we hit water!
Tuesday, December 27, 2011 at 09:44AM 
I feel like every sentence in this blog post is going to have an exclamation point at the end!!!!!! It's just that we've been waiting impatiently for weeks. It was like one disaster after another in the series of "The Well Saga." The story went something like this– first a failed attempt after weeks of digging a 50 foot hole by hand, and making the cement rings from scratch. Months later we miraculously found a well rig from India. We negotiated and bargained and pled our case. Tope and my Uncle worked their magic to get us pushed up to the front of the list. Then there was the Nepali festival, then a national petrol shortage, then a broken pipe on the rig that took 2 weeks to fix...
Krishna Bogati came running into my room first thing on Christmas morning. "Mom! You got your wish on Christmas!" she said. Sure enough, the team turned up to start drilling on Christmas Day, in the midst of planning our biggest school production of the year and organizing a gift exchange and Christmas for 60+ with a terrible head cold and a teething baby.
But today it was all worth it because we hit water!!! Cha-ching!!! And all of the struggle that we've been through these past 5 years seems to make it all the more special. Water in Nepal is gold. As I write this, it's squirting and churning and splattering here and there and everywhere. We had to break the front gate to get the truck in and cover as much of the house as we could with plastic tarps and I had to kiss my favorite little front garden goodbye because it is currently covered in inches of water. Kopila Valley Children's Home looks like a disaster area. It's covered with muddy water and muddy little footprints everywhere. The machine is really loud and villagers by the hundreds have been in and out through the front gate to watch the production, trying to figure out what the machine we have parked in front of our house is. "Is that a train?" one of my older neighbors asked me yesterday. "I've never seen a train before." I couldn't help but laugh.
We're in the muddy water right now and have just another 20 or 30 feet to go until we have the good, pure clean and clear stuff! In the picture above I'm jumping up and down for Uncle Ed and Julia. We've all been working, praying, and wishing extremely hard for this. The days of water shortages are over. The days of walking the kids up to the dam and an hour to the spring to wash all their clothes and bathe are over. The days of carrying buckets and buckets of water from the neighbors are over. The days of smelly toilets that can't be flushed, and desperately worrying and searching around for drinking water and buying tanks of water to cook food at the school are over! The days of going a week without a shower are OVER! The first thing I'm going to do when this is all hooked up and up and running and filtered and connected to the tanks is take a long hot ten minute shower and cry.
I really believe more than ever today that wishes do come true. Thanks to all of YOU for helping me with this, donating for this well, and putting our dream for water out there into the universe with me. We did it. We've got ourselves some H20!
More video footage (hopefully tomorrow)
Reader Comments (12)
Maggie
How wonderful! Wishes and prayers do come true. Cannot imagine how happy everyone is for this. Can't wait for the videos.
Give Nisha a big hug for me.
Laurie
This post made me so happy. Way to go guys! So glad for you and Kopila Valley!
Yay!!!!!!!!
Yay!!!
I am so happy for you and your family Maggie! I can see that this truly a blessing to all of you, I think prayers have been answered and He is on your side! Take care and give those kids tons of kisses!
Thats a great news!!! So glad to hear that you guys got water finally, I am sure you guys will use it wisely and let your water well recharge once in a while and complete its cycle. Underground water if over used may dry-out to the point of no recovery. just a FYI thing.
What a beautiful new! This change a lot ...
I grow up near a souce of clean, perfect water... and never realized how much it was as long as we was in Kathmandù five years ago.
Congratulations to you all that worked hard for this and didn't stop your hope.
God is good, isn't she?? :)
Emily, your soon to be nurse, and I were sorting though medical supplies today. We were talking about the angst of missing showers and water to wash one's undies etc. You have all been waiting for this for so long. I am so happy for you. Emily's Mom
Terrific. along with this also consider rain-water harvesting to get a year round supply..merry christmas and a happy new year
srini
Now THERE's a Christmas present! I wish you a suitably aqueous 2012.
Congratulations Maggie from all of us at She's the First! This is such amazing news!