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Voices from the Field: Team A

Posted on January 12, 2012January 14, 2012 by communitywatersolutions

Antire ! (good afternoon) from Tamale and greetings from the remaining members from team A!

Yesterday was a very exciting day for us because we were able to meet face to face almost every individual in our village (Manguli). Our day yesterday consisted of walking from household to household distributing clean water containers that they will use to collect their families clean water from their new clean water source. It was amazing to be welcomed into every household and get to know each family individually. It was a very exciting day for our team, as all the people that we got know were very excited about the work we were doing. The day was also challenging, as we had to distribute forty- six clean water storage buckets!

Last night was tough as one of our contributing team members Matt Gillstrap returned home to the states as he had grad school to prepare for. Matt’s hard work did not go unrewarded as today was opening day for the village of Manguli giving clean water to ever household for the first time!

100_1503 — Safe Travels Matt! We miss you!

We began our day in Manguli like the days prior with first meeting at the Chief’s household to pay our respects and discuss our plan for the day. Every time we get to interact with the chief it is a really amazing experience as we go back and forth through our translator Nestor.

After meeting with the chief all the women and elders of the village met us at the new polytank with their buckets. There was a great opening ceremony with prayers said and water passed around; after that there was a four-hour frenzy of getting water into everyone’s buckets. It was very rewarding to see everyone so enthusiastic about their clean water.

When we met with the chief after everyone picked up their clean water he presented us with a guinea fowl and six cassavas to express his and the village’s deep appreciation. Can’t wait to make a meal of them!

100_1718 — The chief of Manguli with Laura and our new Guniea Fowl

-Laura and Alex (and Matt)

Voices from the field: Team 3!

Posted on June 10, 2011June 10, 2011 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!

SAM_0415 — 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.

SAM_0302 — 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.

SAM_0321 — Stressful discussion about safe storage distribution. We knew everyone was excited for opening day, but this was still tough to manage!

SAM_0323 — 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

Voice from the field: Team 7!

Posted on January 25, 2011January 28, 2011 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!

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!

Kids dancing by the water treatment center!

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 1

Posted on January 11, 2011February 4, 2011 by communitywatersolutions

Opening Day!! Naaaaaaahhhh.

Chani is a small and quiet village. The chief, supposedly 150 years old, has been sick for a few days so we had been unable to meet with him until yesterday afternoon. He gave us a short blessing and thanked us for working there. The other villagers were extremely receptive and helpful as we built the center and distributed buckets. Selamatu and Muneera, the women running our center, are diligent workers; they learned quickly and are proud of their role managing the center. Everything pretty much went off without a hitch as we prepared for the big morning.

Immediately upon our arrival a few men approached asking to purchase additional buckets. There was also a fancy-schmancy educated man who had been in town the day we distributed so he was eager to get his safe-storage container. As we waited for Selamatu and Muneera, children and women crowded around with their buckets; everyone was clearly super pumped for the “pure wata.” Down at the center we were quickly surrounded by blue buckets and people, more of a mob than a queue. The children and a few fellows were clapping and making music which added to the festive mood.

Buckets all lined up, ready for the center to open!

Once the water started flowing it became apparent that many of the buckets were leaking at the tap. This caused a slight delay – which could have been debilitating at a larger village – as we retightened all the taps with pliers provided by the villagers themselves. Along with the inordinate number of people who wanted to buy additional buckets, the tap tightening was our largest hiccup. The villagers, of course, were chiller than FanMilk – they couldn’t have cared less about the pause. Patience and a constant willingness to lend a hand seem to be the pervading Ghanaian virtues.

Muneera doles out the first flow of pure water at Chani!!!

Wahab, our awesome-sauce all-star translator extraordinaire, was equal parts assistant and leader. He was darting back and forth between problems, often translating two different conversations simultaneously. What a baller. The concrete stand he built is enormous and crafted to perfection, fully blowing those of other villages out of the water (pun intended). Wahab takes an obvious pride in his work.

Wahab working on our ridiculously large stand a few days before.

We thought the stand was perhaps a wee bit too gigantic but it ended up coming in handy when the women decided to put the tubs on top of it as well (right next to the Polytank) to avoid the swarming hordes of ants discovered beneath them.

Swarming hordes is an understatement, there was a ridiculous number of ants.

To exterminate them, a nearby dude instantly lit some grass on fire and started brushing it over the former colony. We were a little thrown off guard by the flames but not a Chanian batted an eye; it was as though fire was the instinctual solution to the problem. Ghanaians are so bad-ass.

Walking back to the taxi, reflecting on our efforts of the past few days, we all felt an overwhelming sense of fulfillment. The work has been, without a doubt, one of the most gratifying of all possible experiences. Like Mike said, the world seems to smile on days like today. Awesomeness abounds for Team C.L.E.A.N.

