joys and frustrations

So my actual time with MMM is up (and I'm visiting friends in South Africa) but I still have some more to share about that part of my trip so here goes...

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned that we get a lot of glory for not much work on our parts and that if everything goes as it should the installation takes about 20 minutes. But how often do things go as they should? And there are, of course, many things that can and do go wrong.

Sometimes it is human error...driving down the wrong road to get to the far off village, being late meeting the installation supervisor, misunderstanding of where to meet the supervisor, etc. Sometimes it is a parts problem. There isn't a great quality control here so though we technically had the right parts sometimes they wouldn't fit together. The metal T handles might be too rough and just that much too big to fit into the plastic piece of the pump. The plastic pipes sometimes weren't pre-threaded but then we had a tool for that.

Sometimes it was not our fault. And those were the hard ones. When there wasn't enough water in the well and it needed to be dug deeper. When we would arrive at the village only to find the well not finished or not finished properly. One well we got to had been finished skew. Which meant the pipes and pump weren't straight up and down which made it very hard to use and a set up for disaster and needing repairs. The concrete wasn't very strong either. We installed anyway but had to tell them that the maintence man would come that week to fix it. That was the second time we'd been out there.

Once we got there and our installer dropped the pipe down the well. The well was that much too deep when he was supposed to measure. So then we had to fish it out which they did using 2 pairs of shoe strings. Whenever things went awry, it was very easy to get frustrated with how much time it was taking...every hangup took the time it would take to get to another village to set up a another well. So that would be one less well installed that day and possibly another trip out to the same area on another day (more bumpy driving).

But then you could look at the other side. It was more time spent with this village. We (us women usually) would dance and sing. I would make faces and play with the children. Jan would hold babies and talk to agogos (grandparents). We would share the joy that clean water was bringing in less illness and less time spent fetching water. And I would realize that though it would be great to get to the next village, this is important too. And that we will get to the next village, just on another day, because that is why we are here.