May, 2020: COVID-19 Prevention Training Update at Kigbal Community
Our teams are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us in our fight against the virus while maintaining access to clean, reliable water.
We are carrying out awareness and prevention trainings on the virus in every community we serve. Very often, our teams are the first (and only) to bring news and information of the virus to rural communities like Kigbal, Sierra Leone
We trained people on the symptoms, transmission routes, and prevention of COVID-19.
With distancing and/or small groups: Due to public gathering concerns, we worked with trusted community leaders to gather a select group of community members who would then relay the information learned to the rest of their family and friends.
We began training communities before the first reported case of COVID-19 in the country and before the government enacted public health guidance related to it. We worked with trusted community leaders and Water User Committees to gather community members for the training. Although community members did not observe social distancing during the training, we sensitized them on its importance and effectiveness in combating the spread of the virus.
We covered essential hygiene lessons:
- Demonstrations on how to build a simple handwashing station
- Proper handwashing technique
- The importance of using soap and clean water for handwashing
- Cleaning and disinfecting commonly touched surfaces including at the water point.
We covered COVID-19-specific guidance in line with national and international standards:
- Information on the symptoms and transmission routes of COVID-19
- What social distancing is and how to practice it
- How to cough into an elbow
- Alternative ways to greet people without handshakes, fist bumps, etc.
- How to make and properly wear a facemask.
During training, we installed a new handwashing station with soap near the community’s water point.
Due to the rampant spread of misinformation about COVID-19, we also dedicated time to a question and answer session to help debunk rumors about the disease and provide extra information where needed.
We continue to stay in touch with this community as the pandemic progresses. We want to ensure their water point remains functional and their community stays informed about the virus.
Water access, sanitation, and hygiene are at the crux of disease prevention. You can directly support our work on the frontlines of COVID-19 prevention in all of the communities we serve while maintaining their access to safe, clean, and reliable water.
May, 2018: Kigbal Village New Well Complete
We are excited to share that there is a new borehole in Kigbal Community, which is already providing clean water to families! People here no longer have to rely on dirty water from the swamp. Hygiene and sanitation training was also conducted, which focused on healthy practices such as washing hands and using latrines.
New Knowledge
The weather is always bright and sunny in the dry season in this part of Africa. And the weather can be harshly bright but not for vegetated villages like this. The headman selected a very shady area behind his house. This was a very conducive environment for learning as everyone was comfortable. People bring benches from their homes to sit on.
In rural settings like this, whenever they are better informed about any activity, especially one that concerns their wellbeing, they will surely cooperate. A good number of people in this village had their one-gallon containers ready for the training. Some said they have to pay their friends to buy it for them in the faraway one-day markets. We were very pleased with that information because it shows how passionate they were about the exercise.
The first day was primarily about handwashing. We used empty jerrycans, string, and other materials to build these, and encouraged participants to return home and build another. Once we finished, we set up one of the handwashing stations to demonstrate how to properly wash your hands. Proper handwashing at all the proper times is the easiest way to prevent sickness.
The second day we discussed daily habits and how they affect health in ways the community never imagined.
There are some topics best presented using pictures. The team holds up different scenes that participants would see on a daily basis. The people were especially interested in this particular topic for one reason: for each scene displayed, there was at least one household guilty of the hygiene mistake portrayed. You could see participants glancing over at the leaders of guilty households. This ended up being quite funny in the end, because everyone was guilty of doing at least something wrong.
It’s important to always use a latrine, pen in animals to keep them out of the kitchen, always cover food and so many other things. The trainer showed how if you don’t go about your daily business the right way, there can be deadly consequences. We also trained on ORS (oral rehydration solution) because we know that even with the greatest effort to prevent diarrhea, it will still be an occasional issue. This ORS will help keep community members, especially children, healthy as they recover from diarrhea.
The final day was all about caring for the water point so that it serves generations to come. After, we took time to review the important takeaways from the three days of training.
“Let me be very honest with you, I use to eat without washing my hands. I can drink any kind of water without even minding the source. But this training has delivered me from such ignorance and I think it will be very good for my life. I will now do what I have learned from this training to better my life for the future,” Mrs. Hawa Kamara said to us.
New Well
We worked with the community to select a spot central to everyone. Two pits were dug next to the drill rig, one for the drill’s water supply and another for what was pulled back up out of the borehole. Community members helped the drill team by ensuring there was always water in supply.
Day one drilling started with filling the two pits with water mixed with bentonite. A 4" carbide tipped drag bit was fixed to the five-foot-long drill stem. The mud pump was started to supply water to the drill rig and the drilling starts. During drilling, the team, after every five-foot length of drill stem put into the hole, would take material samples. The bags were labeled, 1, 2, 3 etc, and these are to be reviewed later to determine the aquifer locations.
On day two, analysis of the material samples was done to determine the appropriate location of the aquifers. Casing pipes were laid out and screens were also positioned properly.
After inspecting, the 8" reamer bit was connected and the drilling commenced once again. Everything was going well, all the team needed to do is add bentonite to the water and swap out different drill bits. This would happen almost spontaneously upon the driller’s request.
You could see the organization of the team. Every member of the team knew what to do and at what time. Even the bystanders were in thorough admiration and would ask any questions that came to their mind out of curiosity.
But unfortunately, the team, when fully focused on the drilling and wanting to hit their time target, would spare no time for responses to their questions. After the drilling, they would communicate with the bystanders what happened. Before the drilling, the process was explained, but as the process goes along people have questions too.
Dedication
Dedication is simply commissioning the well to the community people. For this ceremony in Kigbal, we left the office at exactly 10:05am and arrived in the village at exactly 11:15am. We had a very smooth ride at least for the first fifteen minutes of the journey because the road is tarred up to Gbaneh where we had to make a bend to begin the long, dusty and rugged road to Kigbal village. The village is far in the bush. These are people who have gone generations without access to safe drinking water, so there is great anticipation that this is going to be an exciting day.
When we first arrived in the village there were few adults around. So we had to send the kids to get their parents for the exercise. In the next ten minutes, the community people were all over the place and in all smiles. Some started singing their traditional songs even before the exercise started. People shared testimonies of how already their lives had been changed. They offered thanks to the team and the donors for remembering this very rural village.
"This water well has brought a lot of relief to this community. The threat of cholera alone is enough to kill old men like us," Mr. Pa Fasineh Kamara said.
"I am very happy with what this organization has done for my community."
Rehabilitation Project
