Blog WATER in Ghana: Courtney's Notes 3
Greetings to all WATER supporters,
I hope that your summer is going well. I just had the pleasure to spend about 2 weeks with the group of WATER visitors from the U.S. and what a wonderful time it was. We had the opportunity to see almost the whole country in our two weeks, from the northern border to the southern coast.
As you might have already read we were able to visit with two of the four communities where CRS has drilled boreholes this year. The welcome at Datuko and Kanania (both located in the Upper East Region of Ghana) was quite amazing. Drumming and dancing by many members and associations of the villages and also speeches by district representatives, chiefs, and CRS staff. Water truly is life and clean water is health. Your support for safe drinking water for these communities, CRS’s integration of water with maternal and child health clinics, and community participation should mean sustainable improvements in living standards for hundreds of rural Ghanaians.
Aside from the water projects we also painted a school the Upper East Region in a village called Farinsah and participated in a Habitat for Humanity build just west of Tamale in the community of Tolon. In keeping with the overwhelming outpouring of graciousness and a strong welcoming spirit, our experiences in both Farinsah and Tolon were beautiful cultural exchanges. I also want to personally thank the CRS staff for sharing their expertise about the different community programs they have in Ghana and receiving our group as friends and colleagues.
On a more solemn note, our group also visited a former slave camp in Paga located on the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso. Here we saw the remnants of the trans-Atlantic raiding and trading of human lives. Walking the paths at the camp was as if walking back in time, a time when men, women, and some children were captured or sold from further north and taken to this camp. Here they would wait for two to three months before walking shackled 100 miles south to be bathed, sold, and then marched in chains again to the southern coasts. Our group toured the Cape Coast Castle where thousands of men and women were held in dungeons for two to three months in horrific conditions before corralled through the “Door of No Return” and shipped to the Americas. I can’t describe what visiting these two places of degradation and inhumanity meant for me. I know that those experiences will stay with me all of my life and continue to fuel my conviction to uphold human dignity everywhere.
Sitting on the bus heading south, I watched the shea trees give way to palm, orange, and cocoa; red earth turn a sandy brown; and opportunity and affluence grow. Spending just one week in the southern coastal towns of Cape Coast and the capital Accra, I could see that the disparity between the north and south is striking. In fact, on my way back north to Tamale I was sitting next to a young woman who was born and raised in Accra. She was on her way to spend one week in the northern part of her country, her first time outside of the capital. A few hours outside of Tamale, she grabbed my arm in a panic: “Do you see that!?” I looked out the window and saw a group of women and children washing and fetching water from a muddy stream on the side of the road. She had no idea that fellow Ghanaians faced realities like these. Ignorance of this water situation is not confined to our own communities in the U.S. How important that we take advantage of opportunities to see, listen, share, and act in order to improve access to the most basic human right: safe drinking water.
I have just one more month in Ghana and I look forward to spending much of that time in the communities where W.A.T.E.R. has just drilled boreholes and where they were installed in the last few years. I will be speaking with Water and Sanitation Committee members, representatives from the local schools, maternal and child health clinics, and other beneficiaries in the villages. Stay tuned for more information on the status of these water projects.
These last few weeks have been a celebration of collaboration and achievement as well as continued reflection on the past, present, and future of Ghana and our relationship with its people. Thank you for letting me share my experiences with you and please feel free to look through the W.A.T.E.R. website, our Facebook page, and/or contact me to continue the dialogue.
Courtney
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