Three years, Swiss charity BasAid helped us run a major drive to tell people about the harmful effects of using battery-powered lamps and kerosene. BasAid funded the distribution of solar lamps as an alternative. Today, the lessons seem to have been learned. Many people have switched to solar power, which of course they can also use to charge their mobiles. These pictures were taken in the villages of Galiba and Mantukwa.
While we’re waiting to know whether Mosi-Kura village’s abandoned borehole can be repaired, the drill rig is getting busy. It will soon be drilling in Ebuoso, a little village in Mampong District that must have never thought it would get so lucky; in Domeabrea, which was recently sponsored for latrines but needs clean water; and in Nkwanta, thanks to the generosity of a new donor whose path we were lucky enough to cross. The rest of this work is funded by Softwire, our amazingly supportive sponsors. The photos show the arrival of the equipment. If geophysics is to be believed, the drilling seems likely to be successful in all three villages, but keep your fingers crossed – you can never be certain.
Poor Mosi-Kura. Geophysics tell us that the water is is about 200 metres underground – too deep for a borehole.
But Mosi-Kura has one more chance. There’s a 40 year old abandoned borehole just outside the village. We’re sending mechanics to see if it can be repaired.
Mosi-Kura’s water supply has dried up
Geophysics are on their way, the drill rig isn’t far behind and Ashanti Development has been given funding for boreholes in four new villages, all badly in need of clean water. We’re also funding latrines and hygiene in the village of Mosi-Kura (trans: Mosi’s Home), a community of settlers from Burkina Faso driven south by climate change. We called in last week and were told that their stream had completely dried up and they were having to collect water from another stream, five miles away. Mosi-Kura’s exceptionally lucky, as we’ve re-allocated one of our four boreholes to them. Luckily we hadn’t told the other village that we intended to give them a borehole but even so somehow or other we must try to make good their loss.
We’re very grateful to the Society of Clinical Perfusion Scientists for sending us pens, pencils and exercise books. We used them for our tree-planting project. We ask every child within three years of leaving school to plant and look after a sapling and reward them from time to time with little prizes. After three years the sapling is well established and can survive without help. The pictures show the children of Bonkron village with their prizes.
There’s a stigma attached to covid19 in Ghana, and people are often loath to admit they have it. Also, causes of deaths are often unknown, or recorded incorrectly.
For these reasons we are hesitant about accepting the Ghana Government’s official figures for coronavirus, below,which cover the whole period of the pandemic, though they certainly much lower than here in the UK
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In 1968 General Afrifa was installed as Ghana’s new head of state but he was overthrown three years later. He retired to his home village, Krobo, until 1979 when he was executed by Jerry Rawlings, along with all former military heads of state.
During his retirement, General Afrifa rebuilt all the houses in Krobo and laid out streets, schools and a clinic. Unfortunately didn’t know the importance of latrines and built none.
Over the years, Ashanti Development has been begged by the Queen Mother of Krobo to give her village latrines. She told us that because the streets were wide and the houses well-built, people thought the community were rich and could build their own – but they weren’t. Now finally, we have found a donor to sponsor sanitation in Krobo, and latrine-building is underway.
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