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.
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.
In memory of Seth, who for many years was our good and hard-working caretaker. He died last week and we are all so sad to have lost him.
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The quarterly statistics below are patient-throughput figures for the four clinics (excluding the eye clinic) we have built in Ashanti. The first two, named after founder David Williamson and donor David Rees, are big buildings, designed to serve many villages. At first sight it’s puzzling as to why the Rees Clinic should have so many more cases of diarrhoea than the Williamson Clinic. The reason is that we have not yet been able to give the villages surrounding the Rees Clinic – Ankamadua, Fawoman and Amoaman – sanitation, whereas most of the villages near the Williamson Clinic, have already received it.
Mprim Clinic is situated in a shed originally used to house a cassava processing machine. The shed is small but nonetheless has almost as big a patient throughput as the two big clinics.
As for Adutwam Clinic, it is on the furthest reaches of our area so villages to its south have not been given sanitation, and hence the high figure for diarrhoea.
Ashanti Development must hurry up and expand so as to put an end to all this unnecessary sickness.
