26. The fortieth day

Today is the fortieth day since I signed the contract with Ibrahim to rebuild the Tuareg well. Today was a day of hope and truth. There is never hope without there having been despair first, and in fact yesterday was a day of discouragement and doubts.

The whole new team had deserted on the pretext of returning home for the night, but then they never returned to work. We had been digging for two days without the depth of the well increasing, work was not progressing, and we are two weeks behind the times foreseen by Ibrahim.

The 5 remaining workers were listless yesterday and Ibrahim himself was in doubt as to how to continue. Ali and I were beginning to lose faith in him. I said to Ali: “Giving water to an entire population is an important job of great merit, we cannot hope that it will be enough just to give money to complete it. It is natural that we have to encounter difficulties in our business.”

Ali and I fell asleep with difficulty, my plane ticket was expiring soon, the well was not advancing, and we couldn’t understand why.

That evening Ali told me: “tomorrow we will know the truth”.

 “What if we don’t?” I replied doubtfully.

“We will,” he declared smiling.

 We all left Timbuktu early in the morning and found the workers ready to work. The Dogon team leader, Mamutu, went down into the well and began digging by immerging himself under the water all morning.

In the meantime, I had warned Ibrahim of what I had decided that night: in four days, whatever depth we have reached, we will close the bottom of the well and stop there. I don’t want to postpone my flight a second time. I have been gone for two months, my work and my family are waiting for me.

At the end of the morning the situation is completely reversed, Mamutu brings out the telescoping cylinders that had allowed us to continue the work without risking the collapse of the well. This simply meant that the problem was solved and that we could now safely continue towards our goal which is to have five meters of water in the well.

Now all we needed to do was to dig, but don’t think it’s a simple thing. There must always be water left in the well to prevent the sand from rising, and the more that is dug, the more time passes, the more the water rises and the diggers are soon forced to dive under two and a half meters of water, to dig with the shovel and fill a burlap sack.

Now all we needed to do was to dig, but don’t think it’s a simple thing. There must always be water left in the well to prevent the sand from rising, and the more that is dug, the more time passes, the more the water rises and the diggers are soon forced to dive under two and a half meters of water, to dig with the shovel and fill a burlap sack.

Ali and I had thought that the new team had deserted because Ibrahim had not paid them. Our suspicions were completely unfounded, Mamutu explained to us what had happened: the expert of the new team had not accepted Mamutu’s criticizms so he left with all the team.

It was he, the expert, who while digging large amounts of sand did not notice that the bottom wasn’t going  down, with the risk of the well collapsing.

The cylinders were blocked by stones and did not go down as they should have done.

Ibrahim was not guilty, indeed he is always generous in his payments and had given the deserters and advance sum which they left with.

Ali asked Mamutu how many days he thought it would take to dig up to 5 meters underwater. Mamutu replied that if there was no unexpected problem, there were three days more of work. My plane ticket was in five days.

I asked the workers: “If you reach the established depth in 3 days, I will give you an extra 20,000 francs each. If you do it in 4 days I will give you 5000 francs and if you do it in 5 days I will give you nothing “.

Twenty thousand francs is 10 days of a good salary. The workers were very excited, happy and motivated by this unexpected opportunity, and that day they dug 70 cm, it was a real pleasure to see them working with such happiness.