Blog

Implementation

Voices from the Field: Team C

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Its that time again faithful followers! Thats right, our 2012 Winter Fellows have officially started working in their villages and so its time for them to take over the blog to share their stories from the field! First up is Team  C (also known as Team Cool…)

Team C (Peter, Zander, Michelle and Janelle) and our translator Ayisha on one of our first days in our village!

Despa from Tamale!

Yesterday was the first day that we got to meet our village! We left at 8am, but we got lost on the way so it took us almost 2 hours to get there. Being lost was actually kind of fun, we saw a lot of cities and villages, different African landscapes, and even drove through a University Campus! As we were driving, we saw a lot of signs for different NGOs, including The Children’s Fund, World Food Program, and Catholic Relief Services. It hit us that the pictures that we’ve been taking of the “bibala” (children) look just like the pictures in the Save the Children ads that we all see on TV; it made a few of us sad to think about but at the same time we were excited our team is actually here helping. When we made it to our village, Kurugu Vohoyiai, we were greeted by several men. We met the chief and Janelle began to explain to him who we are. Another NGO, Water For Life, had visited the village before us, so at first there was some confusion. Community Water Solutions contacted Water for Life and cleared everything up for us.

Our chief meeting went great! The room that we met in was filled with cassava, and we just sat on a bench with him to tell him about CWS. He seemed really excited to work with us, but explained that he could not simply make a decision for the entire village, so the next day we should come back for a village meeting.

The village meeting today was a huge success! Everyone sat around us in a big circle, the elders to the front of us, the women and girls on one side, and the men and boys on the other. Janelle stood in the middle with Ayisha (our translator), and we talked to them about CWS. We explained how we work without pipes or anything mechanical, we talked to them about the implementation and training process, and we emphasized the importance of clean water. At first, they acknowledged that they weren’t sure how to handle their water problem because the dirty dugout was the only water source god gave them, but as we continued to explain to them they began to understand that there was a connection between the dirty water they were drinking and the diseases in the village. By the end of the meeting, everyone was so excited to get started!

Janelle doing an awesome job explaining CWS during the village meeting while Ayisha translates
The men at the community meeting
Ayesha passing around the water test results that we brought to help show the difference between contaminated water from the dugout and safe drinking water.

We walked over to the dugout with the leader of the village, and together we picked out where the Water Treatment Center will be built. The children of the village followed us all the way back to our car, and held our hands up until it was time to leave. We spent the rest of the day buying supplies so we are ready to start building first thing tomorrow. We can’t wait to get started!

Peter and Janelle on their way to check out the dugout with some new friends from our community!

-Janelle, Zander, Peter, and Michelle

Voices from the Field: Team Sixey!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Hello from Team Six, better known as Team Kasi or Team Sixey. We have been working for the past couple weeks in Kudula, a fairly large village of just over 100 households and two schools, about a half hour away from Tamale. So far we’ve had a pretty smooth ride, except for a few days where the villagers were at the market or the farm. This caused us to have to push back our opening day to Friday June 10th as opposed to the original Thursday celebration. However, since we were already ahead of schedule it wasn’t a problem. Our team faces the challenge of reaching out to every household in our particularly large village, but luckily we have Lukeman, our wonderful translator, and our fantastic taxi driver Hamza who also happens to speak English to help us along the way. When we opened yesterday, we only saw about 30-40 buckets being filled out of our 100+ that we had distributed, so we went to the village today for our first day of monitoring and household visits ready to do some sleuthing to find out why only some of the village came out.

We were very pleasantly surprised today to see that all the households that we visited had filled up their water containers! It turns out that most of them came in the evening after we had left. Kudula is officially a success! The houses that we visited were all very pleased with the water taste and very grateful for the work that we had done in Kudula. We will be back tomorrow to fix a few leaky taps and do some more random household checks. In each household we took water samples to bring back to the office to test for coliforms.

Nadiah and Christina testing the samples at the CWS lab

Sana and Abibata are our two women who run the station. They’ve been doing a fantastic job and seem to really be catching on quickly to everything we’ve told them. We have full faith in them and their abilities to continue the station after we leave!

A group shot of Team Sixey in front of the polytank stand. From left, Hamza, Nadiah, Sana, Abibata, Matt, Lukeman, Karina, and Christina.

It’s amazing how quickly the polystand goes up! Just a few days ago it looked like this:

Matt, Hamza, and Lukeman take a break from working on the polytank stand before it was finished.