Naoonitibeow,

Catherine, Heather, Mira and Luke

3 Villages in 3 Weeks: Opening Day in Nyanguripe!

Posted on November 24, 2010November 24, 2010 by communitywatersolutions

Thats right! Just a few short days after opening the water business in Gilanzegu, CWS opened our 10th water business in the village of Nyanguripe. This water business was sponsored by Stephen and Marie Nolan at last year’s Medfield Fundraiser. We were so excited to get it up and running! Thank you Stephen and Marie for your support!

The Nyanguripe dugout - this community's only source of water.

Nyanguripe is a rural village of about 280 people, located in the Central Gonja District of Northern Region Ghana (like Kampong and Gilanzegu). Like all CWS villages, the only source of water in this community is a dugout – a fecally contaminated, turbid, surface water source that is shared with the village livestock. In addition to being our 10th village, the water business in Nyanguripe is the 3rd unicef-cws partner community.

I had a particularly good time working in Nyanguripe because I was training our two new translators, TJ and Wahab, who we recently hired to help out with the 2011 winter fellowship program. TJ and Wahab are extremely hard-workers and fast learners. I had so much fun working with them in Nyanguripe and was impressed with how quickly they picked up on the CWS model! Here are some pictures from our work in the community:

Rolling alum balls at the Nyanguripe water treatment center.

Water treatment training day 1: Using alum to remove turbidity from the water.

Water treatment training day 2: scooping the water into the polytank and treating it with chlorine

Peter and Shak came to village one day to help us distribute safe storage containers. Here is Peter securing a tap to the safe storage container.

Opening day at Nyanguripe! Almost every household came to fetch water (and the people that couldn't make it came the next day!)

The beautiful CWS ladies at Nyanguripe working hard (but still having fun!) on opening day!

New CWS translator, Wahab, at Nyanguripe at opening day!

Happy customers bring home their clean drinking water in their CWS safe storage containers.

On the way to Nyanguripe we found an awesome sunflower farm! It was beautiful!

The sunflowers are being farmed for their oil.

The main reason that we were able to open in three new communities in such a short period of time is that Shak and Peter, two of our awesome Ghanaian staff members, have started leading village implementations on their own. You may remember that Peter opened his first water business in Cheko and he did a great job! We continue to be impressed with his work ethic and patience when working in the field.

After working for CWS for 8 months, we decided it was time for Shak to follow in Peter’s footsteps and start leading implementations as well. He was in charge of setting up the water business in Gilanzegu and he did an amazing job. We are very excited for Shak and are proud of how far he has come in the past 8 months! Thank you Peter and Shak for your hard work!

Gilanzegu

Posted on November 24, 2010November 24, 2010 by communitywatersolutions

The day after opening day in Kampong, we opened another water treatment business in the neighboring village of Gilanzegu. Like Kampong, we learned about Galinzegu’s need for safe drinking water from unicef who thought that the CWS model would work well in this community – so far they were right!

Galinzegu is a rural village of about 310 people, located in the Central Gonja District of Northern Region Ghana, 40 minutes outside of Tamale. This water treatment business was sponsored by Gerry and Judy O’Connell. Gerry and Judy – thank you so much for your continued support! Here are some pictures from Galinzegu!

CWS assistant program manager, Shak, unloading the 200-L drums for the water treatment center in Gilanzegu

Shak, distributing safe storage containers in Gilanzegu.

The CWS ladies in Gilanzegu scooping water from the 200-L drums into the polytank.

Shak recording household numbers on opening day!

The water business was packed on opening day!

Opening Day in Kampong

Posted on November 14, 2010November 24, 2010 by communitywatersolutions

Yesterday, we opened our 8th CWS water business in the village of Kampong! It such a fun and busy morning with 26 out of the 29 households in the village showing up to buy water!

Kampong is a rural village of about 525 people, located in the Central Gonja District of Northern Region Ghana, 40 minutes outside of the capital city, Tamale.

CWS first learned of the need for clean water in Kampong from Unicef, who had been working in the village on water and sanitation projects, but could not figure out a sustainable way to bring safe drinking water to the community. In the past Unicef has funded borehole drilling (which is not successful in most of Northern Region Ghana due to a lack of non-saline groundwater sources accessible to drilling) and household water treatment but was looking for a new, simple solution and was interested in our for-profit, water business approach. The water treatment business in Kampong is the first of 5 Unicef-CWS partner villages in the Central Gonja district. Here are some pictures from the past week in Kampong:

Sanatu and Santu (yes they have the same name!) the two women who run the water business in Kampong

Day one of water treatment training: Sanatu and Sanatu rolling balls of alum

Day one of water treatment training: using alum to remove turbidity from the water

Peter, passing out safe storage containers and showing people how to use the tap.

Shak using the results from our water quality testing to show people the "small germs that you can't see" in the water.

Water Treatment Training Day 2: Scooping the water (now clear!) into the polytank where it will be treated with chlorine

The final product! Clear, clean, (microbe-free!) drinking water 🙂

The water treatment centers become a hot spot for village gossip. We love watching the ladies hang out and chat while they fill up their safe storage containers.

Oops! Ladies got a little bit distracted by all the gossiping and started losing track of their safe storage containers! Here are me and our new translator, TJ, using the list of household names and numbers to clear up the confusion!

