Jason Miller- Nairobi Kenya
Working in remote Africa has its challenges, and over time you learn that even the simplest task can turn into a full-scale expedition. It’s part of what makes life out here both frustrating and strangely entertaining. In places where there are no nearby shops, no reliable roads, and very few backup plans, a forgotten tool can become the center of your entire week.
I was in rural South Sudan managing a water filtration project in a region where road travel was considered a bad life choice, so nearly everything had to arrive by small aircraft. Most families here collect water from rivers, ponds, and swamps, and our plan was to distribute five-gallon buckets fitted with gravity-fed filters. Dirty water in the top, clean water out the bottom. Simple, effective, life-changing technology.
Of course, simple projects have a habit of hiding one spectacularly inconvenient detail.
The filters had already made the long journey from the United States through Addis Ababa and onward into South Sudan. The buckets had been purchased in Juba after much effort and at prices that suggested they were handcrafted by Italian designers rather than mass-produced plastic containers.
Weeks of coordination went into getting everything staged in the village before I arrived.
When my little Cessna finally bounced onto the dusty airstrip and rolled to a stop under the afternoon sun, all the supplies were there waiting.
Almost all.
We were missing one tiny but extremely important item:
A drill bit.
Not the drill itself. Just the bit needed to drill the perfect hole into the bottom of 400 buckets. Specifically, a 21mm—or 13/16-inch—flat bit. Too small and the filter wouldn’t fit. Too large and every bucket would leak like an old fishing boat.
Back home this problem would require ten minutes and a mildly annoying trip to Home Depot. Here, there was no Home Depot. There wasn’t even a “guy with tools.” There was simply bush, heat, and a growing sense that this drill bit was becoming the most valuable object in East Africa.
Driving to another town wasn’t an option because the roads were dangerous and flying in a single drill bit would cost approximately the GDP of a medium-sized village.
So we got on the shortwave radio and started asking around East Africa like we were searching for a kidney donor.
Finally, a pilot replied that he was flying cargo near our village the next day and could bring a drill bit from Juba if we could get one to the airport in time.
Excellent.
I contacted a friend in Juba over WhatsApp and asked him to urgently find a 21mm—or 13/16-inch—drill bit.
That’s when the adventure truly began.
English was not his first language. My Arabic consists mostly of greetings and apologizing. Add fractional imperial measurements into the mix and things unraveled immediately.
A few hours later he messaged:
“I found 18.”
I replied, “18 won’t work.”
He insisted, “18 is powerful enough for bucket.”
Powerful?
After several confusing exchanges, I realized my friend had purchased an 18-volt drill.
Ah.
“No, no,” I typed. “I don’t need the drill. I need the bit.”
Pause.
“What is bit?”
At this point I was sitting under a tin roof in rural South Sudan trying to explain the concept of a drill bit over WhatsApp with intermittent internet and two overlapping language barriers. It felt less like project management and more like a hostage negotiation.
Eventually he sent me a photo of a small rusty drill bit he’d located in the market. It looked as though it had already drilled through several decades of civil engineering projects.
I managed to connect to Starlink long enough to download a picture of the exact flat bit we needed and sent it over.
A couple hours later another message arrived.
“I found bits.”
Attached was a proud photo of a 13mm and 16mm flat bit. He explained he was already racing toward the airport on the back of a motorcycle.
And then I realized my mistake.
When I had written “13/16 or 21mm,” he had naturally interpreted this as “13 and 16… or perhaps also 21.” Yeah, my fault completely.
At that moment I decided the imperial measurement system deserved every insult it has ever received.
I politely asked him to go back and search specifically for a 21mm bit.
Then silence.
Meanwhile, I wandered around the village trying to calculate how many months it would take to hand-carve 400 buckets with a pocketknife and declining mental health.
Finally, late that night, a message arrived:
“Delivered to airport.”
No details. No photo. Just enough information to ensure I would spend the entire night wondering what exactly was now flying toward us.
The next afternoon a small aircraft circled over the village and landed in a cloud of dust. We bounced across the field in the back of a Land Cruiser to meet it while goats scattered dramatically from the runway like they were extras in an action film.
The pilot unloaded several boxes before finally handing me a heavy blue bag.
Very heavy.
Far too heavy to contain a single drill bit.
I unzipped it right there beside the plane.
Inside was a brand-new 18-volt drill in a hard case.
A 13mm bit.
A 16mm bit.
A shiny new 21mm bit.
And tucked carefully into the corner like a treasured family heirloom was the original rusty little 6mm bit.
Honestly, after all the confusion, delays, and increasingly absurd conversations, I couldn’t stop laughing.
Out here, even the smallest tasks become adventures. But somehow, against all odds and several measurement systems, things usually work out in the end.
Jason Miller (Kyalo) 