Houey Chort village was a ghost town
January 4, 2012Houey Chort is home to 150 children in a village of 700.
However, on the day that we arrived at the village, nobody was in sight. Something was wrong and nobody told us about it. And the fact that nobody informed us that the pump was not working, meant that we drove one hour into the jungle to celebrate a broken pump. It was not the climatic day we were planning for. We sat there for about 15 minutes as Mr. Seho (water pump contractor) pumped the handle up and down. Not a drop amounted. We were hot, frustrated by the lack of Lao communication, and a bit annoyed with the situation. Jackie (our translator) informed us that Mr. Seho thought that one of the seals that connects the PVC pipe was not working, thus, no suction was possible to pull the water from the ground. On the day before, we had seen muddy water come from the pump, so we knew that there was water in the ground. Thankfully so, or we may have been a lot more concerned considering that time and energy it would take to drill another pump. Mr. Seho insured us that he was 100% sure that the pump would work and that clean water would flow. Our plan was to return the next day to open the top of the pump to pull out the PVC pipe and replace the faulty seal.
It has become quite apparent to me that life in the developing world goes at the pace it wants to. No matter how much we planned out our story line or our daily agenda, it changed. Whether it was school being cancelled, holidays making people late, or equipment failure, you just have to go with the flow. To fight against our development goals this trip could have made us go crazy. Instead, we all just smiled and laughed as best we could. Heck, I guess we are in the land of the Buddha. 
Stay tuned as we attempt to fix the pump and get clean water flowing for this community…
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
