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Well No. 28

 Oga Lata Community Primary School

 Sponsors - Herb and Donna Alfrey, Cannon UMC members

Dacula, Georgia

In April 2006, we drilled a well at the Methodist Church located in the community of Nuevo Asuncion.  However, the locals insist on calling the community by its prior name - Oga Lata - which means "tin house" in the combination of Spanish and Guarani languages.  In the 2 years since the drilling of that well, the local church has worked numerous times with the public school located about 1/2 mile down the road.  The school asked if we could perhaps drill them a well. They had no water supply and had to use the wells from the neighbors.  We explained that the well would have to be completed with a hand pump since there would not be readily available resources to maintain an electric pump.  They were quite satisfied with this approach.  The teachers told us that in the future, they were planning to make an application to the Ministry of Education for an electric pump and water tank.   Therefore, we drilled the well at a diameter and depth that would allow it to be upgraded to an electric pump with the approval of the application.

As you can see below, the school is a humble little facility with 4 classrooms where 80 children are currently attending.  They are all very well behaved children and seemed to be genuinely interested in learning.

We asked that the community provide 2 or 3 helpers and that they feed us lunch each day.  They indeed came out in force and we had plenty of help and great lunches provided by the teachers and their wives.  During the first day of drilling the kids were so eager to get involved that the teachers were concerned for their safety.  Therefore, school was cancelled the next day to minimize the number of kids around the drill rig.  However, we still had a few eager young boys who were more than glad to go down to the creek to help us get water for drilling. 

The drilling sailed along in record time and we finished the well in two days of drilling.  Interestingly, we also finished the nearby well at the church in 2 days as well - the geology in this location is very amenable to our drilling methods.  We did hit some very sticky clay that the kids were collecting as we took it off the drill bit.  They made little balls out of it about the size of marbles and set them in the sun to dry.  They told us that they would use the as ammunition for their slingshots - the local bird population had better beware!!

Once the well was set and the base was poured and allowed to dry, we returned and set the manual pump.  Our crew is getting very good at doing this and we finished in a couple of hours. We left the local Paraguayan crew with the tripod shown in the above photo so that they can do maintenance on the pumps when and if maintenance is needed.  We had left the teachers with a bailer to clean the drilling mud out of the well while we waited for the base to set up and they must have done a lot of work - the water came out crystal clean form the first pump stroke.  All the kids were excited wanted a try at the hand pump - these two cuties were really enjoying themselves !!!

This well definitely was bitter sweet - it is our last well to be drilled in Paraguay before we move on to Nicaragua.  We were thankful to God that it went so nicely and that we were able to glorify Him with such a nice final project.  To God be the Glory!!

 Technical Details

Sponsors:    Herb and Donna Alfrey, Cannon UMC members

                        Dacula, Georgia

Drilling date: Sept 25 - 24, 2008

Location:   Latitude -  S 24°26.927'     Longitude - W 56° 11.161'

Elevation:     242 meters above sea level

Total cost:    $1,971

Drill depth:   43.5  meters (143 ft.)

Soil types encountered:   Sand and clay, with clayey sandstone to clean sandstone at depth

Static groundwater level:     6.35  meters below ground surface

Dynamic groundwater level:      Unknown - hand pump

Installed well depth:  41.3 meters

Length of screened section:   18 meters

Length of gravel packed section:  30 meters

Length and type of sealed section:  Approx. 1 meter of bentonite pellets

Pump description:    Hand pump - Perforagua built

Depth to base of pump:   18 meters

Flow rate:    Hand pump

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