Saturday, August 22, 2015

New Discoveries

Greetings from Ghana!!! The second travel team (Leerang, Becca, and Christine) arrived last Monday, and the first team (Anna, Wing-Sum, Adam, and David) left this morning. Our mentor, Alexi, is here for both travel team times.

There's been a few new discoveries about Amanfrom's current water systems. Community members told us of a borehole built in the 1990s that had worked for a few weeks but then was believed to have gone dry. To see why the borehole stopped working, we hired a specialist to open up the borehole and examine the piping. It turns out that the borehole has water in it, but that a crack in the bottom of the piping has prevented it from being able to pump water. We were really surprised that this borehole has been here the whole time unused when a simple repair (costing 650 cedis) would fix it. We've informed community leaders of our discovery and will meet with them soon to discuss plans to fix it.

We also learned of a private pump and an extension of a water source on the outskirts of the village. A nice girl named Celestina helped show us these and is excited to help us learn more. Her whole family even came by our place to pay us a formal visit. It was great to talk to them about their school and life in the village. Celestina is fourteen years old, so she has applied for high schools and will find out where she is accepted in a few weeks.

On the latrine side, construction is going well and the masons have adapted to the design changes we made to their usual latrine construction. Our community contact, Sammy, has been great about overseeing the latrine work and ensuring the construction occurs efficiently. We are excited about the technical process of building the latrine, and plan to meet more will community leaders and members to ensure that there are systems in place to maintain the latrine at a high quality.

We're looking forward to the completion of the latrine and learning more about Amanfrom's water sources, and will continue to update when we can reach internet access.

Sincerely,
2015 EWB Ghana Travel Team

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