Before coming here to Dominica, I was told that the country was completely in ruins, and I am sorry to say it, but it really is. The first day here was spent seeing the few things that still remained and the rest of the days I had signed up to join the Red Cross WASH (Water and Sanitation/Hygiene) team.
As a lot of the villages were without water, we spent the first day scouting for suitable rivers. The second day we were off early to install a water pump, filter and bag in a village called Dos d’Ane. A hose was then put into the river with a pump and a generator bringing it through chambers of sand, chlorine tablets and a carbone filter before it ended up in a square bag that could keep as much as 10 000liters.
Lots of locals were watching us doing this and they all seemed very happy afterwards when they could fill up bottles and buckets with clean filtered water.
