Divine intervention or just a mad dog?

 21-27 October 2013

This week took me to the Bonbonaro District, in particular two villages near Maliana.  As always, the drive was long relative to the distance travelled (120 kms in 3.5 hours).  I considered the drive along the western coast ride as more picturesque than the road east from Dili, I even made a mental note to head in this direction for my diving forays at a later date.  I promise to film the underwater when the time comes as I have an underwater camera.

(the route taken to get there, the little blue triangle is Maliana and the yellow pins are where we surveyed)

<Warning – Technical engineering concepts ahead>

We did not head directly to Maliana directly, rather we diverted to a small village about 10 kms away called Haluatin, which is to have a water supply system build once a reliable groundwater source is found.  The Maliana area is one of the more agriculturally productive areas of TL where significant irrigation already exists and is being upgraded in partnership with the Japanese Government.  You would think that this water could be used to supply the village – but consider that people bathe and wash their clothes in the channels which makes surface water an unattractive option.  It is likely that people already do given this is the only reliable source in the area.

One of the features of new rural water supply systems is to minimise the need to build a water treatment plant to address the water quality associated with surface water sources, such as those mentioned above.  Unfortunately there are insufficient funds to build the water network AND a treatment plant for TL to achieve its Millennium Development Goal of delivering reliable water supplies to over 78% of the population by 2015, 66% of the population has improved access so far.

The smarter, read low technology, solution is to source the water from underground.  This has three main benefits; 1) the groundwater is likely to have less contamination as the nearby surface water source, 2) most bores can be located near the demand versus a reservoir where the ground conditions need to be considered and 3) the ground itself can perform the water treatment (but catchment management needs to be improved in the long term). 

In Haluatin’s case, a reliable groundwater source has not been found yet due to underlying ground conditions.  The water is there but it’s insufficient to supply a town, so what did I bring to this conundrum on this day?  I happened to mention that I can divine water!  Everybody scrambled to find me some wire to perform this pseudo-scientific approach; you could ask why an engineer is applying such pseudo-science?  Bore drilling is a hit and miss affair at the best of times, especially when there are no reliable records previous drills of the existing ground conditions and the amount of water found.  So there is nothing lost by using less conventional methods.

Did I find anything?  I walked around a number of sites and had no luck in the beginning – this was verified by the bore driller too, he has had no luck in this particular area either.  Then we moved onto to another site nearer to the village, this was where I had better luck - I walked in different directions and found several spots where they may be water of sufficient of quantity.  There was one site that seemed to feel stronger (it is hard to describe this feeling) that was out of the flood plain.  The drilling commenced the following day as a result of this “find”.  You could have called me the Pied Piper as I had lots of children following as I walked around looking for suitable sites.  I even provided on the job training to some.

(second divining run –finding where the water is, working out how deep the water is and training in the fine art, photos by Rogelio Ocampo)

The results of the drilling showed I was correct in that water was there although not a sufficient quantity to supply more than one house, which I estimated was about 7 metres below ground.  The area was noted for the blue clay underground, which in this case was about 6-7 metres from the surface.  The blue clay layer acts as a water barrier, trapping any water that percolates through the ground; the water cannot flow up through this layer either.  The blue clay in this area is known to be several hundred metres deep with no chance of being rewarded on the other side with any more water for the effort made.

It was quite funny to be talking to the chief bore driller and I noted that when he spoke in English it was with an Australia, namely Northern Territorian lilt where he has worked for several years.

(discussions about how to get the drilling rig to site, typical irrigation channel and “normal”channel use)

After lunch we headed to a community planning workshop for a village that escapes me.  It was interesting to watch the process, if only for the last of day two.  The workshop is over five days and everything is discussed, negotiated and agreed to, for example, where the bore will be located, the tanks and the tap stands.  Special emphasis has been placed on the tap stand locations as there were several community members who have special needs.  I have not seen many special needs people in my travels so far and it would appear that they are hidden in a lot of cases or their mobility is severely limited.  But even if you consider the elderly, they will still need to carry water back to their place, but it is likely they would have a grandchild doing the work.

