As many of you know, for over a year now, we have been working on getting a nearby community access to safe drinking water. After countless hours of work with the community and more setbacks than I even want to think about right now, with the assistance of a US Government grant (a SPA grant, for those of you who know what that is)...we did it! The community now has three public taps where they can access safe, clean, piped water. Last Sunday the community threw a party to celebrate the “grand opening” of the taps. We even made it into the local paper! Here is a link to the article: http://observer.gm/africa/gambia/article/d250000-sankwia-water-project-inaugurated
Here are a few pictures from the event, courtesy of our new sitemate Travis (whose camera is much better than ours, and more importantly, not broken!):
Us giving our speech in Mandinka and English
Community members watching the presentation
Posing at the official handing-over of the keys (for the tap locks that hadn't been purchased at that point). After this was taken, we dramatically turned the tap for the photo opp with water running...drumroll....and no water came out (the water usually isn't on in the middle of the day, so this wasn't actually reason for concern, just funny).
Me with two of the community women
Two more of the village women (and baby) watching the program
Our village chief doing the ceremonial ribbon cutting on one of the taps
1 comment:
Congratulations on performing a great service to your community.
You are a credit to us all.
Always,
W. in IL.
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