I drove Tobia and his crew to an area where they could cut doum palm fronds for the roof of my hut. We got two and one half Land Rover loads. I need to drive them there again tomorrow to get more. They also brought some bamboo for the hut. If they finish it this week, they are to get a bonus.
Photos: Cutting and Loading Doum Palm Fronds
The missionaries here had a birthday party for me this afternoon. Janis Arensen made a very good orange cake. Arensen's gave me an Asterix comic book and McConnel's gave me a card.
The Diguna's had trouble - "kabisa" trouble as Phil would say - in putting up the windmill. ("Kabisa" is Swahili for "utterly" or "completely".) The welder broke down in the morning. Then it appeared that the windmill pump rod was too long. Therefore they first took the welder engine all apart and put it back together. It worked, but they left off the muffler and shields so it was kabisa noisy. They did this in little more than one hour. Then they cut a piece out of the pump rod and welded it back together. This time it seemed too short. We started checking and discovered that the cylinder was too short for the length of stroke of the windmill. Tonight at 8:30 p.m. they were just starting to pull up the pipe out of the well to put on the other cylinder with a longer stroke. (The cylinder is on the lower end of a long pipe that extends from the surface to the bottom of the well. The cylinder is connected to the overhead windmill by a steel rod inside the pipe. When the windmill spins in the wind, the rod goes up and down, causing the cylinder to pump underground water through the pipe to the surface.) I think the Diguna's will need to work most of the night to finish the installation.
Photos: Erection of New Windmill at Lohutok
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