Monday 28 October 2013

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!

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