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Voices from the Field: Team Peter (Carole Anne, Lilly and Taylor)

Posted on July 7, 2013July 10, 2013 by communitywatersolutions

We feel so fortunate that we got to be one of the two teams based in Salaga. Our team consists of Lilly Prince, Taylor Kirby, Carole Anne Spohn, and our translator, Peter, and we have been working in the village of Kideng for the past twelve days.

Carole Anne, Peter, Lilly, and Taylor with the chief of Kideng

We have had quite an adventure in Salaga:
• Fighting off scorpions
• Being accused of kidnapping a child in the village next to Kideng. (of course we didn’t!…confusion cleared-up after an hour or so…)
• Holding newborn babies of all kinds
• Carrying water on our heads from the stream (it is even harder than it looks)
• Worrying for our lives because of our adventurous tro-tro driver (just kidding Moms… it wasn’t so bad!)
• Making new friends in the village
• Cooking gourmet meals – burgers, grilled cheeses, salads, and kabobs.
• Chilling at local spots with our translators

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Team Peter with one of our awesome women entrepreneurs!

Today was unfortunately our last day in the village. It was bittersweet!
It was sad leaving everyone behind knowing we may never see them again, but we are happy that the community has clean drinking water. We started our morning out monitoring house to house wearing our awesome fanny packs. We have to wear these stylish fanny packs because they incubate our water samples taken from each house to measure for bacteria. As a group, we passed out all our gifts to the children, the chief, and the ladies who work the water business. To finish off the day, we painted a wall for the entire community.

Our time in Salaga is coming to an end; we are packing up and leaving for Tamale in the morning! The life of the party is coming back to town!

Voices from the Field: Team TJ (Bryan, Maxine, Jhanel & Casey)

Posted on July 3, 2013July 3, 2013 by samreilley

Our Rising Tigers

Finally the day we and the villagers had been waiting for had arrived – our opening day! When we arrived at the dugout, six safe storage containers were already aligned in front of the Polytank in anticipation of getting clean drinking water. As the women arrived at the dugout to provide the drinking water, the numbers of buckets swelled from the initial six to close to forty. It was amazing to see the excitement the villagers had to finally have clean water despite the earliness of the day.

The women in charge of the water treatment center immediately took charge. They filled up a bucket with water to clean out all of the safe storage containers and put someone in charge to oversee cleaning. One sat at the station to collect the money and even moved some of the buckets out of the way, so that she wouldn’t fill up buckets for people who hadn’t paid yet. They then used the lids when transitioning buckets so no clean drinking water would go to waste. Once a new bucket was being filled, they would use the water in the lid to top off the bucket so each household had the most water possible in their safe storage container. One of the fellows even jokingly tried to get a bucket filled for free, and one of the woman in charge laughed at her and stuck her hand out, indicating she had to pay for a full bucket. The system was very efficient and we barely played a role in assisting them, allowing them to have full reign of their business.

Halfway through opening day, the chief and elders drove up in the chief’s Ford Pickup Truck. Many of the elders had already gotten their water and told us how tasty the water had been. The chief wanted to let us know he was leaving for Tamale to run errands, but wanted to see us before he left. From the get-go, we had always had the support of the chief; he had gathered his community to hear about our project and even talked to a few of the villagers who didn’t show up to the community meeting to ask why they didn’t come. Once again, he was showing his support by letting us know everything was going well and thanking us for our role in bringing clean water to his village.

When we were about halfway through filling up all the buckets, the Polytank ran dry. The women immediately took charge, refilling the tank with the settled water from the blue drums, and then refilling the blue drums to treat them with alum. They told the remaining people waiting in line that they would be open later in the evening once the alum had settled the water, so the remaining buckets could be filled and everyone could have clean drinking water on opening day.

Before we left, four drummers came and we danced around while the villagers watched and laughed while joining us. Finally, we left to head back to Tamale, excited for our villagers and looking forward to the upcoming days.

Voices from the Field: Team Eric (Fellow Alums, Brigid & Caroline)

Posted on June 30, 2013June 30, 2013 by samreilley

We’re so excited to be back in Ghana! Since we are returning to the fellowship program, our team consists of just the two alums and our amazing translator, Eric. After saying goodbye to the other fellows and translators, we arrived in Salaga on Tuesday with the rest of the team. Our first visit to our village, Kasawuripe, on Wednesday was a success as we met with the chief and planned to return the next day for a village meeting. We were thrilled to present the CWS model to the community and they were enthusiastic about partnering with us. Today we began constructing the treatment center and brought a movable metal polytank stand to the village so that they can move the polytank to their alternative water source in the months when their dugout dries out. The community has a great school and we especially look forward to educating all the kids on the importance of clean water and playing the CWS healthy habits game and other fun activities to encourage to drink healthy water. Tomorrow we’ll begin training the women and distributing the safe storage containers and we hope to have our opening day on Wednesday! After spending just a couple days beginning the project and playing with the kids of the village we’re so excited to be spending the next week opening the water business in Kasawuripe!