There were four women participating in the workshop and about 16 men.  Women are the real beneficiaries of a water supply project as they are the principle users of the water.  It would seem that there is still some work to go in this area.  As I mentioned in previous post(s), most water supply systems fail within a year as they are not maintained (why fix something that is not broken yet?).  The women (and children) are the ones that are most affected by the failures but are largely powerless to address this in a speedy manner.  This is question that is being addressed through many avenues by different Non-Government Organisations in partnership with the TL Government, a problem that cannot be fixed in a day.

So it was a very big Tuesday!

The saying mad dogs and English go out in the midday sun was an appropriate saying to us surveying in the village Purugoa, I can confidentially say that we were mad dogs!  We spent Wednesday and Thursday surveying the ground levels using the new Differential GPS equipment that I have been learning to use.  The Wednesday day was a day of learning through our mistakes - we managed to walk about 5 kms but only get seven points of data, including the tank location.  Two important lessons: never change something that is working well mid-way through a job and not ignore the error messages and possibly maybe read the manual.  

(bore log – each yellow line represents 3 metres, drilling machine, nearby Malibaca River)

So we headed back to where we were staying in Maliana after the surveying to recover from being cooked in the sun – the car’s thermometer showed the temperature being 37 degrees for most of the time we had been surveying.  Needless to say I was looking forward to a shower which turned out to be a garden house in the room I was staying at Hotel Risky (trust me, that is its name).  I have to say that it still was an amazing shower irrespective of the missing shower head. 

(some surveying hazards encountered – tree covered with bee hives and traffic although it is a quiet road)

So learning from my mistake(s) (it was no one elses), we surveyed again on the Thursday morning.  This is so when can plan for where all of tap stands, tank and other features such as hills and valleys that impact on the hydraulics pipe network.  After finishing the surveying, I was asked to divine more water on the drive back from Purugoa to Maliana, somewhere near Samelau.  I found more water but it was in a rice field about 1-2 metres below the surface – this is not good as it would be irrigation water that flowed past the root zone of the rice/corn crops in the field during the last irrigation season.  So it was not promising for a high yielding, reliable water supply for a village.

The sun was setting when we turned our minds and bodies to the drive back to Dili; we did not get back until 9:00 pm. 

No shower for me when I got home Thursday night however it was not until Saturday morning that the shower and I got re-acquainted.  Although we were hesitant with other, I asked where it has it been for the past few weeks itself?  The shower challenged me saying that I have been with other showers during the week, so the shower was getting back at me for feeling used.  I confessed to the shower that I needed it very much right now but the shower gave me the cold shoulder. 

Anyway it is only three weeks before I move onto my new digs whose shower has a radio in it!  Maybe that is why my shower is so temperamental, it is jealous!

Making the most of a bad situation

14-20 October 2013

There was even a (Muslim) public holiday on Tuesday, so the week was quiet in the scheme of things.  As we all know, Halloween is at the end of the month, this sort of pagan celebration is lost in a tropical place such TL, none of the Halloween creatures seem to be dressed for the tropics, unless you consider more the hairier creatures.  Come to think to think of it, I have not seen a pumpkin in the beach side market either although it is claimed that pumpkins are a plenty here.

I promised that I would let you know about how my survey would go in Aimerahun – it was an utter failure!  A number of things conspired against us: weather, tree cover and most disappointing of all, one of the Differential GPS units was not properly set up so it could not process the satellite signals properly.  

So the remaining DGPS unit did not work as expected – at one stage the elevation increased by 24 metres in 45 min period even though the DGPS was sitting in the same place.  This sort of error would have been “cancelled” out by the other (not functioning) DGPS unit through processing back in the office or tying it back to a verified point nearby.  

I remembered a saying during the week from a previous job, “for every complex problem, there is a simple solution that doesn’t work”.  An appropriate saying considering the complexity of differential surveying.  As I discovered later, it turned out to be a simple fix - all I had to do was to reset the DGPS units and voila! It found all of the satellites in the sky instead of just the Russian ones (Glonass).  I think I managed to iron all of the wrinkles with the DGPS units so I can start surveying the Bonbonaro District next week.  

