BLOG ACTION DAY: WATER FOR GHANA

Would you drink this? Would you allow your children to drink water like this? Can you imagine having no choice?



Today is Global Blog Action Day and the theme is water. It sounds like such a basic, simple thing. And it should be, but the reality is so different.


In July this year, the General Assembly announced that access to clean and safe drinking water is a basic human right.

Despite this, in Ghana today, (my own backyard), over 25% of deaths in children are caused by diarrhea from contaminated water. In these areas, "half the population get its water from wells, ponds and streams that often contain disease-causing microorganisms."

Here some boys collect drinking water from a rubbish dump - it leaves little question as to why illness and death statistics are so high:



The problem in Ghana is 'dire' according to UNICEF, and Wikipedia even features an article about the dismal water supply and sanitation issues in the country. They note that from data accumulated by the World Health Organization and the UN, only 4% of people in rural areas have access to a water supply to their houses, and only 2% have access to any form of sewage system.



The history of why and how it has been left to get to this state is long and ugly. It involves politicians and greed, disorganization and marginalization. Basically the needs of the rural poor have been on the bottom of every list.

But is anybody doing anything????? Well, yes. Luckily amidst the many ineffective NGOs, there are a few that make a difference, one community at a time.

Water for Ghana - helps villagers to come together and build their own tanks for a fresh supply of water.

PureHomeWater - an MIT initiative, run by American Susan Murdoch, distributes filters designed for small rural systems.

Green Cross Australia - has spearheaded a project to bring clean water to schools across Ghana.

Many other volunteers are raising funds to distribute filters on a micro level - after witnessing the conditions in Ghana's north.

But it's estimated that Ghana needs over $200million to kickstart the water and sanitation problems.

For the sake of the children, I hope some of the USD $13billion that Ghana has just been promised by China will go toward bringing fresh clean water like this (below) to every person in all of Ghana.

Colour my World... with food dyes?

While at work, and deeply concentrating on my official duties (not), I came across this gorgeous art, made with water and food colouring. I wanted to share so here you go!

This first one looks like a crimson fish, gushing bubbles into the deep blue sea... LOVE IT!






I can't find the original source, so I'll probably be arrested for copyright infringement or something - but wait, I'm in Ghana. So I'm probably safe.

If these are your work, or you know the artist, please let me know. Otherwise just enjoy, and please don't call Interpol.

Happy Thursday :)

Tuesday photo of the day - snapshot of Northern Ghana

Life in a typical Northern Ghana compound...




Heat ripples slowly, like the dry crusted back of the lizard,
Across the compound yard
Swirled up in mini tired hurricanes of sand

The air is unrelenting
It stings and burns and is uncharitable

Water stains grey skin a glossy brown
as it pours in rivulets down the limbs of the inhabitants
Like life in a dead zone, from the cool earthen pots

Life happens despite the heat
In defiance of the sun and the conspiring earth
that threatens to crack upon itself and tip inward with decay

Life thrives
Muscles ripple in response
Backs bend and thickened feet slap the scorching dirt
There is action

Voices cry out
in vibrant tones
From one compound to another
Laughter, tears,
Humanity persisting...


Photo borrowed from mt friend Krissy - a fellow Ghana traveler.

Ode to the tomato - eating lots prevents sunburn!!

I watched an interesting program last night, on one of my favourite channels. Keeping in mind, as an Expat in Africa there is not much choice by way of television watching. Why, you say, more time to get out there and discover the continent! But I digress...
On our satellite DTH bouquet, we get robbed of $72 per month, for about 10 watchable channels. All are showing series from a few years back at best. BBC Prime rarely disappoints though, and it's culinary cousin BBC Food has some great shows. Tonight was "The Truth About Food". (It was probably aired in the UK in 2005)

The truth, according to the experts on this witty and wise program is:

1. Detox diets don't work, they are a myth - wheatgrass shakes are disgusting and now we know it's not worth the putrid mashed lawn taste and feel!

2. Drinking 2 extra litres a day is not beneficial to our skin. Really? Wow! That means about every diet known to humankind has missed out on some scientific facts...

3. Eating brightly coloured foods is good for your health. The brighter your plate, the better the eating.

Berries help memory

Spinach helps eyesight

4. Red wine is good for you - but only 2 glasses a day and only with a meal!!!

It's apparently the French secret to healthy hearts despite all the fatty cheeses, sauces and meat they consume. However, it's the pigment in the skin that holds all the benefits so white wine doesn't substitute! Cabernet Sauvignon is apparently the best. So drink up!

