Water for Life on the Coast: Wells in Monsefú & Reque

29 April 2018

The pace of our humanitarian mission continues as we labor on the many projects we currently have in work.

Wells up North

Our water projects along the coast of northern Peru have been underway for the past 8 years - installing wells in remote farming villages around Monsefú. We provide the materials, and then the local government digs the wells, builds the well houses and towers, and installs the pumps and tanks.

These projects have been worked on by several senior missionary couples before us, and we feel we have been handed the torch to carry on as projects in this area continue to unfold.

When a well is completed, a local village then has dependable water (as opposed to the polluted streams where they previously got their water). Our previous project in Monsefú (now almost complete) installed 18 wells.

The wells and water towers are beautiful to see, rising above the humble little villages they serve.

Recently completed well in Monsefú.

More Wells on the Way

Now, the next wave of wells are currently under way. This time, an additional 8 wells are going into Monsefú and 5 wells are going into the neighboring town of Reque. These wells, once completed, will serve many hundreds of families in these farming communities in northern Peru.

Monsefú and Reque with their small villages where the wells will be built. Managing projects that are several hundred miles away is a real challenge.

The Challenge - Managing Construction of Distant Wells

Once a well project gets approved, the real work begins. Ordering all the building supplies and making sure everything runs smoothly on the projects that are 500 miles away in Monsefú and Reque is a real challenge. 

Our work involves developing contracts with the local government, making budgets, holding competitive bids, writing requisitions and purchase orders, and making lots of phone calls and emails to followup on deliveries. This is part of the many hundreds of hours we spend making sure these distant projects proceed successfully.

Now, 6 months after both projects were approved, and after lots of work in our office (mostly by Sandy and our Purchasing Department), things started coming in this week into Reque and Monsefú. Once the deliveries are complete, the projects can move into the drilling and construction phases.

Trucks bringing in the building materials for the wells: bricks, bentonite, cement, metal rebar, and lots of other supplies.

Tons of metal rebar, cement, and bricks are shown here arriving on site this week.

We have hired a hydrology engineer, Oscar Castro, a member of the church who lives up north, to monitor delivery of the goods and make sure everything arrives in good shape. He will also provide monitoring after the wells are done to make sure they work as designed.

Our engineer, Oscar Castro, monitoring the delivery of the casing tubes and water tanks.

Oscar was on-site when the sand and gravel (plus other materials) were arriving this week.

These well projects are really, really big in terms of the effort by many people to make them happen. But the end result of the well projects is a community that can now have dependable water where none existed previously.

With the most important items now on site, drilling got started this week on the first wells in Reque.

We are grateful that Oscar Castro can be on site to monitor this project. As a trained engineer, he knows what to look for. If we did not have his help, we would end up spending days (or weeks) living out of hotels up north while these projects moved forward.

Oscar dropped by one of the current wells in Monsefú to inspect it before leaving town. He sent a cute picture of neighbor children, the ones who will end up benefiting most from these wells.

Children from Monsefú showing off the water from their spigot (each home gets one spigot outside their front door to take care of all the family's needs). These wells will positively impact thousands of people in this region.

The well projects bring water, a most precious gift, to those that would never be able to afford it on their own. Their job now, as a community, is to keep the wells functional through the monthly fees they collect from their users.