All the places you never want to go on vacation: Freetown Project check, in the rain

Thursday & Friday, August 4-5, 2016

Jim left this morning to meet a sufficiently recovered Jonathan and also John Blackie at the mission office coming by taxi from John’s house. Jonathan was still rather lethargic because he waited a bit too long to get treated, but he wanted very much to be with them. I stayed home today because of an infection, but am quickly on the mend with medication that I always take with me. I spent hours typing up reports and putting pictures with them. We take a picture of each site, which helps us remember what we saw. I also ended up staying back on Friday, knowing that they only had 4 more sites to visit, and I could get more reports completed and finish all the wash! I also could drink all the water that I needed to drink.

One of the main purposes for this trip was to check on some projects that we haven’t closed yet and to see if there is anything that we still want to do for a certain aspect of a project or not. We would not do this unless there was still money left in the project that would be available for the ones that we feel are worth fixing. The project here in the greater Freetown area is the one that they checked on. We knew that there were some problems here, so it is just a matter of what we decide we need to fix—we also might need some retraining at the different sites and perhaps change some of the weaker water committees. This was the project that was left without much supervision after the Ebola problem arose and needed our official check. It included a combination of some bio-fil latrines, wells, spring developments, and piped water.

Jim was driving and complained about how slow going it was with sharp, rock-strewn roads that he felt could flatten his tires, and the roads were often steep. He wished he was on a motorbike, except for the rain of course. On the second day he came back to the hotel for a moment at lunchtime, wet and mud-stained, after having seen only one of 4 sites. I’m so glad I wasn’t there…they were gone till mid-afternoon and grabbed a very late lunch here.

Some well pumps had been broken and they were now using them as dip wells. But this well (Jonathan with my broken umbrella) was being run by two strong women. They have quite a business there selling water (we presume). We are happy about this, because they have an interest in keeping it working; they help themselves and the community. There were a few others that were functioning properly.

Two or three Biofil latrines were constructed. This design was developed by a man we met in Ghana a few years ago, where local bugs eat the waste so that no clean-out is needed. At least one of these is broken and filthy and not being used. The other is in a bus station, and it is kept clean and working and people are paying to use it. People often do not want to use a public latrine because of a small fee. Why pay to do what they can do for free; but it pollutes their land.

I loved this well because etched into the side of their wall were all the rules to keep it clean and working. In case you can’t read it: “Please keep well clean; No enter with slippers; No fighting; No quarreling; One at a time; First come first.” There is more that I can’t read.

One of the best constructed wells had a tree growing nearby so that they had to build the wall to include the tree. They were warned that this would cause the well top cover to eventually crack, but they insisted that they needed shade. So, it is cracking…of course. Now they want it removed…

This is one of several spring boxes, which normally are easy to maintain. There are no specific plans, because each site is so different. Water was coming out of the overflow as they’d capped off the taps during this rainy season. Some of the spring boxes were very poorly designed.

They have warning tape at this beach, keeping people away from there. Swim, anyone?

We can’t begin to describe the amount of filth these people are living in. These pictures do not capture the depth, breadth and height of it. Once a month there is decreed a cleaning day; no one can be seen doing anything but that and aren’t allowed to move around. However, they strangely never go much past the main roads to try and keep the communities clean. Every river is laden inside, on the edge, and beyond with plastic bags, some filled with feces. The water point below at a spring box is filthy with trash also. It looks worse when you see this in person. We saw this area years ago, and nothing has changed, except that it is worse than ever.