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Voices from the field: Team 2!

Posted on January 9, 2011January 11, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

Day 3 of Implementation: Building Stand in Yipela/Distributing Storage Containers

Today was amazing. It is hard to believe we could top the past week of awesome events and yet we have. The people of Team 2 and the village of Yipela, especially the women, made it super special. In the morning we built the stand for our polytank. Our village really took ownership of the project. We traced and retraced the design in the sand where the men had chosen to build the center. Nearly 15 men came down to assemble the stand’s walls, cutting the cement bricks as needed. Then came the cement. The men said that Sarah and Hannah did not need to help because they were women and visitors, but Hanna would not take “no” for an answer. As Hannah used her hands to cement the bricks together, Sarah and a woman from the village jumped in, too. This woman was superwoman #1 of the day. She did the work just like the village men even though she was the only woman and she is going to help run the center.

Our surprise of the morning was receiving the household list we’d requested in our chief meeting the previous day. We did not have 30 or 40 families, but 128 – a number nearly double what CWS had thought was most likely the village size! So, we returned in the afternoon with Wahab, a second translator, over 100 safe storage containers, and Cam’s brilliant plan for mass distribution. Nearly 300 people – men, women and children – gathered around the tree to hear Cam and TJ’s initial speech about how to use the “special containers for drinking water.” Then we moved right into phase two: distribution. TJ called out names and handed out buckets before sending people in groups of 10 to Cam. Then Cam and Wahab reiterated the rules before people brought the buckets home. It was so exciting to watch children running into the distance carrying a bright blue bucket. Meanwhile, Nate, Sarah and Hannah had an extremely efficient assembly line going. Nate cut the buckets open, Hannah taped the taps, and Sarah screwed the taps into the buckets. In the middle of this process, we met superwoman #2. This awesome woman danced her way from the crowd to TJ and continued dancing all the way to Cam. She was probably around 55 years old and got the whole village cheering!

By the end of the day, Cam’s voice was hoarse and Nate, Sarah, and Hannah had extremely sore hands. But it was well worth it. We had handed out nearly 70 buckets! We probably did the last 15 by flashlight before calling it a night. We drove home giddy with excitement, listening to the only song that plays without skipping of the truck’s cds on repeat. Team 2 has now heard the same Don Carlos song for 6 hours and the only line we can decipher is, “I woke up this morning.” Who could have predicted the day we would have when we woke up this morning?! We cannot wait for tomorrow! 🙂

– Team 2: Cam, Hannah, Nate & Sarah

Voices from the field: Team 3!

Posted on January 9, 2011January 11, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

Day 2 of Implementation: Community Meeting/Building Stand in Kpallabisi

Today we met with our whole community for the first time. Our village, called Kpallabisi, has about 150 households, so over 100 people turned out to hear us discuss our project. Our translator, Peter, got to make use of the village megaphone to help Lauren explain the basics about the treatment center purification process and safe storage system. We fielded a lot of thoughtful questions about the business model and potential problems. It was really great to see how excited and invested everyone seemed to be even at this early stage! We asked everyone to carefully consider our proposal and let us know if they were interested in working with us. We must have said something right because the announcement that we would be back later in the afternoon to start work if they were interested was met with a round of applause!

That afternoon, with the approval of the chief (such a boss with a great sense of humor and future husband of team member, Kathryn) the elders and the rest of the village, we started work constructing Kpallabisi’s polytank stand. Some men, including the village mason, and our now daily entourage of children gathered around the current village water source, a silty dugout, and chose the site for the center. In a classic MacGyver move, one man fashioned a make-shift compass from 2 sticks and string and outlined the stand with a perfect circle. The mason, with some help from everyone else, threw together an impressive stand skeleton from some bricks and concrete. Everyone was laughing and joking. The girls got some marriage proposals and arranged a suitor dance-off for the next day to help ease their weighty decision. 🙂 Even Jim got an offer from a 10-year old boy to be “married as friends”. Moms and Dads, if we never come home, don’t worry. It just means we’ve settled into Kpallabisi more thoroughly than we ever expected!!