During our down time in the village we’ve really gotten to know the kids and their individual personalities. They have endless energy and are so fun to be with. We will miss them so much when we go!

Christina hangs out with some of her buddies outside the chief’s palace
Karina with lots of the Kudula kids chilling on the taxi

We even got to try our hand at the local method of carrying water-on top of your head!

Nadiah learns from the pros

We look forward to seeing more results of all of our hard work when we continue to do more household visits and monitoring in the next few days.

Voices from the Field: Team Nothing but Net

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Due to some technical difficulties this post is a few days late, but here is team 2 (“nothing but net”)’s story about training the women in Kushini to prepare for opening day (which happened on Thursday!)

Today, we performed our second day of training for the women. To this point, they have already fetched the water from the dugout and have used allum to separate the dirt from the water. Today, they moved the separated water into the polytank and added aquatabs (chlorine) to kill the bacteria and other harmful agents in the water. The women are not only exceptionally responsible, but catch on to the training extremely quickly. Often before we could finish explaining the process to them they were able to finish our sentences. After preparing the water in the polytank, they also refilled the blue drums and treated them with allum so that we could have even more clean water for tomorrow’s opening day.

Hudson and Shak training the women in our village

We also performed our final round of distributing clean water storage buckets for households in the village. When we first arrived to the village it was monsooning (of course, we forgot our rain coats at home), but once the rain cleared the entire village was able to gather and be trained on the proper water safety requirements for the clean water buckets. Sharifa spent a lot of time giving advice to the women (with Shak translating) while Hudson, Chris, and Ianthe worked quickly to assemble buckets for the masses. Training the women was a detailed process – Sharifa went over everything from how and where to get clean water to proper placement of the buckets in the home to how to respond to contaminations. The women took the process very seriously and echoed what the Chief had already told us: “We know that the dugout water is unhealthy, but we have no other option for drinking water.” In all the experience was really touching to see how seriously the village is taking this process and we’re really excited for opening day tomorrow!

Shak translating while the team assembles and distributes safe storage containers.

 

Voices from the field: Team 3!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

June 9

Today, Team 3 ended their morning in the village with the grand opening of the Community Water Solutions water treatment center in the Kpalguni Village.  Being a relatively small village with a focus on farming yams, most of the children arrived promptly and proudly to fill their family’s blue buckets.  The team left with an undeniable feeling of accomplishment, and they are excited for the next few days of monitoring the village.


CWS Safe Storage containers all lined up at the water treatment center ready to be filled with clean drinking water!
Clean water!
Meaghan and the cutest little girl at the water business on opening day! The whole village came out!
Heading home with a bucket full of safe drinking water! Such a successful opening day!

But one day earlier….

June 8

5:00 am: The team awoke only to find gloomy clouds looming over Tamale.  The team was weary about departing, but Team 5 along with Sani and the translators decided we should give the drive a shot.  Due to “Ghanian time”, the van did not depart Gilbt until 6:30 am.  Midway through the two-hour drive to both villages, the rain began.

7:45 am:  A large pond of water in the middle of the bumpy dirt road approached the van, and, in seconds, the van halts to a complete stop.  The teams found themselves stranded in the middle of the Ghanian forests without cell phone service.  Villagers begin to watch as the teams wander around looking for rocks (which they are unsure as to why they need them).  After about thirty minutes, the teams begin to push the van out of the pond.  It doesn’t seem promising; however, after the spectators joined the effort, the van finally emerged.  The sun’s rays appeared from behind the fading clouds.

Teamwork at its finest
Abby, Alyssa, Stephanie (from the Pinapple Express Team) and Meaghan in the mud pond.

9:30 am:  Team 3 decides the make the walk to their village. When they arrive for a brief visit to teach the women how to treat the clear water and distribute clean water buckets, the village is not prepared.  Handing out the buckets was a stressful event.  All of the villagers gathered into a tight circle and began to talk very loudly over the team.  While the frantic, loud gathering was clearly caused by the excitement of the opening of the center, it did not make the day any better.  The team was lead to more disappointment when it was apparent that turbidity remained in the water.  Clear water wound not enter the polytank that day.

Stressful discussion about safe storage distribution. We knew everyone was excited for opening day, but this was still tough to manage!
Our translator Ayesha trying to teach the crowd how to correctly use the tap on the safe storage container.