-Brigid & Caroline

Voices from the Field: Team Nestor (Angie, Ethan, Kirsten & Sarah)

Posted on June 28, 2013June 29, 2013 by samreilley

Our team consists of Angie, Kirsten, Ethan, Sarah and our translator, Nestor. We’ve been working in the village of Gundaa, about an hour west of Tamale. Our village has about 40 households, divided into New Gundaa and Old Gundaa. Their current source of drinking water is a dugout that is about half a mile from Old Gundaa (the center of the village).

The first day we visited Gundaa, we met with the chief, sub-chiefs, and elders to pitch the idea of a CWS Water Treatment Facility. They were totally onboard, super excited, and extremely thankful! The chief acknowledged that the dirty dugout water they had been drinking was making them sick. He said, “From now on, we will only be drinking clean water!” When we explained we would be working with them over the next two weeks, they even offered to build us our own hut. We organized a community meeting for the following afternoon, so that all of the women in the village could attend after spending the day in the farm (puni). There were over 100 people in attendance.

Angie and Nestor presenting the results of the 3M bacteria test to the village at the community meeting.

Our community meeting began with a prayer for a good meeting, led by the assemblyman. BAM! A table that many people were sitting on fell to the ground. Luckily no one was hurt and the assemblyman joked that the prayer hadn’t reached the sky yet. We each took turns explaining parts of the CWS concept and the work we would be doing. Everyone at the meeting was really excited and loved to see the visuals we brought with us (bacteria tests, a safe storage container, and our Fellow handbooks). At the end of the meeting, the community began to sing a song that involved the women clapping, singing, and yodeling. They sang us two songs – the first was a song of appreciation and the second represented the idea of “united we stand, divided we fall”.

The team clapping along with the women of the village during the appreciation song.

Tomorrow we’ll start building the polytank stand that will be near the dugout under the shade of a tree. We’re super excited to start tomorrow and we can’t wait!

Voices from the field: Team Shak (Jacob, Hailey, Eda & Victoria)

Posted on June 26, 2013April 29, 2015 by samreilley

Their extremely turbid dugout — Vogyili’s extremely turbid dugout

Anula from Tamale!

Team Shak just got back from Day 1 of building the Water Treatment Center. Yesterday was our first day in Vogyili, a village about one hour away from GILLBT. We love riding in Shak’s open air Jeep, even though we have to stop to reattach the gearshift now and then, it’s a great time on the open road! Jacob taught us a Vermonter/Kansan game called “My Cow” that we play often in transit. Our meeting with the chief went really well. We gathered around a shady tree and explained who we were, what CWS does, and how important is it to have the community on board because they will be running the treatment center once we leave! The chief was very enthusiastic, knowledgeable about the water source, and had a sweet green velvet hat. He brought out a can full of brown dugout water and told us how people get sick all the time from drinking the contaminated water. We ran a 3M test on the Vogyili’s dugout water and found that it was positive for E. coli.

Victoria giving a thumbs up to getting all the supplies there to start to build!

Building the first layer of the Water Treatment Center was lots of fun! The chief even came down to see how the building was going and tons of kids gathered around, helping carry sand, cement blocks, and water. The kids also loved looking at the pictures of other centers in our Fellowship Manual. It was therapeutic to smear wet concrete on the blocks with our hands. The blocks will dry overnight and tomorrow we’ll shellac the whole thing with more concrete—then it will be all ready to support the Polytank!

Building Treatment Center Day 1 Complete!!

We tried our best to communicate in Dagbani, but we’re still learning. We’ve pretty much mastered the greeting, which consists of “Despa” (good morning) followed by a series of “Naaa”s, which affirm that you had a good sleep, your family is well, our marriages are thriving (none of us is married), all of our children are healthy (we have no children), and your work is secure. We use lots of hand signals, which worked successfully for asking the kids about their names, school, and pigs. They chased the piglets for us and caught one, but we had them drop it once the Momma Pig began to charge. Can’t wait for more time in the village!

-Victoria, Hailey, Eda & Jacob

First visit to the villages!

Posted on June 24, 2013June 27, 2013 by samreilley

With presentations complete, all fellows were more than ready to get out there and see it all in place! The fellows were headed out to see two communities (Sam took a group to see Chani & Gbung and Kate another to Wongbong & Nekpegu). They were greeted with lots of “Despa”s (“Good Morning” in Dugbani) and smiling faces.