5. Tomatoes help protect skin against the damaging affects of the sun. Seems a tad far fetched but they took a typical pinky, freckled Brit who had zero tolerance and burned in the mid morning winter sun of chilly Scotland... Put her on a heavy tomato diet for a month or so, and presto - she could bask in the Caribbean without a pink patch in sight! ... or something like that. Living in a climate where the sun shines 350 of 365 days, at temperatures averaging 34 degrees celcius, this knowledge comes in handy! I will incorporate more of this readily available, ungenetically mutated local crop into my diet.

I knew Pablo Neruda, who remains my favourite poet of all time, wasn't dreaming when he deified the humble tomato... poem below:

Ode To Tomatoes
The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

Notes from the Edge - Liberia today

I am in Liberia for business. The whole concept is bizarre to me. There is apparently business growing here. Opportunities. Investment. Liberia has no electricity supply and no running water. Anywhere. It has been like this for 18 years.

Recently some street lights have been illuminated in the capital city, fed by a huge generator, donated by another government.

All water is supplied in huge round trucks that drive around the city constantly.

Of course there is only water for those who can pay.

This morning as I sit on the balcony of the $200 a night (less than) 1 star hotel, my view is the ocean, dotted with small fishing canoes, the beach that stretches along in front of miles of corrugated tin slums, and below me the daily water is being delivered.

One of the big trucks is parked on the street below, loudly pumping water via a hole filled pump, into the hotel building. Surrounding the truck are scores of barefoot children, sent with buckets of every size and description, to collect some of the water. They jostle and fight and wave up at the hotel guests. But the sad truth is that they are here on a mission and no doubt there will be trouble if they arrive back home, down the road in the slums, without water.

Their dilemma is pathetic. The guys from the water delivery truck are also on a mission and the dirty swarming children are to them, like flies. They must fight them off, or bear the repercussions from the hotel owner who's not interested in feeding the water needs of the people. If the kids get alot of water they will tell more people and the hotel will be swarmed, on a dangerous level.

But the children are desperate.


I focus on one little boy who is about 5 years old. Mostly because I see something so familiar in his eyes. He is alive, there is a spark in him. His long smooth chocolate brown forehead is beaded with sweat and his eyes squinting, while he bounces a wide mouthed large plastic bowl against his ashen, bony knees. He steps back from the mob and watches the men from the truck. All the while the pump is deafening. As soon as they move toward the other children to beat them away, slap and shout, flail their arms around hoping to touch skin and cause fleeing, our little boy moves up to the truck behind them and holds his bowl under the massive leak at the base of the hose. At first no one sees him and his bowl is filling. He smiles a cheshire grin to himself. He has no clue he's got a witness, a fan, a cheerleader above him looking on.

I notice as the water sprays up on him, that he's wearing a badly faded 'Rainforest Cafe' t-shirt. This t-shirt has been bought for coins, in the local market. Originally sent by the Salvation Army or other charity, and plucked up for selling to the poorest of the poor. It may have been through three children here already. And all of a sudden I am not happy for him, I almost cry. Involuntarily.

I think about his childhood. That is not a childhood. And that at the Rainforest Cafe, back in the 'civilized' world, children light up at the animals that talk, they enjoy huge lunches they can never finish, they whine for ice cream afterwards, and they get it. They never think about how they will wash or whether there will be water to drink, or whether they will have to fetch muddy slush from the potholes instead, and hope their depressed, desperate, poor mother will not beat them when they get back home...

As I was lost in melancholy, I was jolted back to reality. The water truck driver had seen our boy and lashed out at him. In his haste to get away, his slyfully attained water supply sloshed round and out of the bowl, as if in slow motion, all out onto the cracked pavement as he ran off, the water making rich brown streaks, down to his little calloused feet, down the dry grey panes of his bony legs. And he was gone.

For Quinci

If you were a fish
You would be a doctor fish
Protected by gorgeous turquoise scales
Opalescence reflecting
Deflecting everyone from your secret world
Within

If you were brown you would
Be smooth and varied and steady
As chocolate
Hardwood
And the mild earth itself
You would remember each footstep
That crossed your path

If you were memory itself
You would be immaculate in your intricacy
Not missing a single detail

But you are trapped in our mortal world
That topples you
My delicate one
The mundane routines
Banal in their irrelevance to you

Earth water and sky
The things that preoccupy you

Yet your skin your feet must walk
And carry you through…

If you were a bird
You would be an owl
You would perch above it all
your all seeing eyes
smiling at me and shrugging at the world.