Lads on Tour

Two blog posts in a week! What is this madness?!

While Trevor was with us in Lubang he asked that we ensure that the well will be able to cope with the water demand of the project. We had it on good word from the local people and a map of the area showed good water supply, but he wanted to confirm it with numbers and graphs and suchlike, which meant a PUMPING TEST.

I was back in Manila for the weekend, and then grabbed two other volunteers, Fergus and Nathan to go pump water out of a well. Fergus studied water management at Cranfield Uni, and had done this sort of thing before, and Nathan will be taking over the project when Fergus and I leave in August, so it seemed like a good time to introduce him to everything and everyone. Nathans’ parents are Filipino (but he grew up in New York), so he speaks much more Tagalog than I do, which was very helpful.

Left to right: Fergus, Nathan, some other chopper

As per usual, we got on the road early and met outside the supermarket at 5am. Taxi across town, van down to Calatagan (3 hours), tricycle to the port, mild panic about boat times only for it to leave 2 hours late, boat across the Verde Island passage (3 hours), and then finally packed into the back of a truck loaded with people and much cargo into Looc town.

We got there at 4pm or thereabouts, dumped our bags at the Vice Mayors house and managed to convince the truck driver to drive us to the well, saving us a 2.5km walk. It was getting late, but we wanted to have a look around before we got down to business the next day.

Now that I’ve been to Looc so many times people recognise me and always come up to say hello, which is really nice. So when I mentioned, literally in passing, to Barangay captain Viana (a Barangay is equivalent to a village) that we were going down to the well, he hopped on his motorbike and came down to help us out. He also picked up Sunni, who is captain of another Barangay (there are three in this project) to make our group 5 in total.

We pottered around and stood and looked at things in that very manly way that men who want to look like they know what they’re doing do.

Tank and Tap

For reasons unknown even to the Mayor, the municipal engineer (Gumandoy) built a whopping great storage tank next to the well about 2 years ago. This tank won’t be any use as we take the project forward, but at the moment there is some piping running off it so rather than walk 300m into the rice fields local residents can collect drinking water a tap next to the road. The tank was about half full, and before the pumping test we needed to empty it. Nathan, Fergus nor I wanted to be the one to cut off the water supply to the people, so it was lucky that the Barangay captains were with us to take the decision. Sunni jumped down – pulled the plug out and flooded the fields.

We managed to hitch a lift with Gumandoy, who was passing in another truck at the opportune moment, so we went off to have a look at the water filter site. It’s going to be a squeeze to fit the big concrete structures into the space we have available, but I think it will be do-able.

We were tired after our day of travelling, but the Mayor wanted a chat, so after dinner we were picked up and delivered to the town hall, where we had a sit down with the Mayor and Gumandoy. When I first started, I was quite nervous about dealing with the Mayor as he sounds very important, but now I’ve met him so many times I’m totally at ease and we were nattering away like old mates. Mayors aren’t that scary. At least Mayor Ben isn’t. I’m still pretty scared of Mayor Colonel Sanchez from the other municipality I’ve worked in. I hear he’s killed quite a lot of people.

We got up before sunrise, ate some fish, eggs and rice for breakfast, packed up the leftovers in a box for lunch and negotiated our way to the well. Gumandoy turned up and got in the car with us. I figured he was continuing on to the other town where the car was headed, so all was good. We got to the well and Gumandoy got out with us.

“you know, you don’t have to be here” I said.

“Oh ok.”

He turned around and walked the 2.5km back to town. Oops!

Nathan, Fergus and I sat down and came up with a plan of action. We needed to pump water out of the well at a constant (or at least known) rate, and measure how far the water level in the well fell.

We devised a very good way of finding the pumping rate. We measured the tank dimensions, (4.5m x 4.5m x 3.85m). We tied a rock to the measuring tape and dangled it into the tank, until it was touching the water. We then pulled the rock up exactly 20cm and waited timed until the water was touching it again. This gave us a known volume (4.5m x 4.5m x 0.2m) and a time taken to fill it – divide one by the other and you have the flow rate! Brilltastic.

In the water tank

At 9.18am we flicked on the pump, and had a frantic first hour. This was teamwork and organisation at its finest. Brilliant interview fodder. We had a timekeeper and recorder, a well measurer and a flow rate man on top of the tank. For the first 10 minutes we had to measure the well depth every minute, then every 2 minutes from 10 – 30 minutes, then every 5 minutes until the hour mark, then every 10 minutes and so on. This is because as you pump water out the water level goes down a lot at the start, but the rate of change of the “drawdown” decreases as time goes on – so less measurements are necessary. It worked literally like clockwork.

Sheer organisational tekkers

It was HOT. And we had a tank of water. A big tank of deliciously blue fresh spring water. Deeper than most swimming pools. I was even wearing my trunks.

Unfortunately, this water was going to be used for drinking, so we figured it would be pretty poor form to wash our sweaty bodies off in there. Which was a shame, it would have been great.

I had followed Robin Scanlons first commandment and brought my hammock. So as the gap between measurements increased, we took it in turns to do engineering / hammocking (not mutually exclusive as it turns out!) and played 20 questions and read books and played cards to pass the time.

Engineering in action

After 4.5 hours, the tank was full we switched off the pump, and had to spring back into action, following the same measurement time schedule as the well “recovered”. More clockwork, more measuring, leading into more relaxing as time went on.

I didn’t do any relaxing at all

By 5pm the well was almost back to its original level (which is a good thing) and the sun was leaving us. We packed up and by the time we were back on the road it was warm moonless night. We had no lift organised, so we walked back to town and actually lost Fergus in the dark!

Dinner was followed by another chat with the Mayor, which went on until about 11pm. Mayor Ben then decided he wanted to look at what we’d been doing – nothing that dramatic – but we piled into his pickup truck and went down to the tap by the road. We needed one final measurement to confirm the well had fully recovered so they swung the truck around and pointed the high beams over the fields so Nathan and Fergus could navigate the rice paddies. I hung back and looked at the stars. There were lots. It was purty. Nathan smashed Mayor Bens brand new torch, but nobody seemed that bothered.

Our boat back was leaving at 5.30am. We agreed with Mayor Ben that someone would come and pick us up at 4.45am to take us to the port in the town down the coast. Only problem Mayor Ben never told the driver this. So we got up well before the sun and waited and waited and waited some more. A man passed us on a motorbike, so we asked him if he could find something out. He roared off into the night. I woke up half the town phoning people to try to find our missing driver, but our motorbike man came back with a van full of people also going to the boat. The day was saved!

Back to Manila. Macdonalds and a nap. On Sunday, my housemates daughter graduated from high school so we put together a big meal for all the family and friends and I delivered two Heston Blumenthal style roast chickens. The crowd went wild.