The fellows were able to see the water treatment centers, the communities dugouts, meet some the women entrepreneurs and some even were able to talk with the village chief.

Once returning from the their village visits, the fellows were able to see the alum in action on their samples of dugout water collected from the field. Afterwards, we went through some mock household monitoring to prepare the fellows to conduct monitoring the following day. The fellows then broke out into their teams to practice with their translators the flow of conversation.

We finished the evening at a fellow favorite, Mike’s, to chow down on some delicious pizza!

Above: TJ’s Team (Jhanel, Bryan, Maxine and Casey) making some alum balls! Below: Everyone out to dinner at Mike’s!

CWS Polytank Stands: Cement or Metal?

Posted on June 3, 2013June 3, 2013 by admin

Amin checks the water level of the polytank. This is a typical CWS water treatment center with cement stand.

Wahab checks the water levels of the polytank in Gariezegu. This is a center that uses a metal stand.

While preparations for the summer fellowship program are underway, we’re still focused on monitoring at the CWS Tamale office until the fellows get here. Tamale is in between seasons. It has been raining but the rainy season is not in full swing just yet. The CWS field staff is prepping our 49 villages for the seasonal transitions that will take place during the fellowship program when they will be given less attention. Full time field staffer, Amin, will be monitoring the communities while the other field staff will be working as translators for the fellows.

One way we’re prepping the communities is by bringing the entrepreneurs metal polytank stands. If you read my post on building polytank stands a few months ago, then you already have an idea of what I’m talking about. Several CWS partnership communities drink from multiple water sources throughout the year. As the rains come, the women, who are responsible for collecting water in the Dagomba culture, opt for fetching water from water sources that are closer to home. In some villages that might mean going to a closer dugout that only fills with water when it rains. In others, it might mean drinking from hand dug wells in the community or drinking from a stream that is created during the rainy season.

The path to Gariezegu’s center floods when the rains start, which is why the community now uses a metal polytank stand to bring their center to town. The entrepreneurs treat and sell well water and rainwater throughout the rainy season.

The metal polytank in Gariezegu that inspired the new CWS metal polytank stand!

We’re realizing on the monitoring side that this is a common trend and that we need to have realistic expectations for the entrepreneurs running the centers. It would be hard for the women to treat and sell water at a dugout where the path is flooded and where nobody goes to get water for three months out of the year. Initially, CWS planned on building cement polytank stands at the various locations from which people collect water. But we were inspired by the metal polytank stand that Gariezegu used last rainy season to bring their water treatment center to town to treat well water.

The metal stand can be moved around, which is ideal for villages that collect water from different sources. Instead of building multiple stands, the community can move their center to wherever it is they are getting water. West Africa Reginal Director, Kathryn Padget, and Project Manager, Peter Biyam, got in touch with a welder and showed him a diagram of what the metal polytank stand should look like. The welder was able to make the polytank stand out of metal piping and so the metal stand was created!

CWS entrepreneur, Anatu, stands with Kpanayili’s new metal polytank stand located next to their closer dugout that is only full of water during the rainy season.

CWS does not anticipate using these metal stands in every community or using these stands first thing in implementation. The cement polytank stands are a good fit for communities that only drink from one water source year round because they are so durable and because they can’t be moved! The metal polytank stands will only be added to communities that will need to move their centers to other water points. So far, CWS has brought metal stands to Gbandu and Kpanayili. We are hoping to get metal stands out to Libi, Tindan II, Kpalbusi, Jarayili and Tacpuli before the fellowship program. As of now, we’re just waiting on the welder!

– Brianán

Implementation Envy and Jarayili Jams

Posted on February 7, 2013February 12, 2013 by communitywatersolutions

I love monitoring. It’s “sort of my jam”, as Director of US Operations Sam Reilley would say (I’m sure Brianán Kiernan, Peter Biyam, Shakun Ibrahim and the rest of our full-time Tamale staff can relate). But every so often I get a sense of Implementation Envy. Watching the fellows roll back in their taxis from dusty days distributing safe storage containers or organizing community meetings makes me jealous! (Think you could Azonto with a Ghanain P1 class or assemble a safe storage container with the speed and efficiency of a NASCAR team? Maybe the CWS fellowship is the thing for you!) But fortunately for me I’ve had the opportunity these past few weeks to get in on the center set-up action once again. That’s right, the alum training, the stand building, the opening day anticipation, the taxi breakdowns, it all happened for the 49th time this January in …

The Newest CWS Partner Community, Jarayili!!

Jarayili is a really tiny community about an hour outside of Tamale. I had stopped in here a few times before to chat water, but unfortunately the village didn’t seem to be a good fellowship match for one daunting reason: the walk to the dugout is actually a mile long. In villages where the water source is incredibly far away like this, our current method does not make much sense – each safe storage container only holds 20 liters, and garawas (metal buckets traditionally used to move water) hold up to double this amount. Could we really ask women to double their usual walking time and distance to buy treated water? Would they even be interested in doing it?

