I love a good story, and this is a great story about my friend Robert who helped dig a well in Kenya, Africa. We’ve had an email correspondence interview and that is what I’m sharing here as a follow up to the 5 Part series through John 4 where we studied the account of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well.
Clean water is essential to life. There are many great ministries doing work like this around the world and I link to a couple at the end of this interview, but Rob was in Kenya with a Navy Construction Battalion, also known as SeaBees.
The first part of the interview covers the practical side of his experience in Kenya and in the last part he was so generous to share his testimony and how his faith impacted his experience in Kenya and his military service. Let’s jump right in.
Me: When and where did your well digging experience take place?
Rob: It was in 2007. We set up a tent camp in a tiny Kenyan desert town called Shant Abaq. It was about an hours drive through the brush from a larger city called Garissa. We were very close to the Somalia border. We also had a Kenyan Army security team.
Me: Who were you working with?
Rob: There was a team of 14 of us. It was when I was Active Duty as a Navy Seabee. It was mostly comprised of EOs, equipment operators, and CMs, construction mechanics. I was the only SW, steelworker. We also had a Kenyan Army team that was set up a mile away. Although they never put steel in the ground. They were just hanging out because we were so close to Somalia and were located on a popular drug running route.
Me: Who were you digging the well for and why?
Rob: The small town was a watering hole for nomadic herders of cows, goats, and sheep. They only had 1 well for water they shared for everything. And the herds would contaminate the well water with feces. So we drilled a well outside of the village by about an 1/8 mile.
Me: How did you guys know where to dig? How did you find the water?
Rob: They look at a satellite image of the area, and use known geological data to best guess where an aquifer might be. They gave us a GPS location… And with a little skill, and a lot of luck, we found water.
Rob: I welded for 27 hours straight. Once you start, you can’t stop. And I was the only welder…
The screens are steel pipe with small slits in them. They’re placed at the depths where water is found to allow it to seep into the casing. Our well was about 800′ deep and we had about 90′ worth of screens. Once all the casing is lowered in, an electric water pump is lowered about 30′ off the bottom. This is to keep from getting dirt pushed up with the water. The pump just forces the water up the casing.
Our well produced 8 gallons a minute for 10 min. Then it had to recharge, or let water seep in to refill it full, for 3 min. The water would fill on its own to about 16′ from the top of the well, and the water table was 240′ down. So that was a good aquifer we hit.
On our way out of Africa, we stopped in Djibouti. The well team all went snorkeling in the Red Sea with whale sharks. This is me!
Me: How long have you been in the Navy and what is your current rank and assignment?
Rob: 10 years active, 3 years reserve. I am a E6 now. Petty Officer First Class. Currently I am an instructor at Naval Construction Group 1. I primarily teach Basic Combat Skills, and am a range coach. BCS is just like it sounds. It covers a lot of basic tactical maneuvers like setting up a convoy, how to conduct a patrol, land navigation… And as a range coach I get to do one of my favorite things; teach others how to shoot. I get to instruct handgun, rifle, and shotgun.
Me: How long have you been a Christian?
Rob: I have been a Christian my entire life. A better question is ‘how have I been as a Christian?’ I grew up in a Christian Reformed church. It was traditional in service, praise, and dress. They started becoming more modern in the sense they got a band… We went every Sunday until I was 9.
My parents divorced when I was 5, and we moved when I was 9. We never found another church with my Mom. My Dad left the church after the divorce. They treated him very poorly and he found them hypocritical. He is a religious man to this day, but doesn’t attend church. So that was my early childhood experience.
When I got into middle school and lived with my Dad I became friends with the family across the street. They attended a Non-Denominational church. I fell in love with it. The music was alive. The people were in love with God. And everyone was so welcoming and loving. For the rest of high school I went to that church every Sunday, and got involved in youth ministry on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
When I got to boot camp I attended church every Sunday. It was an hour a week where I got to be myself. Worshiping kept me sane. After boot camp I went to a 2 month school to learn my job as a welder. It was here where I started to fall away from God. I didn’t find a church there, and I didn’t find one when I got to California.
