WorldWide Drilling Resource

49 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® MAY 2015 Water for Life International by Tim Rasmussen and Gary Bartholomew Every year, the volunteers who arrive first at our facilities in Guatemala have a big job to do. All the apartments must be cleaned and the geckos, lizards, and occasional scorpion must be removed. There are screens on the windows, but the creatures come through any small crack. There is dust everywhere. The apartments must be made ready to re- ceive the volunteers. The bedding is washed and distributed. The cabinets are cleaned and made suitable for stor- age of personal items, floors swept and mopped. In the shop each year, the initial start-up of the vehicles involves check- ing fluids, batteries, changing oil and filters, airing or repairing tires, and fix- ing the obvious problems we may see. We have more than ten vehicles on the road in Guatemala, and getting them all up and running after sitting still for eight months in the humidity and heat requires a lot of attention. For example, the emergency brake on one of the pickups was seized in the sheath and required nearly two days to get it operating freely. After using one of the vehicles for awhile this year, a carrier bearing on the driveline went bad and the replacement from Ford in the U.S. was too small in diameter. A vac- uum pump seized (which impacts the whole array of things operated by the serpentine belt), a fender nearly fell off, and a starter began dragging too slowly to start the diesel engine. The well drill rigs have rusty brake drums on the cable reels and these must be serviced. There are also several engines on the rigs and welders which we have to get up and running. Trying to find replacement items in Guatemala for some of the parts is im- possible, so some of these items are sent from the U.S. with the next volun- teers coming to Guatemala. The drill operators are anxious to get drilling in the remote villages. The villages we've chosen, along with the mayor's input, are typical villages where the pigs run free and most of the chil- dren are bare butt most of the time. Most of the folks in these villages speak the Quiche' dialect. It is a native lan- guage that is not like Spanish, and people fluent in Spanish cannot understand much of what is said. We have some people who can speak it, and often there are people in the village who can speak in Spanish, so we get by. There is no grid power in most of these villages. Water for Life International and our drill crews prefer working in remote vil- lages where the need is obvious, rather than a large municipality with concrete streets. Please come and help us. There are lives you can change, not counting your own. If you would like to help, please contact Gary Bartholomew at 509-466-5075 or 509-939-1941 Tim Tim Rasmussen may be contacted via e-mail at michele@ worldwidedrillingresource.com +3$ (1 -.2 )312 /0("$ !32 2'$ .4$0 ++ 1$04("$ -# $6/$0($-"$ .%%$0$# !7 '0../ ."* (2 .,/ -7 - $&(12$0$# 0& -(8 2(.- .6 9 .-* 5 6 , (+ 1 +$1 2'0../0."*!(2 "., 555 2'0../0."*!(2 ".,