Introduction

The Flag of Ghana (Link to Photograph source embedded)

Introduction

Ghana has a long History of a large expanding population and non-sufficient clean and safe water source over the majority of the country. This causes issues with a number of different factors such as, economics, development, education, and inequality of the sexes as well as the obvious issues of health and sanitation. The worst effected parts of the country are the smaller villages. Many of the areas access their water from holes dug out of the ground to access the groundwater. These boreholes are unprotected, uncovered, accessed by animals and very susceptible to pollution and disease.

We went to the village of Aurigo in Ghana to gain the perspectives of the local people and visitors to the area on the situation.

Girl Under 15's Perspective

Young girl collecting water (link to photo source embedded)

Young Girl Under 15

Hello I am Effia. I am 8 years old and go to school in the village. I was born in Ghana and have lived in the same village all of my life with my mother and father and my older sister.

I go to school every day to try and learn things I will need in the future for jobs and life. We start school at 10am and then we have sleeping time for 3 hours for all of the students old enough to go collect the water from the nearby village for their families. They are all very tired when they come to school as the nearest water to the village is a pond about an hour’s walk away. The other older children say they have to get up really early to start the walk to get the water when it is still dark so they can get back with the water before it gets too hot. They carry it on their backs in containers, apparently they are really heavy. The other girls at school were saying ill need to grow some muscles quickly as I’m going to have to join them in a few weeks when my 9^th birthday comes. With luck I can keep up with everyone and I won’t be as exhausted as the girls that come to school after they’ve been to collect it. 

Im a little nervous it’s really dark when they set off I have seen my older sister and mother going early in the morning before safety in numbers. Hopefully I will do alright and will manage to bring back plenty of water and not get lost on the way, I don’t know where I would end up. Theres apparently lots of animals nearby it too drinking the water and walking in it I’m a bit worried in case one of the animals bite thinking were stealing their water!

 The water we do get from the pond isn’t very nice but we still have to drink it. Its muddy and brown and there is definitely things floating in it… best not to think about it, it has to be drunk…

Expecting Mother's Perspective

Woman getting water for her family (link to photo source embedded)

Expecting Mother

Hello I am Baba. I am 34 years old I have two children and I’m pregnant with my third child. I live in a small village in Ghana with my children and my husband.

I have one girl and one boy they are 14 and 16 respectively. They both go to the local school to learn how to write and how to add up which makes me happy. I didn’t get the chance when I was younger as I had to go collect water and look after my family as my mother died in childbirth with my younger sister. They said it was because she was very weak she hadn’t been very well for a while having stomach pains and feeling sick they thought it could’ve been to do with the pregnancy but she also had a really high fever most of the time so it was likely something she had caught from the water. Despite this suspicion I have no option but to use the same watering hole as she did when I was younger because there is simply no other water supply in the area for me to use to provide for my family, it is scary that there could be something harmful hiding in each sip of the water. We just have to hope, it makes you feel very helpless.

Well I said I was the one providing the water for my family it will no longer be me making the long journey to get it soon it’s becoming too hard to walk along the rough ground up and down hills with being so pregnant. My eldest daughter is going to have to take the burden which makes me very sad as she was doing so well in school and had hopes for the future escaping our little village. I’m worried that when she starts helping on a morning that she will be too tired for school, that’s if she makes it in time at all. I don't think she will be the big business woman she could have been spending all this time providing water for the family.  There is simply no other option though….

Young Boy, Under 15's Perspective

Young Boy under 15 (Link to photo source embedded)

Young Boy Under 15

Hello my name is Ato. I’m 16 years old and live in the village. I was born in Ghana and lived in a village 2 hours away from here we moved here because there was better access to water my family only had to walk 1 hour away to get it instead of 2 hours each way at the last village. I have lived in this village since I was 8. I live with my Mother, Father and my older brother.

I go to school in the village and I’m getting really good at reading and writing, I am the top of my class. I have big hopes and dreams for my future I hope one day to be able to travel to the city to live and to work so I can get lots of money for my family to make their lives better. I really enjoy school the class I am in has 15 other students only one of them is a girl, not many girls seam to carry on with education past their younger years as they are needed to collect water for their families so are too tired or don’t have time to come to school. A lot of them got so behind in the learning with all the missed school too that it was too hard for them to continue so they had to leave. I am very lucky my mother collects the water for our family and my dad and brother either help her or work on our little patch of land farming to grow food for us and extra to sell on to get money to provide us with other things we need. My younger classes were much bigger than the one I am in now a lot of the boys dropped out too as they were needed on their family’s lands to grow food or to be sent off to work to provide for their families, in my family my brother and father work extra hard to do all of the work themselves so I can stay in school and hopefully one day be clever enough for a job in the city. This means we scrape by day to day always a little bit hungry but one day I will repay them for their sacrifice.

My family have always been good to me. They have made many sacrifices. When I was 7 I was very ill. I was being sick all of the time and I was running a very high temperature. I couldn’t keep any food down and as I was already quite thin I was skin and bone, they said I nearly died. The doctor in the village said it looked to be cholera or dysentery and that I must’ve drank some bad water, which is hardly surprising because it was always brown and had bits in it. They said I needed some form of tablets, antibiotics I think he said, my brother walked for 24 hours total to the nearby villages all over looking for somewhere that had some. I got lucky. Since then I’ve been grateful for every day I am in school and healthy. As I’ve said I will get a good job and pay them back. I have had some friends that weren’t so lucky in the past they didn’t make it.

