Today we began drilling our last attempt at a second borehole well in Chilimani. According to our resistivity testing, our most promising location was near the center of the village near a previously hand-dug shallow well that had run dry. When we reached 23 meters we struck water! We kept drilling down to 40 meters.
While we were drilling, one of our translators, Martha, gave us a small lesson in the local language of Chichewa. One of the phrases I remembered the most was ‘Malawi a moto’ which translates to flames of fire and is part of how the country got its name.
Towards the end of our drilling, the combination of the coarseness of the soil as well as the abundance of Micah present indicated that the well would be very productive, possibly even more so than the first well we drilled! With the excitement of the new well, a couple of us danced with some of the children who were at the site to some Malawian songs.
Everyone’s spirts were high. As it was, our driver, Joe’s, birthday we went to lunch at a restaurant called Dominoes- not the pizza place- where we had some pizza, chicken, and shwarma. Following lunch, we drove up the Zomba Plateau. At our first stop, we hiked a short path to a waterfall that was breathtaking. We went back into the truck to go to the top of the plateau to Emperor’s View. Although some of the view was hazy from dust and the day’s cooking fires, you could still see the beauty of the city. And as we made our way back down the plateau, we stopped at a couple of street vendors for fresh strawberries and goose berries that we later had with our dinner. It was the perfect ending to a day that I would consider a positive turning point for our trip.