12:30 pm:  Team 5 began to approach the center after hours of waiting at the van only to find that Team 3 was finally wrapping up their work in the village.  Both teams walked back through the village down the bumpy, muddy road to the van.  Even though the afternoon just began, both teams were exhausted and bummed about the series of events of the day.

Luckily, all team members found humor of all of the parts of the day, and grew closer with the hope that both teams would make it to their villages the following morning.

-Will, Meaghan, Abby and Alyssa

Voices from the Field: The Salaminga Snails!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Hey there from the Salaminga Snails! You might be wondering how we got our name. Salaninga is the local word for “foreigner/white person” and then snails because we make everyone look so slow! Our trip to Ghana has been great so far, we have been working in the village Tacpuli and loving every minute of it. This past week we have been working on setting up our treatment center and preparing it for our opening day on Wednesday. We bought our Polytank, blue buckets, and all other necessary supplies, fitted them on our beautifully crafted Polytank stand and just started the first treatment process today.

The Salaminga Snails: Annie, Christine, Nate and Ben
Peter translating for Annie at our village meeting. She did an awesome job!
Leaving our mark on the polytank stand!

We spent the morning training the two women who would be running the center, Mariama and Laseechey (forgive the butchering of the spelling) who are awesome. They had already used alum in their water before, so the first half of the training was super easy. Afterwards we began distributing buckets to individual households in the hottest part of the day under the blazing African sun. Needless to say every member of our group came out of the field with some pretty gnarly sun burns. We managed to distribute 31 buckets, nearly half of our 68 household village, and look forward to an early morning distributing the buckets tomorrow (a 6:00am wake up is totally worth it to beat the heat). We’re also excited to keep working with Laseechey and Mariama! Tomorrow we will show them how to take the alum-ized (new word?) water and treat it with chlorine.

Christine training Mariama and Laseechey how to use alum to remove turbidity from the dugout water
Peter translating for Annie, Ben and Christine during water treatment training

We also should mention that we have the best translator in CWS history, Peter Biyam. Peter also happens to have the greatest sheep in all of history, “Don’t Forget,” which we purchased from our very own Tacpuli as a way of thanking him. He promises to take very good care of her and we like to know that he will not forget us with Don’t Forget!

Brining "don't forget" home in the truck

Overall the Salaminga Snails are having a great time in Ghana! We’re loving our village, loving our translator, loving our team, and are super excited for our opening day on Wednesday!

Awesome kids at Tacpuli!

 

-Christine, Annie, Ben, and Nate

Voices from the Field: The Fu Fu Fighters!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Team 7-also known as the Fufu Fighters- has been busy beginning the implementation process of their water center; however, we had an interesting start to our process.

The Fu Fu Fighters: Heather, Cassie, Christina and Xi

We began our implementation process in one village, but ended up switching to a different village to actually implement in. Unlike the other teams, we had two chief meeting experiences that were completely different from each other. The first one was in our first village and it was very informal with just the chief and the chairman. The second one was in our new village and it was very traditional with the chief, chairman, elders, and any men who happened to wander into the chief’s meeting hut at the time of our meeting. By witnessing these two meetings in two different villages, we got to see how different some governmental systems are within any village in Ghana.

Our first village actually had a rain water collection tank set up by another NGO and the chief mentioned in our meeting that it was very difficult to find someone to run that operation in the village. He told us his people were stubborn and that they wouldn’t want to put in the work at our center to have clean water when they already had a rainwater collection tank. When we asked about the use of the rain tank, the chairman told us they only use it during the rainy season, which leaves them with the dugout water during the dry season. This meant that a CWS water center would still be very helpful in this village.

We left the first day, intending to come back the next day to get a decision from the chief. When we came back the next day, there happened to be a funeral going on, so we were unable to talk to the chief; however, we did talk to the chairman and he told us that the chief was not very supportive of our system simply because he didn’t think his people would take to it well. The chairman was telling us the opposite in his opinion. He said he talked to some people in the village and they were all onboard…which meant we had a slight problem. It seemed the village really wanted us to be there, but the chief didn’t. Also, the chief was refusing to let us talk to his people, so we had only communicated with himself and the chairman at this point.

Our experience in this village was SO different from what all the other teams were going through. They had enthusiastic chiefs and community meetings…so it seemed our process wasn’t going as planned, which worried me. When we reported our concerns back to Kate, she assured us that it would be possible to implement in a village with a difficult chief, but we’d need to work really hard and overcome many roadblocks along the way.

