Hello! Ten minutes to post. Ready, go!

Work has been going really well at the factory since I last posted. One or two days have been slow, but almost all are jam-packed with work to be done. Last night we poured a concrete foundation for a rainwater harvesting tank being built right next to the factory (60 cubic meters, or 60,000 liters, in a 15x20ft hole dug 9 feet into the ground, by hand) until 9pm, using truck headlights and all the flashlights we could find to work past sunset. The Ghanaian workers we’re next to just don’t tire out, and we had an awesome time.

While we’ve been busy wrapping up work at the factory (tomorrow is our last work day), we’ve tried to stay busy outside of work also. Some of our group tried a friend’s favorite club in Tamale last Saturday, and we’ve been to a couple fun restaurants through town. Tamale isn’t known for it’s abundance of things to do, but exploring and just seeing new sights has been a great experience. As always, I’m trying to keep Zac and Stephen taking as many pictures as possible. This includes factory work, the beautiful Ghanaian landscape, and as much of Tamale and Taha as we get to see. I expect my last few days of IAP to be spent putting pictures and more detailed blog posts here. So keep checking back!

It’s crazy to think our work is almost done here. We’re getting one day in at the Green Turtle Lodge on the coast before our flight back home Tuesday the 25th, and we’ll be in the States before we know it. It will be strange to wear clean clothes (I’m still in my concrete pants and boots) and for the roads (well, everywhere, really) not to red and dusty. Most of all, I’ll miss the super-friendly, always-smiling Ghanaians we work with and drive by every day. The drives to the factory are a joy, as every child waves and screams like crazy and every man and woman we wave to give a big grin and wave in return. Throw a Dagbane or Twi greeting in there, and it’s like you’ve made their day.

I hope to post before we fly back, but it might be a post-flight blog post. Stay tuned!

Hello! More love from Tamale. Again, the slow internet means I won’t be able to get a ton in, but I’ll do my best.

Work is going well. The “addition to the factory” we’ve been working on is making ground, and I think we’ll be done with it tomorrow. Since the Chi Phi guys didn’t come to Ghana with a project already planned, like the grad students we’re working with, we’ll be finding something else to keep us busy. We’re really shooting for capacity-building work - as much as we love digging holes, we want our work to have lasting impact on the Pure Home Water operation, and as MIT students, we hope we can contribute in many ways. As always, details to come.

This weekend was a fun one, with a full work day on Saturday (it’s pretty common across Ghana, or at least that’s what I’m told), and we did a lot of relaxing on Sunday. Ghanaians seem pretty religious on the whole (more Christian on the coast, more Muslim inland), and almost everything was closed all day Sunday while people went to worship. We played some frisbee at a park on the other side of town, and went out for a good dinner at a nearby restaurant. The food situation has been more of the same: oatmeal for breakfast, our rice lunch, and a square dinner. I definitely can’t complain.

Friday after work we visited the dugout, a place where many nearby villagers gather water (we’re working outside Tamale, very close to a village called Taha). We had seen pictures of the dugout, and we found what we expected: a shallow pool of water where girls (dirty feet and clothes and all) waded into to scoop water into 40-liter buckets on their heads (that’s 90 pounds). There is piped water from the city, but the quality is iffy, and the supply depends on the politics of the time. I want to write a bit about the situation, but it will have to wait. Hope to write again soon!

-Mitch

30 minutes on the internet and it takes 15 to load tumblr… let’s see what we can get!

Work is going really well. We’re doing a huge variety of tasks including designing new areas of the factory space, making rammed-earth blocks, checking block prices in town, and helping with anything that needs help (which is usually a lot). Other students are working on water testing and test kit effectiveness, clay samples from sites near the factory, underground tanks for rainwater storage, sanitary latrines (a bigger problem than you’d think!), and the filter-making process. The Ghanaian employees we work with are really friendly (like every Ghanaian we’ve met or waved to from the back of our truck) and teach us phrases each day. Although everyone speaks a very basic amount of English, there are over 60 languages throughout the country. It turns out that our coworkers don’t even speak the main domestic language, but actually speak a language that’s very local. So all these phrases we’re learning, I call them Pure-Home-Water-speak. It’s a lot of fun.

We’ve been eating surprisingly well, and nothing’s been too crazy yet. Lunch each day is jollof(?) rice, a rice and sauce that has some fish and is pretty tasty. Breakfasts have been oatmeal or bread and peanut butter, and dinners have been lots of Ghanaian or American foods. We’re spoiled.

We’re looking forward to getting into town this weekend, depending on how much time we have on Sunday to check things out. Tamale’s soccer stadium is pretty impressive, and there’s a home game next weekend, so we’ll definitely be checking that out. Stay tuned for those stories.

It’s been a lot of fun so far working with some very cool Ghanaians and students, even if that work is shoveling dirt all day under the equatorial sun (I had a shovel in my hand the entire day yesterday). I’m definitely sore getting out of bed each day, and my eyes and nose love the dust that gets blown across Ghana each dry season (Google harmatan, or something that sounds like that), but spirits are sky-high. I wish I had pictures, but I’ll have to post some of those when we return to the States and our high-speed internet!

-Mitch

Howdy! I know this post will be way too short to cover half the things we’ve been up to, but due to a power outage at the internet cafe, I have about two seconds to give you a quick run-down, so here’ goes!

First and foremost, we’re here and safe. Our international flight was a doozie, but we’ve overcome the 5 hours of jetlag pretty successfully. Next was a day in Accra, Ghana’s capital city. We stayed with some Pure Home Water friends and had a fun day exploring the city and getting some supplies. Finally, yesterday was a 12-hour bus ride across Ghana to Tamale, the city we’re working in. I’ll post later about the trip, since we saw too much to write a little blurb about. Stay tuned!

Today was our first day of work, and we have 60+ rammed-earth blocks to show for it. We’ll use these blocks (made of a sand, soil, and concrete) to build latrines and a kiosk to distribute Pure Home Water’s filters. We have some sunburn and kill mosquitoes on sight, but all is well otherwise.

I’ll try to blog soon, including some cool stories. But so far, we’re having a lot of fun, eating some good food, and getting some good work done. More to come!