“Good bye, bye bye” – Team 3: Jim, Elsie, Kathryn & Lauren

Fashioning a makeshift compass to layout the center.

Village men helping us build the center.

The village mason working on the center stand.

Days 5 through 11: Village Implementations!!

Posted on January 8, 2011January 11, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

For the next week or so, the teams all went off to implement what they had spent the last week learning. They met with their chiefs and elders, built and assembled their treatment centers, trained the village women to run the centers, and distributed safe storage containers to all the households in their communities. In the end, it turned out that Chani had 28 households in their village, Yipela had 171 households, Kpallabisi had about 170, and Zamzugu had 71. At the end of a week’s time, the fellows had helped bring clean water to 440 households, or ~3,520 individuals! Since I couldn’t be in all the villages to report their progress, and the teams were working independently on their implementations, I thought it would be nice to have each team report on different aspects of their projects from the week. The following blogs will be their words. Enjoy! 🙂

-Mike

Session Two Fellows Have Arrived!

Posted on January 8, 2011February 4, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

After not nearly as much excitement as the session 1 snow-storm, the last of the twelve Session 2 fellows arrived safely in Accra today! A small group that had arrived early headed to the beach for the day take in the Ghanaian coast and relax before their busy fellowship session officially begins. The rest of the group is relaxing in the nice, air conditioned guest house, enjoying the wireless internet.

We head to Tamale on our long bus ride early tomorrow morning. We’ll all very excited to get up north and will be posting pictures as soon as we can!

Day 4: The Teams Meet Their Villages and Catherine Arrives!

Posted on January 7, 2011February 4, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

Day 4 began with Catherine finally arriving in Tamale after three flight delays due to the bad weather across the U.S. She wasn’t given much time to settle in as the teams all departed that morning for their first visit to the villages in which they would hopefully be working. Catherine met her team, Team 1, and was off. For the first half of the day, the teams all took water samples from their village dugouts and attempted to schedule the first meeting with the village chief and elders for the next day.

Welcome, Catherine! The Winter Fellowship Session 1 is now complete!

Team 1 loads into their cab with their translator, Wahab, to go meet their village, Chani!

Team 2 loads into their taxi with their translator, TJ, and head out to meet their new village, Yipela!

Team 3 was paired up with the CWS pickup truck and Peter as their translator! They head out to meet their village, Kpallabisi!

Team 4 got the posh jeep with Shak as their translator. Heading out to meet their village, Zamzugu!

The teams all returned successful. Many had informal meetings with the chief while they were in their villages that morning. All of the teams scheduled an official meeting for the next morning. The fellows returned from their village visits in great spirits and proceeded to test the samples they had taken from their village dugouts. The next day they would bring the results with them to their chief meetings.

Heather helped explain the water testing to her newly arrived teammate.

Catherine caught on quickly and did her team's water tests from that morning.

Luke and Heather reading the results of the tests they'd performed yesterday.

Lauren had some trouble reading the lab results...

For the last part of the day, the teams went off with their translators to rehearse their upcoming chief meetings. (Each team had selected one member to lead the meeting so as not to confuse the translator or intimidate the chief. ) We ended the day’s training with each team giving me one final run through of the meeting.

Team 2 working with TJ on their chief meeting the next morning. The team nominated Hanna to lead the meeting.

Team 3 working with Peter on their chief meeting. Lauren was nominated to lead the meeting.

Team 4 works with Shak on their chief meeting the next morning. The team decided that Kevin would lead the meeting.

Luke and Wahab simulate the full chief meeting with their team in the CWS office. Obviously, I played the role of the chief. 😉

After the initial bows, Luke, with the help of Wahab, introduced himself and summarized his reason for requesting the meeting.

Luke and Wahab then settled in for the full discussion and Q&A that occurs in these meetings. They did a great job and, after just a little feedback, were ready for the real meeting the next morning.

To celebrate the beginning of the teams' projects and Luke's birthday, we went out to eat!

Day 3: Household Visits, Lab Training and Full Implementation Review

Posted on January 4, 2011January 7, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

Day 3 of the Fellowship was a very full day for the teams. The first half of the day was spent visiting existing CWS villages. Each team visited a different CWS village. Half of each team monitored sales at the treatment center while the other half did household water storage monitoring with their translator. Both team halves took water samples along the way.

