This week in pictures
Monitoring
Back in the Field
Today was my first day back in the field since I was here in January. Peter, Shak, TJ and Wahab have been doing an awesome job monitoring all of the CWS villages over the past couple of months, and I was excited to go check things out for myself. This morning, I shadowed Peter and Wahab as they did household visits in Chani.
We started off the day with my favorite Ghanaian breakfast, eggs and bread (and nescafe)!
Then we hit the road to Chani! I was happy to see that everything at Chani has been going extremely well! That morning, about 10 people came to fetch water, and almost every household that we visited had clean water in their safe storage containers. Peter and Wahab did an awesome job monitoring – i just sat back and took pictures!
Besides getting to see everything run smoothly, being in Chani this morning was exciting for another reason as well…there were puppies in almost every house! We didn’t know what was going on with all these little guys, but we loved it!
Day 2: New Year’s Eve!
The second day of the fellowship began with a brief classroom review of the CWS approach to water treatment followed by a more hands on lesson. The fellows practiced rolling alum balls and using it on samples of dugout water. After seeing for themselves the magical filtering ability of alum, the fellows split up into their teams and practiced simulations of random household monitoring with their translators.
The fellows then made their first trip out into the field to visit existing CWS villages!! Teams 1 and 4 went to Jarigu, Team 2 Cheko, and Team 3 Nyamaliga. The fellows got to see the treatment centers first hand and further visualize the end goal of their projects. They also got to practice their Dagbani with the villagers!
What We’ve Been Upto
The past couple weeks have been devoted to monitoring, updating my monitoring files (pretty much as fun as it sounds…), preparing for the rainy season, and getting ready for our awesome Fellows who arrive on June 7th! Its hard to take pictures of these tasks, but I managed to snap a few, enjoy! Be prepared for a post with our updated monitoring results soon!
The next few pictures are from an old Guinea Worm Containment Center. In order to prepare for the rainy season, our team went to check out some rainwater harvesting projects (in two of our villages, the paths to the dugouts, and therefore the water treatment centers, flood during the heavy rains. We are thinking about setting up rainwater harvesting systems to fill the polytanks with rainwater during this time – ill keep you posted!). We stopped by this containment center to look at their rainwater harvesting system and found out that the center had essentially been abandoned. Why? Because there haven’t been ANY Guinea Worm cases in this area in months! Such great news!
Guinea Worm is a horrendous water-related disease that has been endemic in Ghana for years. Due to the amazing Guinea Worm Eradication Campaign, led by the Carter Center, the number of Guinea Worm cases has drastically reduced – especially over the past few years. Shak visited this center in 2008 and said that there were so many patients that they had to put beds on the veranda. Not anymore! As the Carter Center explains on their website:
“Humans are a Guinea worm’s only host, so spread of the disease can be controlled by identifying all cases and modifying human behavior to prevent it from recurring. Once all human cases are eliminated, the disease will be eradicated.”
I recently heard through the volunteer rumor mill that soon, it is going to be announced that Guinea Worm has been eradicated from Ghana!
Monitoring in Gidanturu
This week we spent some time monitoring in Gidanturu. Its always so fun to see people using their safe storage containers in their homes. We were very excited about our monitoring results and are so proud of Birami and Mariam, who have been doing an excellent job working at the water treatment center!
Back to Work
Today was my first official day back in the field. I spent the morning checking up on Nyamaliga and Jarigu and was so excited to see everyone again!
Nyamaliga had recently decided to switch from a daily to a monthly payment system at their water treatment center. This was the village elders’ idea and it seems to be working well. I was excited that leaders in the community took the initiative to devise this payment plan and put it in action! Each family pays 50 peswas (~50 cents) each month and then can collect water from the treatment center as much as they like. Big families seem to be collecting everyday or every other day while smaller families are going about twice a week. The first month using this payment method ends on Monday. I am planning to meet with Sanatu and Hawa (the women who run this center) to review the revenue and make sure that 50 peswas is enough to cover the cost of treatment while still leaving some left over for their wages. Based on the sales that Peter has observed so far, we expect the 50 peswas to be fine.
While I was gone, the Nyamaliga men got together and built a shade for the treatment center. It looks great and keeps the water in the polytank nice and cool! It was exciting to see that the village came together and worked on something for the water treatment center. Like their new payment method, it shows that Nyamaliga really feels ownership over the water business-which is one of our main goals!
After visiting Nyamaliga, I spent some time with Alhassan at the Jarigu water business. He is doing great, but for the past two weeks, water sales have slowed down a bit. This was a little confusing because Jarigu has had consistent sales ever since we opened the water business last October. Tomorrow, Peter and I are going to visit some households in the community to see if we can get to the bottom of the drop in sales and may suggest the monthly payment method for Jarigu as well. I’ll keep you posted on what we find!
Last Day in Ghana!
