We had a great first day of 2014 here in Tamale! After a late night spent ringing in the New Year, we all slept in and then met at GILLBT  for another day of orientation. It started off with an awesome monitoring presentation by our field staff: Peter, Shak, Eric, Wahab and Amin. The fellows had great questions for the staff! Bimala asked the guys, “What motivates you?” Shak, who has worked with CWS for over 4 years, replied, “This is my country and everyone deserves to drink clean water. I feel proud for my people, they feel proud to have clean water to drink and you all should be very proud for what you are able to provide for your new communities.”

After the presentation we all headed to the CWS office just down the road for a tour of the water quality testing lab. Brianan, CWS’ West African Regional Director, led the tour and gave an introduction to the lab work the fellows will be doing once they are done implementing in their communities. The Fellows will taking water samples from the safe storage containers that people will keep in their homes to test for recontamination. Testing for recontamination will help pinpoint additional education for the households.

Later in the afternoon, orientation continued with alum training. Alum is the first step in CWS’ water treatment model. It works to remove the particles and turbidity from the water. As the fellows have never worked with alum before it is important that they know how it works so they can teach it to the women entrepreneurs in their village.

The fellows then broke off into their groups to practice Dugbani (the local tribal language) with their translators. First they practiced greetings and then went through some mock household monitoring. The mock-monitoring conversations are a great way for the Fellows to get used to the format of questions and to practice working with a translator.

Yesterday, the fellows put their monitoring skills to the test in some of our current CWS villages! It was their first time in the field with just their translator and everyone had a great time! Today, they are off to their new villages for the first day! We can’t wait to hear how their first meetings went!