The only positive from the survey was watching a butterfly while waiting for the GPS to do its magic.  The butterfly’s wingspan was about 10 cms across and was largely black except for when it had the sun shining through its wings – the back wings glow this amazing yellow/gold colour.  It danced around for many minutes with another butterfly of similar size but brown in colour (was this the girl butterfly?).  It seemed that I was the only one that was in entranced by the display.  I hope to see more of the natural side during my time here - it is hard to find.

The weekend was spent watching Australia’s butter-fingered performance against NZ in the Bledisloe Cup, which is novel thing for a Vicwegan/Mexican from the country where it’s AFL, AFL and more AFL…  Sunday was a busy day with lunch at the Hotel Esplanada, finalising the new housing arrangements at the palacio in Santa Cruz and swapping books.  Finding a good book to read is hard here.  A lot of people use electronic books.  Call me old fashioned but I stare at a computer screen for most of the day so a book is a welcome relief for these dimming eyes!

I better get ready for the week ahead and wish me luck for the surveying foray in Bonbonaro.

Adeus

Does this sound familiar?

7-13 October 2013

This week was quiet relative to the previous week in Suai/Covalima.  I have spent most of the week learning about the new Global Positioning System equipment that has just arrived.  So what is special about this equipment other than lots of tripods, poles, heavy handheld GPS units?  The Differential GPS system is more accurate than the just using the handheld GPS’s.  I will spare the details about how it works as there are plenty of web sites that describe their abilities.

I have to confess that it has been a while since I have completed a land survey, back then there was no GPS available to civilians - that is how long ago it was.  What has been the frustration and needs to be considered when in developing countries is being able to access online help.  As I may have already mentioned the internet is slow and on the weekend contractors managed to cut the main phone line nearby and this has affected all of Dili for over a week.  Unfortunately there is no Dial Before You Dig service to assist in locating underground assets such phone lines, water pipes etc.

But then again that is why there is a push to improve the capture of survey data here; in the water sector for example, many aid organisations and the TL government have built water supply systems throughout the country.  The problem is the lack of data about the pipes, tanks, material used, when it was used etc during construction.  The result is that no one is able to quickly respond to breakdowns in any water supply system as there are no records of the assets nor an operations manual anywhere.  

One of my tasks is to improve this by creating a system with the Timorese that can capture all of the data for existing systems as well as the systems that are to be built in the near future.  This is not a new problem, it also exists in Australia too – the job is not finished once the ribbon has been cut when the water supply is opened for business.  It always boils down to funding, it is easy to justify the capital costs but funding ongoing maintenance costs is harder to justify as breakdowns are harder to predict when they occur.  So in short, another funding mechanism is required to manage this issue.

The rural water supply systems are co-funded by the aldeias (villages); the average wage in rural regions of TL is less than US$1.00 per day, making it difficult to fund the replacement of say the bore pump by the community.  What complicates matters further is the parts are not available locally, so they have to be brought in from Dili or even overseas.  I have talked about the quality of the roads before – this increases the length of time before a village sees their replacement pump.  Could the pump failure be prevented by regular (preventative) maintenance? It definitely would and would allow a replacement part to be ordered before the failure occurs.  Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  It is, but consider that most people live a hand to mouth existence making preventative maintenance low on their priorities until it breaks.  There is also a backup system called walking to the well every day.  

I was in an aldeia called Aimerahun, which is only an hour’s (or thereabouts) drive from Dili on Friday.  The aldeia’s water supply was built by the Portuguese nearly 40 years ago, BESIK is assisting in the rehabilitation of the system.  This system relies on several springs and a small stream diversion to get the water to the people.  The system does not rely on pumps, however the river diversion has never worked as we suspect the water has to flow uphill which is not possible without a pump.  We have tried to get ground levels using the handheld GPS’s but the height differences are incorrect.  This will be where I will be undertaking my first DGPS survey and training the Timorese in its use, it will be a challenge as there is significant tree cover around the springs and this is where we need accurate level data.  We might use an Abney level to verify the data collected and improve the data’s quality.

I will let you know how it goes next week.