After a team meeting and a thorough evaluation of the situation, we decided that our water center would probably be more successful, at least at this time, in a different village. We figured since rainy season is just beginning, it would be hard to compete with the rainwater tank anyway. It seemed to make more sense to implement this village in the dry season when they are running out of rainwater. So, CWS is going to keep this village on their list of villages to visit later when: 1. It’s dry season and 2. The chief’s more supportive. Hannah went back to that village and told the chairman our decision, as well as encouraged him to try to get the chief onboard for when CWS does come back.

So, after this slight set back, the Fufu Fighters worked hard to make up for lost time. We ended up having a great chief meeting at our new village-with a chief who is very, very enthusiastic about the project-as well as a meeting with the community about the center. In fact, the chief said something that basically embodies everything CWS stands for. He said, “Clean water is life. And every person deserves life. Since you are bringing clean water, you are also bringing life to this village.”

We’ve been working hard, and getting dirty, for the past two days building our polytank stand. Our new village is really excited for the center and we feel very welcomed by everyone. I think I can speak for everyone on my team when I say that we had an unusual beginning, but ended up catching up and making a great decision in terms of switching villages. The community support as well as the chief’s support is very important in order to make a CWS water center successful. We feel as if we have the greatest support in this new village-hopefully, in time, the other chief will be influenced to support a center for his people as well.

Some of the men from the village who helped us build the polytank stand
Heather, Cassie and Christine smoothing out the gravel in the polytank stand while the awesome kids from our village watch in awe
Leaving out mark on the polytank stand
Christina, Cassie and Xi posing by our finished polytank stand

 

-Christina, Cassie, Xi and Heather

Voices from the Field: The Pineapple Express!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

So our team, Team Pineapple Express, started off our Tamale adventure really strong, winning the scavenger hunt with a prize of pride, but hey, we also found Barack Obama underwear, which is a prize in itself.  Our team is Stephanie, David, Matthew and Abena and we all come from different backgrounds and came to Ghana for different reasons, making our team a really interesting and dynamic grouping!

 

David posing with a Djembe for the CWS scavenger hunt!

 

Stephanie pounding Fu Fu - another scavenger hunt task!

 

Everything has been really great so far.  After visiting two different villages that already had worked with CWS, we were really excited to finally visit our own village, Jabrang (which we are still working on pronouncing).  Although its one of the farther villages, we’re really excited to be paired with this village, which has about 33 households and lots of enthusiastic members and adorable kids!  Our chief meeting went really well; he was really excited to have us and all the elders and other present members could not wait to get working and get the project off the ground.  The dugout water is really dirty and full of algae and bacteria.  We’re really happy that we can assist this village clean up their water.

 

Abena and Wahab checking out the dugout in Chani, one of CWS' newer villages

After our initial meeting with the chief, who by the way is awesome, we held a village-wide meeting the next day.  With the help of our trusty translator, Wahab, we explained to men, women and children who we are, what CWS does, and what our partnership would look like and how we are able to help them.  We explained in detail the implementation process and how the water business operates.  We also brought with us water samples, both clean and dirty, to help all the villagers visualize what we were talking about.  It is an understatement to say that they were all on board, excited, and extremely grateful.  They gave us a round of applause in the end and wanted us to start immediately!  We’re so happy to have a village that is so thrilled.  We know we can really make a difference in Jabrang!

Yesterday we started the building process: manual labor day one!  Fortunately for us, Wahab is a great mason and takes the polytank stand construction very seriously!  He requested a lot of pictures to be taken, mostly solo shots!  But he really did a great job!  We had a crowd of about 25 people, men and children mostly, watching the stand being built and just coming around to show their support and see if we needed any help.  It was great to see such a good turnout from the community.  The kids are also finally warming up to us!  Can’t wait to play!

Matthew helping to load the van with bricks for the polytank stand!

 

Our translator Wahab loading up the van with sea sand for our polytank stand
Wahab laying the first row of bricks for Jabrang's polytank stand
Another solo shot of Wahab and his excellent work!

 

-Stephanie, David, Matthew and Abena

 

 

Voice from the field: Team 7!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Opening Day in Chongashe with Team 7!

Saturday was the big day for Team 7! We finally opened our CWS water treatment center in Chongashe! The other two teams opened yesterday so we were anxious to finally see ours in action and it was a HUGE SUCCESS!!! Every household in the village eventually came to collect water.