To see if we can deal with all this we coupled with UNICEF, the East Gonja District Assembly, and the village of Jarayili to try out another option. We distributed 70 liter safe storage containers to each of the 17 houses in the community. We set up the treatment center by the dugout in the usual way. And we told people they could use whatever they liked to transport the clean water to their houses, as long as the water is stored in the safe storage container in the house (to prevent recontamination) and is transported in something clean. Opening day found nine jerrycans (yellow buckets with twist on lids that are transported by bike), six garawas and two metal washing tins lined up for clean water. People seemed ready to go the distance to bring home clean water now that larger transporting options were on the table! So exciting!

But now the second test. Will the water stay clean between the time it leaves the polytank and the time it enters the drinking cup? Only time and further water tests will tell, but if so we might well be able to roll out water businesses in communities we previously thought we could not help, which is obviously huge! Enough big picture talk. Getting the chance to work with the wonderful Suayba and Awulatu, seeing them own the opening of their business (and pocket the hard-earned peswas), hanging out with the Jarayili chief and son, and providing endless unintentional entertainment for Mohammed, Rashid, Fushi and the rest of the Jarayili kids was awesome in and of itself. It was so great to get my center start-up fix, and now… More Monitoring!

-Kathryn

Voices from the Field: Team C (Emily, Lauren, Sarah and Priya)

Posted on January 15, 2013February 12, 2013 by communitywatersolutions

Team C, aka Charlie’s Angels (consisting of Emily, Lauren, Sarah, and Priya), ventured into the school in Tindan today to teach students about healthy drinking habits! First, Sarah, Emily and Lucy (our photographer) went to the dugout and water treatment centre to collect materials for the games, and check on the women (Adamu and Maymuna).After a couple days of distribution and monitoring safe storage containers, the kids of the village were excited about learning healthy drinking habits!

The motto of our first activity was: clear does not always mean clean! We had the kids gather around while Emily and Priya presented them with three water bottles, filled with polytank water, a salt-water solution, and dugout water. We asked them which one(s) they would like to drink, and the two clear solutions were chosen. Needless to say, Abrahim, a little boy of the village, was shocked that the salt water solution tasted bad even though it looked clean. The kids laughed, and we taught them that re-contamination is not always visible, so they should keep their hands out of the safe storage containers.

Next, we played ‘healthy-habits tag’, where we taught the kids safe drinking habits. Three kids were “diseases”, who were “it” in the tag game and, five kids were assigned healthy habits, giving them extra lives in the game. Lauren volunteered as a “disease,” and the young Tindan kids outran her as we all played. At the end, the kids with the healthy habits cards (drawn by Priya!) remained standing which showed how crucial healthy drinking habits are.

Playing games while educating was a great way to introduce healthy drinking habits to the kids and excite them about their safe storage containers filled with clean water! We are sad to leave Tindan, but we have left the centre in the capable hands of Adamu and Maymuna, and we are confident that the children will practice safe drinking habits!

Voices from the Field: Team E (Linda, Vanesa, Alexa and Julia)

Posted on January 13, 2013February 12, 2013 by communitywatersolutions

Team E (Linda, Vanessa, Alexa, and Julia) has spent the past week in Nekpegu, a small village of 26 households.

Prior to opening day, we had met with the chief and whole community and distributed 26 buckets to all the households. After only an hour on opening day, all buckets had been filled at the center. Our two women, Fatima and Ramatu, had made a profit of over two cedis—which is more than a weekly income for most people in rural Ghana.

What was best for us was really watching the women take charge, and see the village’s excitement. When the chief arrived at the polytank Ramatu was so eager to have him take the first drink from the tap. (The photo of him smiling is when he was asked what it tasted like… I thought it tasted pretty good, too.) The second they turned the knob and saw the crisp clean water, the whole line of 15 women and children started clapping.

During the first training session we had with Ramatu and Fatima, which Julia helped lead, Ramatu modestly accepted Julia’s notebook and pen and explained with a smile that she could not write. Seeing her pose with her notebook and pen, after learning how to tally the people who arrived, gave light to the empowerment that the CWS model brings to the women of these villages.

The next day, the polytank was empty and our women were enthusiastic to start round two and scoop their blue drums into the tank for treatment. On our last days we get to monitor and hear back from our households on how the center is working for them (and mostly just how the water tastes.) We will also be spending a day at the small school in our village and we are excited to get to help start the education process with our children—because, as our chief said to us, the kids will help enlighten them.

xoxox

Lexi Lee