The history of Water for Ghana
In 2008, Nicole Buttner travelled from her home in Australia to the West African country of Ghana, to work as a volunteer for four months.
Her story is as follows:
"My name is Nicole, I’m 20 years old and until last year, the reality of poverty had never really hit me. Sure, I had seen sad pictures in magazines, confronting videos on TV and heard some terrible stories of those living in the third world. But it was all from the comfort of my own home - I saw it, sympathised and went back to my own privileged life.
"But in August last year, I boarded a plane for Accra, Ghana. I was to undertake a four month volunteer placement in the West African country, which also involved living with a local host family. And at that point, I had absolutely no idea that the trip would change me forever.
"While I learnt about a very different culture, people, their food, language, religion and way of life, I also experienced things I just did not expect to see or experience anywhere or at any point in my life. Suddenly, access to healthcare, education and clean water was no longer a given or a right.
"To hear that one of your students is fully deaf and blind because she didn’t have access to simple vaccinations, to visit a rural village where virtually all of the children do not have the opportunity to attend school because of financial difficulties, or meeting people who simply could not afford a trip to the hospital or medication despite suffering from malaria, a hernia or severe diarrhoea – it was real and it was confronting – I could no longer just sympathise, turn my head and walk away.
"I saw some pretty confronting living conditions. Actually the first rural village I visited was just twenty minutes from where I was staying. The village did not have a toilet as such, so locals just went anywhere around camp. However, during the rainy season, faeces are washed into their crops, the water they bathe in and drink from. It was simply the unthinkable. Naively, I thought I could make instant changes...but trying to tell the community that they needed to go to the toilet well away from the camp and water, and that they should boil all their water, was just useless. And when I thought about it, I understood it – this was their way of life. It was all they had ever known – it was how their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had lived. And who was I? So for some random person to come in and tell them what they were doing and had been doing for a lifetime was “wrong”, of course they were reluctant and unwilling to accept such a change. On the other hand, many villagers knew they needed change but didn’t know how to go about it.
"While this disturbed me, I was to see a lot more of it over the next four months!
"In the Eastern region of Ghana, I became quite close to some Ghanaians from a local Non-Government Organisation (NGO), who were working with a rural village called “Adenya”. Adenya is about a forty-five minute drive from the capital of the Eastern Region, Koforidua, and then another thirty minute walk to the village from the main road. It is a farming community, so very poor. Most of the children there are actually orphans and a lot are not in school. Although this is a serious problem, what is more shocking is the water situation. The water they drink, cook with and bathe in is collected from a stagnant pool that is at least a twenty minute trek from the village. In addition, the water is absolutely disgusting – it is just plain dirty and is clearly causing numerous health problems to the villagers.
"So I did some research – how many people do such conditions affect in the developing world?
"Over 1.1 billion people (more than 1 in 6 people in the world) do not have access to safe drinking water. Sure, some states in Australia are experiencing some pretty tight water restrictions....what are the implications? Hmmm shorter showers, not being able to water one’s lawn and plants between certain times. But generally, we can still turn on a tap and running, clean water comes out. Water that we can cook with, bathe in and drink, knowing it will not lead to severe diarrhoea or some other kind of water-borne disease. In developing countries, 80% of all illnesses are caused by water-borne diseases.
"Now those statistics are pretty confronting. But please, please don’t just feel sad and then turn away. Really think about it. Think about if you woke up, the sun was beaming down and it was a hot forty degrees outside. But you couldn’t just switch on the air-conditioner, jump in the shower or run the tap for a cold, clean glass of water. Instead, you have no option but to make the twenty minute trek to a stagnant pool of water.
"But the water’s not clean – it’s brown, murky, dirty and has insects breeding in it. But it’s all you’ve got. So you bathe in it. You cook with it. And you drink it. And because of it, you might just join the 2 billion people infected with water-borne diseases at any point in time or the 5000 children who will die today from drinking dirty water. Or you might prove the statistic that “a child dies every 15 seconds from lack of access to safe drinking water”.
"Access to clean water is a basic human right. Yet more than nine million Ghanaians do not have access to safe drinking water."
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