Greenhouse Drip Irrigation

Great progress continues to be made on different fronts. I believe I have already mentioned that the deep well apparently has huge output potential (to be confirmed when the well test pump arrives)~we stopped drilling at 90 metres after discussing our options. The drill stems(6 METRES EACH) were removed and the permanent bore hole casings were inserted on Thursday June 3. Now we wait for the pump test rig to arrive ~it should have been here yesterday but we are still waiting for it to leave Nairobi. Yesterday they had a water pump problem with their truck engine and as of Saturday at 2pm this is still in the shop being worked on.
On Friday we hired a taxi to go to the Matuu Girls High School (about 3 hours from Ndandini to discuss their greenhouse drip irrigation project. We took along the Ndandini primary school head master the area sub chief and the parents school ommittee chairman. It was a long but productive day ~the Matuu school has been incredibly succesful in raising and marketing tomatoes in greenhouses using drip irrigation ~ a project sponsored by CDF community development fund. It cost 125 000 K shillings approx 1700 U S dollars for a 8 by 15 metre greenhouse´irrigation piping seeds and training. They started this last November and are doing incredibly well ~already making 6000 K shillings each week. The headmistress was so enthusiastic and offered her assistance if Ndandini wanted to submit a proposal to something similar. As she said ~the secret is water and without it we could not have done this. Since they had their bore hole drilled the incidence of fever and illness for the students has also dropped dramatically due to the clean water.

While we were at the school the taxi had the bushings replaced on the taxi. There is no description that I can give you that comes remotely close to describing how bad the roads into Ndandini are.
The many hours together in the taxi with the area sub chief headmaster and school committee chairman were invaluable for discussing the future of the well project and the importance of the skills of the well management committe going forward.
We arrived back after dark feeling very tired. No one in Ndandini has a vehicle ~so the day was very interesting for our passengers but the long drive exhausted them.
Close to the drill site on our return a long fat pinky red snake crossed the dirt track in front of the taxi ~quite fascinating but I hope this is the only one that we see!
As far as food goes we have not been eating too much it's been too hot and we have been busy.. So we have eaten after dark each night fighting with the buugs who attracted either by our soup or by the light from our flash lights!
On that note I will close for now
Jan and Terry