We set our alarms for 5:30AM so that we could get to our village, which is almost two hours away, in time for early morning water collection. We think that it was the first time this whole month that we’ve actually left on time – “Ghanaian time” is usually at least half an hour behind schedule. We were on the road before 6 AM even though Rachel slept through her alarm and Sanita had to wake her up…

 

Eleanor, Rachel, Sanita, Fabiola and TJ - heading to our village before sunrise!

After days of dreaming about it, we finally stopped at a food stand for egg-bread sandwiches to get a protein boost before the big morning!

 

Ghanaian egg sandwiches, finally!

We arrived in Chongashe and greeted our welcoming committee, AKA a group of 50 children who swarm our truck jumping and clapping whenever we drive in. People brought out drums and we all headed towards the center, the truck loaded with kids and buckets to be filled with water.

Once we got to the center, we still needed to scoop some water from the blue drums and add Aquatabs to the polytank so that we would have as much clean water as possible. Mata and Wasseela, the two women who we had trained to run the center, handled the process as if they had been running it for years. After emptying the blue drums they filled them up immediately and were quick to stir in the alum too.  It was great to see that our training sessions were so effective!

 

Scooping water into the polytank where it will be treated with chlorine

While we waited for the chlorine in the Aquatabs to kick in, the crowd of women holding their new safe storage containers grew and grew! TJ entertained everyone with his awesome drumming, and the music led to a big dance party giving us a taste of traditional dancing!

 

Wahab and Rachel on the drums!
Kids dancing by the water treatment center!

 

TJ showing off his drumming skills!
"traditional"dancing on opening day

By the time the center was ready to open, there were already forty buckets ready to be filled.  We were so excited by the big turnout!  Since we had distributed our safe storage containers in large groups, we were worried that our message hadn’t gotten across to everyone, so it was very encouraging when so many people in the community turned out over the next few hours.  Many families even brought cups to wash out so that they would have designated drinking cups that wouldn’t re-contaminate their new clean water.

 

All of the buckets lined up to fetch water on opening day!

The long line of buckets got hectic at times, but we reassured the ladies that it wouldn’t always be so crazy. There was also some confusion about which bucket was whose and a few problems with leaky buckets, but it all got sorted out in the end. Within a few hours all of the buckets were filled and we were proud that all of our hard work setting up the water treatment center paid off!

The next day we had a day off, so Rachel, Sanita and Eleanor went with TJ and Wahab to the Kintampo Falls for a relaxing and awesome morning.

Then we hurried back to Tamale to finally catch a soccer game in the Stadium. We’ve been waiting all session to see a game there – and even though it took us until half time to figure out which team was Tamale, we were still pumped about the experience.

The view from our seats at the Tamale football game - there wasn't the turnout we had expected....

-Team 7 (Eleanor, Rachel, Sanita and Fabiola)

Voices from the field: Team 5!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Tyte Tyte Tyte: The Adventures of Team 5 in Zanzugu

Our day in Zanzugu began with twenty dust-covered kids piling into the back of the jeep to help bring bags of cement and concrete blocks to the dugout for the Polytank stand. We got down and dirty with the kids and mixed cement with our hands, guided by our expert mason, translator, driver, food connoisseur, mechanic, and Ghana’s number one freestyle rapper, Shak. After a long day of work, we were glad to see the first step of our project come to life.

 

Shak, Pranav, Shalyn, Sarah, and Lina in the half-finished Polytank stand

The next day, we mixed gravel, sand, and cement to fill in the Polytank stand. Sarah got to try her hand at off-road trucking and successfully made it back in one piece, much to our relief. In true Ghanaian fashion, Lina and Pranav carried buckets full of dirt on their heads.

 

Pranav has fun plastering the stand with some of the boys

After we finished the final layer of plaster, we all wrote our names in the wet cement, officially making our mark in Ghana.

 

As the rest of the team admired their handiwork, Lina decided to take a nap (per usual)

While Pranav was off playing with the boys, the ladies got to spend some quality time with Fati and Hazara, the two women chosen to run the treatment center. We rolled alum balls together and swirled them in the blue drums full of dugout water. Aluminum sulfide is a coagulant that causes dirt particles in the turbid water to flock together and sink to the bottom. Finding the right balance of alum is important because too much can lead to sickness and not enough will leave the water turbid – it’s a learning process for all of us. Fati and Hazara scooped the clear water into the Polytank and added Aquatabs (chlorine in tablet form) to rid the water of E. Coli and other microbes. We then taught Fati and Hazara how to set aside the correct amount of money to purchase more Aquatabs and alum in order to maintain a self-sustaining business.