Why yes, that is a big ant hill towering above us!

I tagged along with Team 3 (Kathryn, Lauren, Jim and Elsie) for the day.

Lauren couldn't resist trying to climb the ant hill 🙂

In Cheko, Team 3 encountered an example of the difficulties that can arise in development work. For the first time, we found in Cheko that households didn’t have clean water in their homes and some had dirty water in their containers. The center wasn’t running and it had obviously not been for at least a week. The CWS staff immediately looked into this and discovered that the women running the center had left the village (for various reasons) without leaving properly trained women behind to keep the center running. Shak met with the chief and elders to solve the problem and held an emergency community meeting to reiterate the significance of clean drinking water and the need to use household containers properly. The next day, he spent going household to household to repeat this message and the treatment center was cleaned and new women were selected to be trained to run the center. Team 3 was disappointed to not see the Cheko center up and running that day but appreciated the realistic experience they were getting. Personally, though we realize that we are here to monitor and problem solve, it’s never enjoyable to see such rare problems. Teams 1, 2, and 4 all visited villages with busily running centers and every household visit showed properly stored clean drinking water.

Lauren tried to blend with the village by making goat noises...there was minimal success.

...but the children loved the goat-sounding girl 🙂

And for lunch? Ta da!! Chicken & Rice! Yum!

Sometimes it's best to get in out of the sun after a while.

As there are no bunnies in northern Ghana, these are called giraffe ears...

Lunch out was a nice break, even if the menu was pretty familiar.

The second half of the day, the teams rotated through the CWS office, where they spent an hour and a half reviewing with me in detail the step by step CWS implementation process, focusing especially on the very important initial meeting with the chief and elders. Following this, each team moved over to the lab to learn how to properly conduct water tests and performed tests on the samples they had taken that morning. They were also taught to clean the lab equipment; we had to buy distilled water for the process, to ensure that all the testing equipment was clean and safe to use.

Mira carefully drawing a sample to test.

Heather skillfully testing the water while Allie holds the sample for her.

Jim draws from the sample Lauren holding open for him.

Cam water testing with surgeon-like hands

Nate watches in awe as Sarah tests their water sample.

Elsie takes her turn with the pipettor while Jim holds out the sample.

The hard part is done. Now it's time to incubate!! 🙂

To treat ourselves for our full day, we ate out. Sarah enjoyed spaghetti with vegetables.

Cam enjoyed red red (a traditional been stew) with plantains and chicken.)

Lauren played it a little safer with good 'ol vegetable pizza.

Day 2: New Year’s Eve!

Posted on January 3, 2011January 3, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

The second day of the fellowship began with a brief classroom review of the CWS approach to water treatment followed by a more hands on lesson. The fellows practiced rolling alum balls and using it on samples of dugout water. After seeing for themselves the magical filtering ability of alum, the fellows split up into their teams and practiced simulations of random household monitoring with their translators.

Luke with Alum — Luke practicing using alum with dugout water

Kathryn practices a household monitoring visit with her translator. Lauren played the part of the village woman and then they switched roles.

Luke practiced the household visit with Jim playing the villager. Wahab translated.

Luke checks inside the container and inquires about the level of water and the last time the villager (Jim) filled the container at the treatment center.

Hannah practices while Nate (who just arrived this morning!) plays the villager and TJ translates.

"Do you mind if I take a look inside your container?"

"Aha! This is not water from the treatment center!" -Every fellow practiced any type of situation the may encounter in their visits and how to deal with each.

Kevin enjoying a New Year's Eve treat for lunch, guinea fowl with ground nut soup and rice balls. A delicious traditional Ghanaian dish.

The fellows then made their first trip out into the field to visit existing CWS villages!! Teams 1 and 4 went to Jarigu, Team 2 Cheko, and Team 3 Nyamaliga. The fellows got to see the treatment centers first hand and further visualize the end goal of their projects. They also got to practice their Dagbani with the villagers!

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