Today is my last official day in Ghana! I can’t believe how quickly these two months went by. I have spent the last week preparing Peter for my departure. We put together new monitoring forms for him, and then had a practice run- where he went to the villages without me and filled out his monitoring forms which we then reviewed. He did a great job and I am confident that he will be able to handle anything that may come up while I am gone. Right now, the plan is for me to be in the States for the holidays where I will work on fundraising with the rest of the CWS team. If the fundraising goes well, then I will hopefully be back in Ghana in late winter/early spring. We’ll be sure to keep everyone posted! If you are interested in supporting our work please visit www.communitywatersolutions.org to learn more about donating to our cause!
Monitoring at Jarigu and Nyamaliga
Jarigu
Since opening day at Jarigu on October 17th, 98% of the households in the village have visited the water treatment center at least once, while 74% have come a second time and almost 50% have come three times. These are some of the best uptake and sustained use results that we have seen in any CWS village!
Nyamaliga
The rain has finally stopped in Northern Region Ghana and the path to the water treatment center at Nyamaliga is FINALLY dry enough to open the center. Sanatu (the woman who runs the center in Nyamaliga) officially re-opened for business last week and has been very busy. Right now she is opening the center about 5 times a week and plans to be open everyday once the dry season officially gets underway. Currently,about 5 to 20 people are buying water each day and we expect this to increase as we move into the dry season. Here are some pictures from the re-opening at Nyamaliga:
Updates from the Field
I can’t believe that its already been a week since I left the U.S. It has been really fun being back in Tamale and visiting the CWS water treatment centers. Unfortunately, I was totally fooled by the weather in Accra, it is NOT cool and breezy up north, in fact is is horribly hot! It is nearing the end of the rainy season, all of the crops are fully grown and ready for harvest. I have never been to Tamale in September before and it was quite a surprise to see Maize (corn) and other crops growing right in the middle of the village!
Here are some updates on the two pilot villages!
Nyamaliga
Since the CWS team left Tamale last January, Hawa and Sanatu (the women running the water treatment center in Nyamaliga) have been opening it for business every Thursday morning. The women are happy with the number of people that are coming to the center and enjoy working there. A couple of months ago, the ladies finished their first batch Aquatabs (one of the products used to treat the water) and had to buy more. While this may not seem like a big deal, it was a very exciting event for the CWS team! This means the women were treating the water correctly (they ran out of Aquatabs at the right time) and that they had saved the right amount of money (they had enough funds put aside to buy more Aquatabs)!
Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago the path to the water treatment center flooded and people from Nyamaliga have not been able to get there to buy water. The chief thinks that the path should dry out in the next week or so, so hopefully we can get things up and running soon! Although the flood disappointing, I am glad that I am here to see how the village has reacted. It is very important that our CWS team learns how the water supply in this region changes throughout the year so we can be more prepared for situations like this as we expand to other villages.
I have started going around to households in Nyamaliga to see where people have been getting their drinking water since the center has been closed. So far I have been to just over ten households and have been very pleased with the results. Most of the families have continued to use their safe storage containers to store their drinking water! This means that the people in Nyamaliga understood the importance of safe storage to reduce the risk of re-contamination. Since the center has been closed, most of the families in Nyamaliga have been drinking rainwater, or water from a nearby well. Over the next week I am going to continue this monitoring and start testing the quality of the rain/well water that people have collected. So stayed tuned for the results! I am also planning to work with Hawa, Sanatu, and the village elders to come up with a “rainy season plan” for the treatment center in case another flood like this happens in the future. Here are some pictures of people using their safe storage containers in Nyamaliga:
In other news, Hawa recently had a baby boy! His name is Alhassan and he is precious! Pics to come soon!
Kasaligu
When our team was in Ghana last January, Kasaligu had just recently began receiving piped water a few days a week. The water flowed sporadically and members of the village never knew when the pipe would work or for how long. (At that time, Ghana was in the middle of an election, and the village leaders were convinced that once the election was over, the pipe would stop flowing). Fati (the women who works at the center) and the village leaders decided to keep the water treatment center open once a week to make sure that the community had access to safe drinking water when the pipe was not flowing.
Well the election has come and gone and Kasaligu is still getting municipal water! In fact, they now have access to piped water all day, everyday! It turns out that Kasaligu’s increased access to clean water is the result of the Biwater project in Tamale. This is very exciting news because it means that the city is improving and expanding their infrastructure to include more rural areas. While there has been some controversy about the project, our team is hopeful that it will be a success. Here are some pictures of one of the public standpipes in Kasaligu, providing piped municipal water to the village:
Now that Kasaligu has consistent access to municipal water, CWS’s involvement in the village is going to change. I have discussed the situation with the village chairman and with Fati, and we have decided to move the treatment center to a village that is outside the reach of the BiWater project (and therefore will not have access to piped water any time in the foreseeable future). CWS will still work with Kasaligu by helping promote safe water storage. In the future, Fati may also help me teach the women in the new village how to treat water from the dugout (since she is a pro by now AND can speak Dagboni!) Ill make sure to keep everyone posted on these changes over the next couple of months!
Some Pictures From My First Week in Ghana!
