The Well

Today was quite packed. So one story for now.

We have a well in the camp. It was built in 2004, for what purpose we don't know. It's never been used and it was capped a few years ago by the city, probably for safety reasons.

Today we were finally able to crack the top to see what was in there. We found that it was almost 50m deep. We also found that there were no nitrates or nitrites in the water and that it wasn't hard water (according to a calcium magnesium test). We also are running a faecal bacteria test...

This is the funny part. To run the fb test you need to take a sample from the well and add a fertiliser ingredient which turns the water yellow. The yellow water is then held/ sat upright for 24-48 hours to see if it turns black. If the water colour doesn't change -that's good. However, you end up walking around with a bag looking suspiciously like a urine sample until you get somewhere you can stand it. So imagine, if you will, me carrying around this 'sample' throughout the camp, back to the office, in the van on the way to our accommodation until I was finally able to stand it in a cup in our room.

Hopefully it still looks like a urine sample tomorrow. Then we'll be able to get the Korean UN engineers in to do a flow test and see how fast the well can replenish itself. This will tell us whether it is a renewable water source. Here's hoping.

In the meantime, there's much too much water falling from the sky. People in the camp will be standing most of tonight so that they don't lie down in the mud. Some will sit on a bucket with their children sleeping on their lap.

All things being equal, the drainage works start on Monday. But even that is not soon enough.