Up until now there hasn’t been any problems in this new village with the water although it still tastes a bit funny, it comes from a bore hole so It’s a little bit cleaner than the stagnant puddle we used to use. We just have to hope there is no more illness really….

Young Girl, over 15's Perspective

 

Young Girls at school in Ghana (Link to photo source embedded)

Young Girl over 15

Hello my name is Kuukuwa. I am 16 years old I have lived in the village all my life with my mother, father, my brother and two sisters.

I go to school in the village, I did have hopes to be a successful business woman in the city earning lots of money to help out my family, month by month though this seems more and more unlikely. Since puberty hit I have missed a lot of school having to stay home a week each month because my school doesn’t have any proper sanitary facilities. Not only that but the weeks I do make it to school I’m usually really tired because I’ve had to get up really early to travel to get water, there are times when I’ve fallen asleep in class and the teacher has just left me I think they feel sorry for me. With all of this time I have either not been to school or I have not been paying total attention to the lessons I have fallen behind the boys in the class are so much cleverer than I am. The lessons at the moment because I am so behind just leave me lost and I am losing the will to stay there.

My mother is pregnant at the moment and will soon need extra help getting the water for our family with there just being the one person going my younger sister is too young to go yet on her own, it’s just not safe letting her walk up to an hour away I the dark to get water, safety in numbers is what they always say, so I can’t leave it up to her. I’ll have to say goodbye to my dreams but hopefully I will be able to get back to school once my mam has had the child, I don’t know how far behind will I be then, I just hope I can catch back up….

Business Man's Perspective

Country of Ghana (link to photo source embedded)

Business Man

Hello I am Ben Smithington. I am a business man from near Los Angeles. I was born in the USA and have travelled to all 4 corners of it and not to mention across half of the world, don’t want to let the private jet go to waste do we… I’ve spent time working for multi-million pound corporations my whole life.  My dad is the owner of a quarter of silicone valley including some of the newest most up to date technologies there is. My current job is outsourcing director for A technology company who provides the market with phones, music players, computers ect., you can imagine the type of company.

On my latest trip out I visited the country of Ghana, I have a help centre to set up for the European side of business, seeing as India was exploited for workforce and cheap space years ago, it is no longer the cheapest option so I was looking into leads of other possible sites.
 

I chose Ghana due to the large available population, they have never heard of a minimum wage and are all also desperate to work to raise money so it seemed like a good place to start. When I got off the aeroplane I was met by heat and dust. I visited the local cities where there seemed to be 1000's of people crawling the streets, there is my available work force. I then moved onto the outskirts of the city to look at the places with more land available, which would keep the build costs down, and I came across a little village. They stole my heart. When first walked I was greeted by what looked like a school full of children running towards me with a mix of excitement and dare I say it sacredness. Suppose they haven’t seen anyone like me before. There was one young girl that I began talking to the hope and ambition she once had was evident although it appeared it had shrunk in recent times. If she had interviewed with her back at home I wouldn’t have hesitated to hire her. She talked of her family troubles, her mother was pregnant with her 3^rd child so would no longer be able to go and get all the water needed for the family. Her sister was too young to go on her own to collect it so despite her best efforts she was losing the will to go to school and learn, she was saying she had fallen behind firstly with the effort it takes to get the water not to mention the fact that since puberty she has to miss a week a month because the school doesn’t have adequate sanitation. It’s a really terrible situation, to think all this would be solved by a little investment and a nearby water source… I can’t let this go on my father is not going to be happy about this I think the new help centre can wait I have some much more needing people to help first…

PlayPump Operative's Perspective

PlayPumps Operative

Children playing on the PlayPumps roundabout (PlayPumps, 2015. Link embedded)

 

Hello my name is Yooku. I live in Ghana and have done my whole life. I work for the company PlayPumps who water pumping equipment disguised as children’s play equipment. The pumps come in forms of roundabouts which children from the local schools can play on and get water from the groundwater out of specifically chosen and tested safe boreholes from which the water is taken. The rate of extraction is checked and pumping equipment is amended so the boreholes are never run dry but otherwise the energy of the children playing on the revolving roundabouts turn the pumps and cause there to be clean water available easily for the previously barren villages. This means that children can go to school without having to worry about having long treks to get water, they now have a close source and because the water is sourced from a tested and clean environment the levels of water borne experienced in the area are reduced significantly. So less fatalities occur and less time is spent off school for health reasons. The children also love the equipment so the general health and happiness of the village is increased with not a lot of expenditure relative to the outcomes gained.

My most recent posting had to be my favourite one yet. The village previous to my helping had no nearby water source at all the girls were having to walk up to an hour and a half away to get some disgusting brown water. I think the investor responsible had been on a location scouting trip or something but he must’ve seen something he liked. A cheque came into the office from Smithington enterprises, an American company, enough to cover a couple of Playpump placements and a working toilet and sanitation block by the school. They are all overjoyed by the results. This help will likely help the village escape from the no water poverty loop they are experiencing and it will basically give the children in schools their future back. The result from this will be earth shattering to the village I can’t wait to see the results in a few years, I did hear rumours of a help centre opening up nearby that will also bring some more jobs…