Can of Sprite

Our well drilling is being as successful as we had hoped. The area is very dry and making us drill a lot deeper than originally planned which is using up the budget faster. Yesterday we were drilling in Mkalama village about 7 km from Gairo. We were close to an old (2002) abandoned well and while we were waiting on the drillers to drill more, we got to having a look at it to see why it had been abandoned. Turns out the hand pump on the top of the well had lost its bottom check valve and the villagers had never replaced it so the NGO who installed the pump came and took it away they villagers said. It is a $40 part and they had been without water from this well for about 5 years now. They were using a nearby open pit to get all their water from. Open to surrounding area run off, animals to come to, and their own washing So we figured if we got the villagers to clean out the well we could put a new pump on it and get them a lot of clean water from this sealed well. It was a 1 m diameter well as compared to the 20 cm diameter well we were drilling nearby. This old well flows at 1000 lph where as our drilled one flows at 75 lph. (different circumferential inflow areas) We chipped the concrete cap away to expose a 1 m diameter round lid and flipped it over to the side to get access to the well. It was about 4 m deep with 3 m of water and sticks in it that the locals kids and put in there over time. One of the local villagers striped down to his shorts and then put a long log down the well to act as a ladder! so he could climb down into it. Others on top lowered down a bucket on rope to him to fill the bucket then they would pull it up and dump its contents off to the side. This poor guy down the well would get water spilt all over him as they lifted it up and stones and dirt kicked down on him from the workers above. He was down there for about 4 hours filling this bucket time and time again. But he did a great job.
When he finally came out I gave him a can of Sprite for his efforts. This is one of the Aluminium cans with the pull tab. He put it on the ground not really knowing what it was let alone how to open it. This old Masai shepherd came in his purple red wrap around and staff, and peered at the can, picking it up looking at the top and bottom and the ring. It was like a scene from ‘The Gods must be Crazy’ movie as he had obviously never seen a soda can before and didn’t know what to make of it. They left taking the unopened can with them.
You see some weird things here at times.