The Logone Oriental region is one of the most populated regions of Southern Chad. It is a rather flat savannah, where most of the population lives in villages with an average population of 500 people. The regional capital, Doba, has roughly 100,000 people, and the region around 600,000. Most people work in farming, raising cattle and small artisanal industry. People are quite poor. Villages have no electricity or running water, but there are water wells in most villages.

It rains around 1,300 mm a year: supply of water is not an issue. There are two types of improved water systems: open large diameter wells and drilled wells equipped with pumps. Since the early 1990’s, there has been a significant effort to equip villages with wells, either from large international donors (Unicef, AFD, EU), religious organisations (Catholic Church, World Vision), oil companies, who exploit several oilfields in the Kome area (Esso) or the government of Chad, who has a program devoting 5% of the oil revenue to the local area.

The large diameter wells have a big advantage: they do not break down, and water is always available, except in the case of a severe drought. But the quality of water is not very good: polluted items can fall in the well, and the water needs to be treated. Drilled wells equipped with pumps provide usually excellent quality of water, but the pumps can and do fail.

Our IDO volunteers come from the oil industry working in the Kome area. They are all Chadian, often originally from the area and are technicians working in the oilfields. Most of them are technically very competent. IDO employs a full time person who runs the organisation in Chad, who is a Chadian from the area and speaks the local language (Ngombay). We have a pickup truck and a guesthouse in Doba to house our volunteers during their missions.

IDO started operations in the Logone Oriental in December 2009.

We started first by doing an inventory of the water wells in our area. As of June 30^th 2011, roughly 18 months after we started, we have inventoried 214 wells in 124 villages. Out of these 214 wells, only 64 (i.e. 30%) were operational when we saw them first. Some of the broken wells had been down for 5 or 10 years, but there were also some very recent wells, less than 12 months old, that were down.

We found 4 types of pumps: Vergnet, India, UPM and electric. We counted 7 electric pumps, (2 working), 24 UPM pumps (2 working), 29 India pumps (10 working) and 154 Vergnet pumps (50 working). We have concentrated on Vergnet and UPM pumps, and we have not yet addressed the India or electric pumps. The situation of electric pumps is very disturbing: often they replaced working manual pumps, yet most of them are down because the electricity supply, either generators or solar panels have been stolen. In this paper we concentrate on the Vergnet and UPM pumps.

When we asked a village if they had tried to repair the broken pumps, most responded that they had tried, but were not successful, either because they could not find a reliable artisan-repairman, or that spare parts were difficult to get. We also noted that the village chief, invariably a man, is not above asking the village women to walk to the next working well sometimes many kilometers away, and carry back the water. When we asked the artisans-repairmen why they did not repair more wells, they said they had difficulties in getting paid, and that repair was not a very good business, so they had to do something else (bicycle repair is popular). Yet, we found 5 artisans-repairmen in the area who have been trained at the time of the drilling of the wells. We also found reliable spare parts suppliers in Moundou, a large city on the western border of our region. The suppliers have parts for Vergnet and India pumps. UPM is a different issue we discuss at the end of this section.

After some early trials and field training of our volunteers, we developed a strategy we call Awareness- Diagnostic- Repair (ADR).

• The first step is a village awareness session, where, in collaboration with partner organisations that are active and present in the villages, we explain the importance of clean water (which is already known by most villagers) and how they should proceed if their well is down and they wish to fix it (call us…).
• In the second step we come to the village with volunteers at our own initiative and cost, and make a diagnostic of the pump. We give the village chief a written estimate of the cost of repair. We wait for the village to call us back to tell us if they want to repair and if they have succeeded in collecting the money to pay for it.
• The third step is done if the village has decided to make the repair and collected the money. We then come to the village with an artisan-repairman and a full set of spare parts we have bought from the supplier. The pump is then repaired and the village pays the salary of the repairman and the spare parts. Having a complete set of spare parts is essential: it guarantees that the pump will be repaired on the first attempt and avoids expensive and time-consuming trips to the part supplier.

In about half the cases so far the village does not call back after the diagnostic and estimate. However, this is becoming less frequent as our reputation for getting pumps to work becomes known in the region.

For UPM pumps, which are quite old (most were installed in the late 80’s), there is the added issue of the French pump manufacturer gone bankrupt: spare parts were not available. To solve this problem, we have designed and manufactured ourselves these spare parts, and we have installed them in one of the pumps, with great success so far. After confirming that our spare parts work well, we plan to follow exactly the same ADR approach as described above.

When we started in Chad in 2008/2009, IDO received from Planet Action both satellite pictures from Chad and two copies of the ArcInfo software, which have been extremely useful to map our progress. We thank again Planet Action for its support!

All our results have been mapped using ArcMap and we have produced large maps (A0) that are given to local authorities and our partners. These maps play an essential role in showing the real situation in the field, making local authorities realise the seriousness of the situation. Region map.

Using our ADR strategy, we have made 51 repairs on 45 pumps (some pumps failed more than once). The average total cost of repair for the village is 125$, 110$ for spare parts, 15$ for the repairman. This compares with an amount of 10,000$ for drilling and equipping a new well. The most expensive repair so far was 950$, and the less expensive around 1.3$, yet in all cases there was no problem for the villages to pay.

We were quite surprised by this, but we understood that because of our approach, the villages trust that the well will work afterwards, and that they will not be overcharged for unnecessary spare part replacement (something the artisans-repairmen used to do, impossible now under the watch of our technically competent volunteers). As a result of our action, the percentage of working pumps went from 30 to 50%. If we look at the Vergnet pumps only, out of 154 pumps, the number of working pumps went from 50 to 94, and the percentage from 32% to 61%.

The lessons learned are as follows:

1. New well drilling is useless unless a permanent sustainable maintenance system is put in place as well. Repairing a well costs 125$, drilling a new one 10,000$, but most large well drilling projects do not include the establishment of a permanent maintenance organisation and stop after training some artisans-repairmen and making sure there are spare part suppliers. Yet without this maintenance organisation, the villages are just not able to manage their wells. Such an organisation need not cost very much: we estimate that one person with a transport could take care of 500 wells. In our area, the annual cost would much less than 1% of the initial cost of the project.
2. The availability of artisans-repairmen and suppliers of spare parts is necessary, but not sufficient: the villages need help in organising the repair. It is of course necessary to have artisan-réparateurs and spare parts suppliers. Without them, the situation is hopeless. But it is not enough. Without a competent person organizing repairs the village is quite lost and prone to spend money inefficiently and eventually to give up, leaving women the hard choice between having their family drink dirty water or walking several hours everyday to carry back water. In our region, a maintenance organisation existed around 10 years ago, run by the local representative of the Ministry of Water, and the situation was quite good. Unfortunately, this maintenance organisation was disbanded, and the situation got very bad quite quickly. 
3. The villages are ready to pay for the repair if they trust the quality of the work done. In our area, villagers are very aware of the importance of clean drinking water, but they need to be sure that the money they will spend on the repair will produce results. When it is the case, paying is not a problem. In the words of one of these women: “ Why do we have the money to buy drugs for the sick children when they drink dirty water, but not when we need to repair the well that provides the clean water?”