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Field Rep Voices: Team Elias, Meaghan, Raleigh, Sydney and Wahab

For the short attention spanned millennials out there, here is a haiku describing our day:

Put tanks near water
Changed the location once
Now we are Sweaty

Women working with orange drums in original location

For everyone else, here is the fun story of our day:

On Saturday, June 3rd, we, Team Wahab enjoyed our 3rd day in the village of Sahani. Our goal for the day was to choose a location for the water business and to put the Polytank stand and three plastic water drums in place. Going in to the day we expected the task to be quick and simple, but such was not the case….

 

The original dugout location

Even though it had rained the previous night, the original dugout was extremely low and it would have been tough to fill 3 orange drums with water. Our first solution was to fill 2 drums with dugout water and the third drum with water from the borehole. The borehole water was salty, but we hoped that diluting the water and adding the aqua tablets would lower the salt content.

The larger dugout

After talking with the children they showed Elias and Wahab a much larger dugout that was slightly further away, but had a good amount of water left in it. We were able to convince the women running the business that the walk would be worth it and they wouldn’t need to use any of the salty borehole water. An impromptu parade of community members of all ages helped us move the equipment to the new location.

The children we try to keep entertained

Over the next hour some of us attempted to balance buckets on our head to help fill the orange drums. Some of our team was in charge of keeping the kids entertained. Duck duck goose was a favorite, as well as follow the leader.

Filling the orange drums

Once the orange drums were filled, we added the alum to the chocolate milk colored water and watched in amazement as the sediment began to floc. We closed and locked the drums to let them sit overnight so the sediment could filter out.

The dugout water

The day was concluded by another village wide procession back through path in the forest and though fields back to the village. The chief’s wife informed us that they thought our names were to hard to remember so they came up with our village names on the spot: Raleigh – “Roakayo”, Sydney – “Sedina”, Meagan – “MaMuna”, and Elias – “Eelisu.” We accepted our names and exchanged farewell formalities with the chief of the village and went on our way – Din Nuna