Monday 30th April 2018

Humid morning. Flies all over the surfaces in the dining room. Food needing, more than ever, to be covered! Breakfast of egg-on-toast was disturbed by a chicken determined to lay its egg in its favourite place. Turns out that this was the settee in the seat next to Jo.

In the morning we had a visit to Kijongobya Modern Primary School for their end of term prize-giving and service.

We also dropped down behind the school to find one of the boreholes that we have helped to fund. This one goes to quite a depth ……… 250ft. The borehole was dug by Nile Drilling with a professional report provided at the end of the work.

The water tank on the metal frame will serve the village of Kijongobya and the lower tank will serve the school. The low level buildings to the left of the raised tank are the teachers’ accommodation. Teacher’s pay is 250,000 shillings, or thereabouts, per month. This works out as about £50!!

After this we visited the new borehole on the farmland before seeing water being pumped from the older shallower borehole which was installed early in the life of the farm but which only reaches a depth of 50ft and can run dry later in the dry season.

Vertical electrical sounding was first undertaken to establish most likely water-bearing strata at each new borehole location. A borehole was then drilled in each location to levels suggested by interpretation of the survey results. At the determined best level for supply in each borehole, both a constant discharge test and a recovery test were undertaken. Elias, our ‘godson’ is a trained water-engineer and supervised the work.

Pumps still need to be bought and installed, the Nile Drilling’s report specifies these as needing to be electrical submersible pumps …. Electrical supply: 1.5kW; maximum flow rate: 2.5 metres cubed; required head: 100 metres maximum.

Late afternoon and evening were spent at Katonga Wildlife Reserve.