I'll Bet You A Dollar

I recall one story from the time that we lived in Bayad, the small Egyptian village sandwiched between the Nile and the desert. We were there from 1978 and 1982. Right in the middle of that time Ike and Charlene Powell became the new project directors, and this story is about an incident on one of their first days in the village.

Most of us remember Bayad as the place where villagers created a miracle by building their own water system, and in the process overcoming a cloud of despair and breaking deeply-held images of impossibility about what villagers could accomplish. The day Ike arrived on the scene, I was working with the Bayad water team. We were just finishing up a new well in the neighboring village of Sheik Ali. We had set up a digging apparatus right next to the Nile with consisting of a tripod of sturdy pipes with a mechanical winch hanging in the middle. The men would dig wells by digging out the mud and sand within a twenty foot long pipe that was about six inches in diameter. As they dug, the pipe would sink deeper into the earth. When the digging was completed, they would drop a well casing into the larger pipe, and would then pull the outer pipe out of the ground. Ike Powell arrived fresh from the city when we were about to pull the large pipe out of the ground. Ike saw our tripod, winch, and rope just as our strong-armed team leader, Abdul Hamid, was tying the rope connecting the winch to the pipe. Abdul Hamid was an uneducated local villager, but a man with a penetrating intelligence about ropes and pulleys born of a lifetime piloting a felluca (sailboat) on the Nile.

Ike said, "There is no way on earth that that rope can possibly grip that pipe strongly enough to pull it out of the ground!" Abdul Hamid just grinned, and bet Ike one Egyptian pound (about a dollar) that he could do it. Ike took him up on the friendly wager.

With exaggerated nonchalance, Abdul Hamid wrapped a rope three times around the pipe, not even bothering to pull the rope tight, then looped the rope up around the hook attached to the pulleys. He began pulling on a rope which went up to a series of large pulleys that provided tremendous mechanical advantage in pulling up on the rope so casually attached to the pipe. As he pulled, the rope inexorably tightened, and gripped the pipe like a vise. The tension increasing to the breaking point, and Abdul Hamid's muscles bulged with the strain. Then suddenly, but nearly invisibly, the pipe began to move. The tension eased, and the pipe slid easily right out of the ground.

Ike laughed and admitted defeat. Abdul Hamid's face had a smile that went ear to ear. Ike and our team learned a valuable lesson that day. While we from outside Egypt may know many things, and have some modest things to offer the villages, we should never underestimate the canny intelligence of the villagers themselves. And concerning ropes, pipes, and pulleys, never make a bet with an "uneducated" Egyptian boatman!

-- TimWegner - 03 Jun 2006

• Abdul Hamid at the Bayad Pump: