The second phase of Mpantuase water project (see below) is 98% complete and it will be commissioned by the sponsors on 7th April, when Martha will be visiting.
It includes a bedroom for the caretaker, kitchen, store room, shop and waiting area, which will also serve as a community area for the people of the village. It has eight wooden benches for people to sit on.
The community will decide what is to be sold in the shop. It will probably include farm input like seeds, chemicals, fertilizers, cutlasses etc.
Mpantuase has got a brand new kindergarten, thanks to the generosity of their Chief, Nana Ab Roy, and SpecSavers in Hinckley and Lutterworth.
These photos are of the moringo tree. It’s apparently terrifically nutritious, and Martha recognises it and hopes she’s seen it in Ashanti. If so, it might make a world of difference.
For many years now, Ashanti Development has received grants from a Swiss charity, based in Basle. From time to time, they’d send someone to Ashanti to inspect the way we’d spent their money, and – since the work was carried out by Nicholas – the result was always great satisfaction.
One of the inspectors retired recently. He set up his own charity, and decided to base his operations in Mpantuase/Nkwabrim. There, he commissioned Ashanti Development to drill and commission a new borehole, and also build a storeroom and house for the person who looks after and levies the charges for the water. Here’s a photo of of the house.
The beeskeeping training course ended. In the picture the participants proudly show their diploma. In the other pic one moment of the pratical lesson.
… and speaking of drums, here are a couple of photos of the ones Goldington Green Academy bought for Gyetiase Primary School.
Martha visited Goldington Green Academy in Bedford recently.
The school is twinned with Gyetiase Primary in Ashanti, and recently saved enough monyey to buy Gyetiase a set of drums.
Martha told the children what it was like to grow up in Ashanti, and about the traditions and festivals the people observed. The teachers reported that she was fantastic, pitched it just right,and how staff and children loved her talk, So if you know a primary school that would welcome a talk from Martha – or indeed if you know a school that would like to be twinned with an Ashanti school – please let us know.
More news from the front, ie Paul and Dawn.
Yesterday was the semi final of the Africa cup of nations, as we all know. We also know that ghana was playing against Equatorial Guinea in that semi final. The tension in the village, indeed in the entire country was palpable all day. Would the power supply hold out for the game? Would they tease us by turning the power on at 18:00 to turn it off again at 19:45 as the game began?More on this later.
… we had been making a natural …
No photos for you at present, but here’s a recent round-up of life in Gyetiase from Paul and Dawn, who are organising a bee-keeping training course there next week
*****.
Local news is that the power cuts are every bit as bad as nicholas reports. We get perhaps 3 or 4 hours per day? Today it came on at about 6pm and off at 6:20 pm after a power surge blew the transformer in mampong. Perhaps it will come back later after the c…