God is a funny thing in the military I’ve come to find out. There are a very small few who openly talk about their faith. And a slightly larger number who attend services regularly. I think about 3/4 would say they’re Christian, but that’s as far as their religion goes. But as whole, the military supports believing in God very heavily. Personally, I fell into the category of the members who had Christian placed on my dog tags, so should I die, they would follow traditional customs for a Christian burial.
So, as all good, cold feet Christians, I found God again during my deployment to Iraq. To spare you the details, it was a very stressful environment. I remembered how great it was in boot camp to go to service. But I didn’t have that this time. So I relied on praying. A lot. I wouldn’t say I was praying without faith, but I was being a Christian of convenience. I called to God when I needed him. But once I returned and he had got me through what I had asked for, I forgot about him. I didn’t thank him.
That lasted another year until I met Ashley, my now wife. She was religious. And part of my way of becoming more attractive to her was to attend services with her. It felt good to get back to going. But she was a Lutheran, and it bored me to tears. Finally I convinced her to go to a Non-Denominational church with me. She fell in love with it, as did I again.
Since then, our family attends regularly. We brought prayer back into our daily lives as a family before meals and bed. So there is the long answer to a short question. I am not a perfect Christian to this day, as much as I try. Cursing is one thing I have a hard time breaking…. Military and police life make that difficult.
Me: How does your faith impact you in your military service?
Rob: Once I found my faith again with Ashley in 2006, it has been a large part in my life. The hard part is reconciling some things that happened in Iraq. But I didn’t deploy with the intent to harm anyone. I wanted to help my fellow Christians have the freedom to praise and worship without fear of their entire families being killed. It is something I continue to struggle with, and others I know as well.
Me: Did your faith help you in your well-digging experience?
Rob: I loved getting the chance to talk to the local village about their experiences with Christ. It was a Christian village we drilled in. For a people with so little in the way of material things, struggling to get food and clean water, they were so in love with God. It was amazing to see how God worked in their lives. You get there and think how miserable it would be to live in a mud hut. No running water. No electricity. Scarce clean water. Inconsistent food sources. Yet, they were happy…
Me: Were any of the other’s on your team also believers? If so, did that have any impact on the team?
Rob: I was the only one who read the bible and prayed. There were others who had a background in Christian churches, and everyone was a Christian. I put together a Christmas service. And to my surprise, everyone attended. We took communion with my pastor over a satellite phone… It was a great experience.
Me: How were you able to sustain welding for 27 hours?
Rob: By the end of it… a lot of cursing lol. But seriously, it is just my personality. I get my mind set on something, and I am a freight train. I am very driven to accomplish what I set my goals to be. I hate failure. And my job as a welder was to make this happen. Not only did my team depend on me to finish this, but so did an entire village of 70 some people. From tiny babies, to the frailest of the elderly. For some of them, their lives depended on clean water. It was a huge burden lifted for all of them. So I placed a lot of pressure on myself to succeed.
Me: Other than the welding marathon what was the biggest challenge in your experience?
Rob: Time away from my family members. I have missed so much. Things you can’t ever make up. Births of my nieces and nephews, weddings of brothers and sister. Seeing a loved one in their final days. And missing a funeral once. You miss the milestones of your kids. First words. First steps. So much others take for granted, I have missed.
Me: Is well-digging a pretty common military project? I guess what I’m getting at here is that a lot of mainstream media talks about the awful stuff that happens but we don’t see hardly any stories like yours about the folks who get sent out to be a practical help in other parts of the world.
Rob: SeaBees secondary mission behind supporting war efforts is humanitarian. At anytime, SeaBees are helping others. You name a natural disaster, and we’re there to help. We build schools. We build hospitals. We build housing. We build orphanages. We drill wells. We clear debris. We do it all. And we do it with little fan fare. We are a humble group. But if you do some google searches on SeaBees and humanitarian work, you should find examples abound.
Wow Rob! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and your heart with us. Thank you for your service and sacrifices for your country. I pray God continues to bless you and your family.
Resources: More information about the Navy SeaBees and Christian Ministries that dig wells
A Brief history of the Navy SeaBees
Official Website of the U.S. Naval Construction Force
Infographic – A Closer Look: How Wells Work
Samaritan’s Purse International