose to pursue it, while I worked on the truck. I sealed and cleaned the tanks and helped check out the well, but they did the sitting and looking to see when the pump shut off and how long it takes to fill. Thank the Lord for friends. PS Can you guess the next Prayer request???? We could use some rain!!!! Please Pray. :) As always, there are more pictures to be seen by following the link on the right. Check out Travis's Photo...