Monitoring, we’ve found, involves much more than monitoring. Every monitoring day in Wovogu brings new friendships and new challenges. Today was the third day of monitoring, and our second-to-last day in the village. It will definitely be hard to say goodbye to everyone we’ve met here!

We visit around six households each day, and ask a series of questions about the water and how the safe storage container is working. Most of the safe storage containers were working, although two households reported leaky or broken taps, which we will replace. When we ask about the taste, they usually say “denyasa pom”— it tastes good.

The more households we visit, the more our entourage of children grows. They love to follow us from house to house, asking for photos and holding our hands. It can be pretty overwhelming at times, but they are adorable and it’s nice to see how excited they are to have us in their village.

We also make sure to look over the water treatment center itself and to check in with our fabulous women entrepreneurs, . They’ve been great at keeping the center running smoothly. A large number of the households had returned to the center to refill their safe storage containers.

There are some troubling rumors going around that the clean water might limit fertility, or cause a woman to only give birth twice. We’ve been doing our best to dispel these rumors and to make sure that everybody knows that the treated water will improve their health and the health of their children.

In addition to monitoring, we visited the school that Wovogu shares with a neighboring village. We filled one water-bottle with water from the treatment center, one with dugout water, and one with salt-water. We had the kids decide which water they shouldn’t drink. The turbid dugout water, with visible pieces of fecal matter, was an easy first pick.

The treated water and the salt-water both looked clear, so we had the kids do a taste-test. After one boy got quite the salty surprise, we explained that just because water is clear, it doesn’t always mean it’s clean. We told them that it is important to make sure the water in the safe storage containers stays clean— if it gets recontaminated, you might not be able to tell just by looking at it!

We also played Healthy Habits tag, which was a lot of fun. We reminded the kids that practicing healthy habits can prevent them from getting sick.

Tomorrow is our last day of monitoring. We’ll visit six more households, check in one final time with Senatu and Abiba, and visit the chief to say our goodbyes. While it will be hard to leave, we know that our entrepreneurs will be more than capable of running the treatment center and making sure that Wovogu’s drinking water stays clean and safe.

-Sarah, Ben and Erin