WorldWide Drilling Resource

by Tim Rasmussen Seth Weilage walked around in the cavernous room at the Groundwater Week convention in Nashville last December. There were hundreds of booths and exhibits of machinery and equip- ment, but he was keeping his eye open for Water For Life (WFL). Seth introduced himself when he found the WFL booth. He had seen the booth at previous conventions and wanted to talk to Gary Bartholomew. Seth wanted to get some experience on a cable rig and had always wondered about drilling on some sort of mission project. He wanted to do something like this, so he took a chance and volunteered to come for two weeks and find out what it was like. Fast Forward to Guatemela - Nuevo Santa Elena is a little barrio outside of the city of Santa Elena. There is no public water source in the village. The community gets water delivered and placed into open barrels beside the road. The villagers dip buckets of water from the barrels for use at home. This is the only place the people have to get water. This all changed with the help of Water For Life, and two volunteers. Seth Weilage from Council Bluffs, Iowa, teamed up with Adrian VanMourik of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to bring real changes to the people who live beside the road in this little village. Adrian had been a volunteer before, and was eager to come back for another season. The drilling site in Nuevo Santa Elena was on the side of a hill, but there was a level pad and the access was not too dif- ficult. It was hot and the sun was high as Seth sat in the little shade he could find. He was getting used to the noise of the cable tool relentlessly dropping the drill string, picking it up to drop it again; but he wished the breeze would pick up. He and Adrian were making slow and steady progress with the drill. He noticed some of the village ladies drifting by. Each had a water jug on their hip or was carrying it. They were headed to the large open barrels of water the city placed for the villagers beside the road. The city sent a truck twice a week to refill the barrels, but there was no lid or spigot on them. After a while, Seth would see the ladies walking back, usually with the jugs balanced on their head or carried on their hip. They laughed and talked as they walked in the heat carrying the heavy jugs. Their homes were not much - some boards for walls, a few pieces of tin for roofs, and dirt floors were the usual. Here and there were some small concrete block rooms. There were thin dogs and chickens running around picking up every edible scrap of anything, and children playing amongst them. He had not seen any sanitary facilities anywhere. This was village life, hard and dirty. More of Seth’s experience drilling in Nuevo Santa Elena next month. If you would like to help, contact Gary Bartholomew at 509-466-5075 or 509-939-1941 Tim Tim Rasmussen may be contacted via e-mail to michele@ worldwidedrillingresource.com 50 MARCH 2018 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® WWDR wishes you a happy St. Patrick’s Day!