Tuesday started just like Monday: breakfast at 5:15am,
depart hotel at 6:00am, stop for gas and ice, then arrive at Bethania Iglesia.
The one difference on Tuesday is we were down two team members. Connie and Mary
decided to stay at the hotel together and recover from Monday’s illness. They
were very sad to miss the day they planned to work on the drilling team!
Before we left the breakfast table, I told the team that
October 24th is a special day. It’s the birthday of my cousin,
Leilani, who died on March 31st in Hawaii. Leilani would have turned
two this day, so I asked the team to wear special pink bracelets all day in
memory of her. I also told them my hope that we would hit clean water and
finish drilling today, as a little birthday gift for our Leilani. The rest of
the day, I loved seeing the pink bracelets on the arms of our team.
One other difference about Tuesday was a short stop we made
on the way to Iglesia Bethania, when we visited a church where Jaime helped
drill a well two months ago. We investigated their well and the church grounds
for a few minutes before finishing our drive.
Tuesday’s routine was similar, but our tasks were different
as we switched crews around. Sonja, Katie, and I joined Lisa and Greg on the
drilling team.
Since Lisa and Greg had drilled the day before, they showed
us some of the ropes as Jaime gave us lessons on drilling. When it was my turn
as head driller, Katie played the role of assistant driller to me. It was
pretty cool to actually – finally! – do with Katie what we’d been talking about
doing for so many years.
Meanwhile, Dan and Derek joined the prevention team and were
teaching upstairs in the classroom. I snuck up there to take some photos.
Drilling continued, and it felt much slower than Monday’s
drilling. For one thing, we kept hitting rock and jamming the drill bit. I
learned to lower the drill a fraction of an inch at a time, getting into a
rhythm of counting to eight before barely tapping the lever to lower the bit.
Any quicker than that and the drill would make this sharp “stuck” sound and I’d
have to reverse out of the hole just a bit and try again. This was the part of
drilling that scared Katie, because she felt like she was breaking the machine.
Lisa was her assistant driller at the time, and Katie told Lisa she wanted to
quit so Lisa could take over. Lisa, being the pro mom she is, wouldn’t give in
to Katie and made her finish her turn. I am so glad for that, because Katie
stuck it out and later told me she’s glad she did.
Drilling is kind of a solitary job. The rig is too loud for
you to talk much to anyone around you. As head driller, you have to pay
attention to the drill’s rotation. As assistant driller, you stand and wait for
the cue to shut off the water and clamp the drill pipe. As I stood beside the
drill and waited for progress, I started paying attention to the sensations around
me: the subtle shifts in noise made by the drill (which signify its stress or
success), the smell of generator smoke, and the sensation of the rig shaking
the earth under my feet as it chewed and chomped through layers of rock. I
could feel the vibrations, and it made me think of stories in the Bible where
God descends to His people with such power that the ground shakes under their
feet. Was this a slight glimpse of what those moments were like? The drill
roaring in my ears with the glory of God, and the rock under my feet trembling
as it surrendered. Before I knew it, the song “Tremble” by Mosaic MSC started
playing in my mind and I started singing it under my breath. After all, no one
could hear me over the noise of the rig! “Jesus,
Jesus, you make the darkness tremble. Jesus, Jesus, you silence fear. Your name
is a light that the shadows can’t deny. Your name cannot be overcome!”
My thoughts turned to prayer, and I started praying for the
villagers who would spend future days drinking water at this well. I looked at
the work crew around me, full of old men and young men, and wondered why
exactly they would give up so many days of their lives (and, I assume, time
away from work that paid) to come sweat while digging and scraping gravel and
mud. Who would jump at the chance to volunteer for a team like that?
And then I remembered Blanca telling us about a drill team
she led recently. On the first day in their village, the team met a mother with
a very sick baby. On the second day, the baby died. The team knew it was a
waterborne illness that killed the baby, and they naturally wondered if the
baby could have been saved if the village well had been drilled earlier. On the
third day, they attended this baby’s funeral.
