We have been using the well for about 3 months now. The well diggers dug it 15 feet deeper. It produces about 4,000 liters in one pumping. 12 hours later it can produce another 4,000 liters. Yet, I believe those numbers are a bit high.
Every day before we pump, we lower the 50 lb. pump into the dark hole in the ground. After we are finished pumping water, we pull out the pump out of the well. One day about 2 months ago, we went out to the well to find all the electrical cables to power the pump were gone. Our night visitors had come! Angry. Upset. I shell out more money to buy replacement electrical cables.
I reconsider my anger and upset. If I would have simply not dug a well, I wouldn’t be exhausting myself by being angry. I wouldn’t be exhausting myself in efforts to keep something that others want. It sounds like an inviting kind of life. Owning nothing seems like a more peaceful kind of existence.
Every day we have to pump water I cringe. The power stabilizer we purchased for the pump doesn’t work anymore. We unplug the fridge guard and use it to stabilize the power to the pump. Lowering the pump into the well and connecting all the power cables takes about 1-2 hours.
We have to pump about twice a week to keep everything in the nursery watered and alive. Yet, sometimes the Lord gives us a reprieve and waters our plants for us.
This blessing occurred multiple times this past month.
January started out difficult. We were visiting the clinic, Jehovah Rapha every day for six days. First, Stephen went in and tested positive for malaria and typhoid. He was put on treatment. 2 days later, I went in with Glory Gracie and myself and we were tested for the same things. Gracie and I were both diagnosed with malaria. We started treatment right away. Treatment wasn’t working for me, so I went back in and got an intravenous treatment. Gracie improved. I improved. Stephen continued working on watering and pumping water from the well despite feeling worse. I took him back to the clinic, where he tested positive for Covid.
The morning before going to the clinic, Stephen installed the pump into the well and we pumped water into the tank. After the Covid diagnosis, we came back from the clinic and set up his quarantine bed, in the storage room. We moved in an old bed and a mattress. I was still struggling with malaria symptoms and likely covid symptoms, so after all the moving of furniture, I slept till evening.
But the pump was still in the well and nobody had energy to pull it out.
So we charged up a motion sensor I had happened to bring along in my suitcase from America. We set the alarm on the well.
At 11:25pm the alarm goes off. Stephen and I both get up out of bed and run out to the well. I remember that I left the can of bear spray in the house and something even more precious is sleeping in the bedroom we have left unprotected. Stephen and I look around in the dark. We couldn’t find what tripped the alarm. We wait for some time, then went back to the house to sleep.
At 12:15 am the alarm goes off again. Stephen and I both get up and run out to the well. Again, we cannot figure out what tripped the alarm. Delirious, we go back to bed.
And so goes the story all night long.
By morning, I am ready to call up the thieves and surrender. After all, we know who they are. This is just an elaborate game of cat and mouse.
Sick. Tired. Body aches. I sleep most of the next day. But we pump water again and pull the pump out of the well that evening. That was last week.
Over the weekend, the gardener that helps us, also got sick with Covid and Stephen has been weak for 2 weeks, but God watered the whole nursery on Friday night and Saturday night. Monday night and today, Tuesday, it has been raining cats and dogs all day. We are exhausted but grateful.
Shared Frontiers, Uganda 