Berto’s Day
Jun 09, 2010
For the past nine years Bertolomeus Baga, or Berto as he is known to everyone, has been working for the Sumba Foundation. Each day his job is to turn on and maintain many of the generators and pumps that provide power and water to many of the villages in our area.
In fact, Berto is responsible for half of the Sumba Foundation’s water coverage area so Kaale Sea, the Foundation’s Outreach Co-ordinator spent a day with Berto recently as he made his daily rounds.
First stop for the day is the village of Gallowatu which has a 60 meter deep well - one of 11 deep bore wells the Sumba Foundation has drilled since 2001. A small generator house made of cement blocks with a tin roof ,sits next to the well site and houses the Yanmar TF 65 R Diesel generator which Berto turns on for three hours per day. This is enough time for the two 5,000liter water tanks and a 2,500liter tanks to be filled and used by 235 people living in three nearby villages.
Next to the deep bore well is a hand dug well with a cover and hand pump - one of 47 hand dug wells which the Sumba Foundation has assisted in building. Several teenage girls are supervising five or six children in soaping and washing clothes. The soap they use is a by- product of the Sumba Foundation’s biodiesel plant. The soap is delivered to them for free and is much better for their skin and the groundwater than the cheap detergents most commonly used.
The next stop on Berto’s daily schedule is Hobowawi village which is also is home to the Sumba Foundation’s first primary care and Malaria clinic. In fact, when Berto hand cranks the Hobowawi generator he is not only pumping water to two schools, a village and the clinic but this generator also provides electricity for the clinic to run their microscopes which are used for diagnosing the four types of malaria prevalent in Sumba.
“As we headed off on our motorcycles Berto pointed out a couple of the water stations which are gravity fed from some of the water tanks, ” said Kaale. There are already over 100 of this kind in the surrounding area. These water stations consist of a faucet with an enclosed cement area which is used for washing and water collection.
Waikabonu which supplies water to three giant villages and a school, Pededewatu Clinic, Pahola Village and Rua, is Berto’s third stop for the morning. All of these locations have a water reticulation system where water is pumped from a deep bore well to the highest hill in the area, filling several water tanks that are supported five feet off the ground by a cement pier. Once the tanks are filled Berto turns the generator off and good old trusty gravity brings the water down to the various faucet locations at the villages.
The cost to drill one of these deep bore wells is US$8,000. The reticulation price varies depending on how many villages and the distance of coverage. Some of the materials include water tanks, pipes, cement, rocks , faucets, pumps and a generator.
Berto is in charge of The Sumba Foundation team that oversees these projects. The villagers are required to do as much as they can to help. Claude Graves, co-founder of the Sumba Foundation always re-iterates to the villagers that the villages are responsible for their wells.
“They need to be able to care for their wells. If they help to build a well then they really begin to feel a sense of ownership. In this way they are more capable of maintaining it themselves”.