While in Thailand and Burma, I started working with a friend on a water project. My friend had found the project and, to be honest, did most of the work. I just helped with some of the planning and fundraising.
As I mentioned before, we met with some people in the community, interviewed a driller, and helped work on some of the logistics. Initially, we thought we would raise all the money for the project, but while I was there, I could see that the community was poor, but not so poor that they could not contribute. Contributing to their own cause has a lot of benefits including pride of ownership which, hopefully, will lead to better maintenance.
I suggested that we not tell them how much we could give and ask them to raise as much money as they could. In the end, they raised a couple of thousand dollars from people through out the community. Truly shocking to me. In what may be a first, I told the friends of our family that we needed less money than we thought for a project. They are really good people and I was really worried that things could go wrong because I was not working on this project everyday.
This is the best time of year to drill since it is the peak of the dry season and it will give us the best understanding of the water table. We began drilling a couple of weeks ago and hit water at 150 feet. We contracted for 200 feet, so the extra 50 feet will insure that there will always be water available from this well even in the driest of dry seasons.
I think the project will wrap up in about a month or so and the people of the community should have a reliable water source.
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