We arrived to our village around 9 am on opening day. Not many of the villagers were near the center when we first got there, but after the sight of our truck they began to show up in large numbers bearing their blue buckets. Lydia and Damu had the center well put together for opening day and things went off without a hitch. As people gathered in line we passed around a small bucket so that everyone could have a taste. The water was perfect and everyone was very eager to get their water home to their household. After 2 ½ hours we had filled all but three of the 59 buckets that we had distributed and called it a day. It was amazing to see how quickly the facility was able to get up and running, as well as how efficiently it was able to supply more than a village’s worth of clean water.

After such a successful opening day, we took the day off on Tuesday. Shak drove Rich, Colleen, and Chelsea to Kintampo Waterfalls for some much needed R&R. Nick, unfortunately, could not join us because he was sick, but we all had a great time!

After our day off, it was time to get back to work. We got a late start due to some technical difficulties with Shak’s truck, but made it to Sakpalua around noon to begin monitoring. We checked 21 households in all. Everything looked great. Every household we checked, with the exception of one, had adhered to the rule of keeping the storage container 6 inches off of the ground and all had used their container only for clean water. We were all incredibly pleased to see that going household to household to distribute buckets and explain to each villager how to properly use their safety storage container properly had truly paid off. Only 3 more days of spending time with the lovely villagers of Sakpalua and monitoring before we hitch a bus back to Accra. My how the time has flown.