I stood beside our drill, and the thought hit me: the
elderly men on the work crew were busting their butts to make sure the grandkids
of their town wouldn’t die from dirty water. The young bucks on the team were
working hard to provide for their own children. One man on the team, Wesley,
had a baby on the way. No wonder he worked 12 hour days of hard manual labor;
he wanted to give his unborn child a good chance at LIFE.
Oh, the things I take for granted! Forgive me, Lord.
We ate lunch in shifts on Tuesday. Jaime wanted to move
forward with drilling, so the team took a break to eat while he and the work
crew kept drilling. It took us a really
long time to eat, though. The ladies served us our lunch, which was a clear
broth vegetable stew. It was flavorful, but MAN was it hot! Imagine sitting
down to eat steaming hot soup after sweating in the 100 degree heat all
morning, dressed in long pants and boots. I couldn’t even get the soup in my
mouth until it cooled down, and then I wasn’t too eager to eat it when I felt
so hot that I’d prefer an ice bath.
Katie sat beside me at lunch, and started looking a little
pale. I had reminded her to drink water all day, but she hadn’t consumed nearly
enough. I asked if she needed to take a break and sit outside the church
courtyard to get away from the drill noise and find fresh air. She said yes, so
we walked outside with some water to drink. A few kids followed us, because
they liked to tag along with Katie. Blanca came out to check on her, and Hannah
came to say hello. After a few minutes away from the lunch table, Katie perked
up and the kids asked her to play. Before I knew it, we had a soccer ball and a
frenzy in the middle of the street. I had so much fun watching and snapping
photos.
The soccer game (which became a mixture of volleyball,
soccer, and basketball) lasted less than 40 minutes, because rain started
pouring down.
Meanwhile, the drill team kept at it and brought on two new
members as it was Shauna and Tami’s turn to take a break from teaching.
I stood in a dry spot and used my zoom lens to observe the
activity, and take some secret portraits like this one of a boy as he watched
the rain and drilling.
This daddy comforted his daughter while she cried.
Miley blowing bubbles.
Peekaboo with this sweet boy.
After many attempts, I finally caught this momma smiling.
Afternoon lessons rolled along as the rain slowed and drilling
finally finished. There wasn’t much fanfare when Jaime started withdrawing the
pipes from the drilled hole, but I noticed them getting wiped down before being
stacked back on their pallet.
Where the metal pipes had just been removed, the crew
lowered the PVC pipes that would permanently line the well. The hardest
drilling was over, and Dan stood by the well to show his pink bracelet for me
to take his photo. Happy birthday, Leilani!
We got to have a little celebratory break for coffee and
sweet bread. There were sugar cookies embedded in the puffy rolls and some sort
of honey sugar in the coffee. Pretty spectacular!
The next step for the crew was to add gravel to the drilled
hole, to surround the PVC pipe and stabilize it. Hannah kept track of how many
buckets were dumped, and Jaime and Nestor measured the depth of the hole yet to
fill. Katie and I tried to carry a few buckets of gravel together, but they
weighed WAY more than we expected!
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| Photo by Lisa McCutcheon |
As the rest of the team waited, Katie and Hannah started
singing that old song from their childhood. You know, the one that goes “Baaay-beee
shark, doo doo doo doo dah-doo. Baby shark, doo doo doo doo dah-doo.” Blanca
had never heard that song, and the girls delighted in teaching it to her.
After a while, I noticed our friend Alder sitting at the
table with Katie. He asked for her help on a handwritten English-Spanish
dictionary he was creating. And it wasn’t just a dictionary – Alder was
illustrating it with his own drawings. I was amazed by this, and promised to
bring my flashcards and dictionary the next day to help him.
Finally, the day’s work was done and around 7:30pm, we piled
into the truck and van for the drive back to the hotel. There were many rounds
of “Baby Shark” on the way home, and we arrived at the hotel with good news to
share with Connie and Mary: the drilling is done! They had good news for us,
too: “We feel better!” Smiles, showers, and dinner all around before we turned
in for the night.
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