 

Sarah, Shak, and Lina roll alum balls with Fati and Hazara

The last and most hectic step before opening day was distributing the safe storage containers. Initially, we didn’t think distribution would be difficult, but with nearly fifty households in the village, it proved to be a daunting task. At first, we went household-to-household and talked to people individually, which worked well because we had two translators with us. The next day, while we were assembling the containers, villagers formed a crowd around us so we experimented with a new approach. We trained villagers in small groups at the center of the village, speeding up the process but adding an element of chaos. This new method put our management skills to the test, but once we got ourselves organized the rest of the training went smoothly.

 

Wahab translating Shalyn’s explanation of how to use the safe storage containers

Overall, we had few setbacks but recently two of our members fell victim to Fufu-itis. Even though Pranav and Sarah have experienced fever, stomach cramps, dehydration, and light-headedness, they just can’t stop running.

But no worries, they are in the safe hands of Dr. Kate and a strong regimen of Cipro.

-Team 5: Shalyn, Sarah, Lina and Pranav

Voices from the field: Team 6!

Posted on by communitywatersolutions

Dirt Don’t Hurt.

Our adventure begins…As we start construction of our water center, and all of our planning is becoming a reality, we are getting even more excited about our project. Our first meeting with village Gbashe did not go according to plan. We initially thought that they had six bio-sand filters for the entire village of approx. 85 households, which were provided by another non-profit, ensuring a CWS system was necessary. By the end of the visit we found out that they had six water filters for the chiefs palace alone!! Realizing they already had a great clean water system, we moved on to another village that had reached out to CWS a year ago – due to funding constraints, transportation, and distance this project had been put on hold. So we rose up to the challenge, with Peter (our translator), Small Boy (our fearless taxi driver), and Bone Shaker (our “trusty “station wagon). It wasn’t too long into the trip when we were blanketed in dirt, looking like we had just survived a spray tan catastrophe in a cheap Las Vegas salon.

 

Team 6: Annie, Hannah, Sam and Karla with our new spray tans!

 

The Bone Shaker!

Finally we arrived at Chanaayili, our new village and home for the next two weeks. We had a very successful meeting with the chief, who is da’ Bomb Diggity. He shared his wisdom with us…”When you have a load that is too heavy to carry by yourself, it is only with the help of others that you can finally lift the load.” With his wise words and welcoming attitude, we knew we had found the right village. We arranged a meeting with the entire village for 8am the next day, and with high spirits we headed back to Tamale.

 

The chief (far left) with some of the village elders in Chanaayili

The next day, after a 5am wake up and a successful meeting with the village elders, we headed to town to gather supplies (cement, sand, and 25 cinder blocks) to start construction. Only a few miles away from the village, we experienced our first “bump” in the road, with the truck’s shock system suddenly dropping off. The chief, made aware of our situation, sent a few motos to retrieve us from the bush. An unanticipated situation turned into an incredible bonding experience with our village. We…

• Played games with the kids, including drawing mustaches on them with charcoal and losing to them in foot races.

• Exchanged games and songs and made the kids giggle at our attempts at speaking Dagbani

• Practiced our corn grinding skills with the women

• Tried rubbing alcohol/ hand sanitizer, I mean “gin” packets

• Ate delicious yams and meat stew provided by the chief’s wife

• Witnessed the slaughtering of a goat to complete the funeral for the chief’s son

• Road motos to the nearest village, to get picked up by Shak!

After an epic day, we finally arrived home safely around 10pm, with our tribal faces still in tact.

 

Sam, Peter, Karla, and Annie after our epic day in the field. (Hannah was there in spirit!)

 

Wahab and Peter celebrating the end of a long day in the field!

The following day, we started construction of the stand for our water treatment center. Lots of men, from elders to kids, gathered to lend a hand and watch wide-eyed as we built to the beat of American pop songs. Wahab, our translator, entertainer, and building director, used calls to his forefathers to school us all in building and dancing. Over the next couple of days the construction will be finished and we are looking forward to finally providing clean water for Chanaayili. We are ready to embrace any future bumps in the road and any experiences that come along our way.

Chanaayili

 

Team 6!

 

-Team 6: Karla, Sam, Annie, and Hannah