Despite the fact that the very sight of me makes most babies in the villages burst into tears (like this little guy! they are terrified of my pale complexion...), their Mothers always insist that I hold them. I don't mind 🙂

This water business is sponsored by the awesome Medfield FitGirls. Thank you to FitGirls founder, Sarah Nixon, and all of the FitGirls who raised the money to support this water business. Your hard work has really made a difference in the lives of the people in Kampong!

Opening Day in Gidanturu

Posted on April 20, 2010April 28, 2010 by communitywatersolutions

Its only Tuesday, but our team has been so busy this week it feels like it should be Friday! We spent Sunday and Monday passing out safe storage containers to every family in Gidanturu, and training Mariam and Bariami (sp?), the two women who were nominated by their community to run the CWS water business. Then today, we opened for business! Over 90% of the village showed up to buy water, and we even saw a few more people headed to the center as we were leaving (unfortunately we had run out of water due to a leaky polytank, so we closed before those people were able to fetch. Have no worries, the polytank is fixed and more water will be ready tomorrow!) A big THANK YOU to Colleen and Jeff Clopeck for sponsoring this water business!

First batch of dirty water ready to be treated during our "water treatment training"

Miriam and Birami treating the water with alum during day 1 of water treatment training

Water treatment training day 2 - particles from the dugout water have settled at the bottom on the drum

Alum - in case you were wondering what it looked like

Water treatment training day 2 - scooping water into the polytank

Peter teaching a lovely Gidanturian (sp?) lady how to use the tap on her safe storage container

Happy customers on opening day in Gidanturu

All set to go - safe storage container filled with clean water!

Recording the households that came to buy water

Gidanturu is home to many fun animals! They actually have crocodiles in their dugout and pet monkeys!

On our way home from Gidanturu we passed an overturned Coke truck – the road was COVERED in broken glass. I had to take a pic!

World Water Day!

Posted on March 23, 2010April 28, 2010 by communitywatersolutions

Yesterday was World Water Day, and we made sure to celebrate this special day with our entire CWS Family here in Ghana!

We started our celebration bright and early by opening our fifth water business in Gbong! It was so much fun to open a CWS water business ON World Water Day, even though most of the people in Gbong did not understand what we were talking about when Shak and I kept cheering for WWD! We had an amazing turnout, with 94% of the village showing up to buy water. Fati and Amina, the CWS ladies in Gbong did a great job selling and treating the water! Here are some pics from the morning:

IPHONE 073 — Shak recording which households came to buy water

IPHONE 092 — Selling water on World Water Day at Gbong

IPHONE 079 — Safe storage container filled with safe drinking water!

The one hiccup was a few dozen leaky taps – but Shak and I were able to fix them all by the end of the morning. Thank you iContact for sponsoring the water business at Gbong!

Later that afternoon, we had a party for the entire CWS family here at the office. Shak and I cooked (well, I chopped veggies while Shak cooked!) while Peter went to pick up everyone. Everyone except Fati from Kasaligu was able to make it to the party. The ladies were a little shy at first, but once they got to know each other, they started to share stories and offer each other advice. It was such a great experience. For example, the ladies in Cheko mentioned that some people in their village don’t like the smell of chlorine in the water. Alhassan, from Jarigu, explained to them that the chlorine was the most important step in the water treatment center, and that in a few weeks, people won’t even notice the smell. He went on to explain his experience in Jarigu, and how the chlorine smell is the smell of “clean water” so of course it is going to smell different than the “dirty water” from the dugout. This entire conversation happened while I was in the kitchen helping Shak, and when I came back, Soufoo (who can speak a little english) told me about it. I was thrilled! We missed you Mike, Chuck, Vanessa and Peter A!

IPHONE 063 — World Water Day Celebration!

IPHONE 064 — Of course we had to serve water from a CWS Safe Storage Container!

IPHONE 071 — Everyone was dressed to the nines! (sorry that the picture is blurry!)

Opening Day at Cheko

Posted on March 15, 2010April 28, 2010 by communitywatersolutions

Today was opening day at Cheko and it was a great success – 80% of the village showed up to buy water! Out of the 7 households that did not come this morning, 2 of them are Fulani families. The Fulanis are a nomadic ethic group in the Northern Region of Ghana that move from village to village and takes care of cattle. Fulanis usually do not stay in a village for more than a year, but we always make sure that the Fulanis that are around get safe storage containers and have access to the water treatment center. We’re guessing the two Fulani families that did not come this morning were probably out in the bush with their cattle.

This week Peter will conduct household visits in Cheko. He will take water samples so we can make sure that our safe storage containers are doing their job of preventing the water from being re-contaminated in the home. During these visits, Peter will also chat with members of the community to see what they think of the water, the water business, and CWS in general. He’s going to be on the look-out for the 5 remaining households that did not buy water this morning and see if he can figure out why. I’ll keep you posted on his findings!

Unfortunately, I forgot to give Peter my camera this morning so we don’t have any pics from opening day. I’ll make sure that he has it the next time the water business is open so we can post some good pictures!