Oh yeah, Halloween

Through their lovely banner artwork, Yahoo! was kind enough to bring to my attention that today, is in fact, Halloween. Just another one of those signs of fall that have completely passed me by out here. No pumpkins, no colorful leaves falling to the ground, no rain. If it hadn't been for my jaunt to Germany a few weeks ago, I might have completely forgotten that in my normal universe, fall is usually accompanied by cold weather. Out here in Khanaqin, the sky might have turned cloudy at times, but the temperature is still warm. The only time I need a sweater is when the air cooler is turned on or late at night.

Today, Habibi and I went out on our third visit to the town of Kifri, located about 50km from Kqin. We've been meeting with schools to determine their eligibility of participating in a UNICEF project that will rehabilitate the water and sanitation needs in each school. As part of the project, we are also mobilizing groups of teachers, parents and community members for each school in order to develop a hygiene awareness campaign for the students. It's been incredibly interesting to be able to go out on these visits, since security concerns restrict us from visiting our bread and butter USAID program in the south.

The conditions of some of these latrines are appalling, and incredibly unsanitary. Although many schools have underground pipes installed, they frequently they lack the necessary equipment to actually bring the water into the schools. At one school we visited, water didn't reach the school simply because no one had bothered to make the necessary arrangements with the water authority. Although there is great delight within the communities at the prospect of improved latrines in the schools, the hard part is ensuring they are maintained in the future. This is where the concept of community ownership comes in, so I will be incredibly curious to see what type of results we get from all of these meetings