ASD Travels to West Africa...A Glimpse at the WASH Conditions Encountered Along the Journey

In May I set out for West Africa to meet with our African Women and Water Conference participants from Ghana and Nigeria.

To begin with, a tour of the water resources found...


Rejoice, a resident of the Lotus Children's Home for orphaned girls in Ghana's capital city, Accra, collecting water from the storage tank in the compound to use for washing.


For the small ones here, they carry what they can at a time on their heads, working just as hard as their older sisters washing their clothes and cleaning their home and the day care and preschool supported by the organization.

This piped water source was found inside the chief's palace where Rebecca lives in a small town called Lawra. This type of access to water is not common, especially for those in the rural outskirts of the town, and of course it must be paid for.

The dried up indentation in the river bed is a hole that was dug to fetch water when the dry season began and the water table sank below the stream's surface. As the dry season progresses women have had to move farther and farther upstream to find the water, abandoning holes previously dug.

The hole seen above was one of many passed during this walk on a visit to the community Rebecca selected to be the beneficiaries of a training on the BioSand filter, the technology she learned at the Women and Water Conference and wrote a grant proposal for in order to implement a project in her community. The people of this village, called Kunyukuo, are leading the way to find the nearest water hole in the riverbed where water can be collected.

The tedious task of filling silver basins by the gourdful hoping that the water doesn't retreat down or upstream any further during this trip to the stream.

Not quite the same as turning on a spigot! This water is presumably not very safe for drinking and will require some measure of pasteurization or disinfection to be ensure it is safe for drinking, especially by the vulnerable population; the sick, elderly and children.

Basin is filled and the journey home begins. The women of Kunyukuo explained that in the rainy season when the stream waters are high and fast it is a daunting task to collect water here, having to descend it's unstable banks and maneuver the heavy water from the stream up onto their heads.

The path to get home from the water source, which for some means several kilometers.

For agriculture and livestock purposes, the local government sends trucks to the Black Volta River every day to transport water to the community.

The most common water carrying sight in modern Africa, the plastic jerrican container. Atop the heads of women and girls and children, sitting in a line of fellow jerricans waiting to be filled at water refilling stations or boreholes or wells, on carts pulled by donkeys or men...it is the primary water container for millions of people.

A borehole in rural Ghana, with access for people on one end and livestock on the other end.

In the midday heat a woman fills her water containers. She is alone in her pumping but in the mornings and evenings-the morning queue starting most days at 3:00 a.m.-the line of women is impressively long and the wait can take a few hours.

These young ladies cheerfully help each other fill their families' water basins.

The majority of responsibility for fetching water is held by women and girls but young boys are often recruited to help out with the chore. The family relationships and roles, discipline and unquestioning obedience are amazing aspects of Ghanaian culture to behold.

The water that comes from the boreholes is generally considered to be "clean" and safe to drink because it was brought by people with money and technology from outside and it is normally clear.

A different type of pumping mechanism for a well. This particular well is not currently being used because there is no water.

A closer look at the wheel that turns the system and brings up water.

A mother and her child drinking out of the common gourd used in this region.

At community gatherings water is often shared in a calabash that is passed around.

An open well is yet another type of water source found in the Ghana's Upper West region. Water is retrieved using a container-anything from a plastic container to a metal bucket-attached to a long rope. The danger of contamination in open wells is great, from not having a cover like this one which allows wind to blow possible contaminants in, to having animals grazing and defecating around the well, to the unhygienic and uncontrolled conditions of the receiving container.

A look down the open well

Felicia taking me on a tour of her village's water resources. This open well is located next to the school and has a cover on top. This water source, like so many at this late stage in the dry season, is not being used because there is no longer water in the well (the water table has dropped).

Water used in homes also comes from the sky! This is a makeshift rainwater harvesting setup to channel the water from rains off the roof, but it can also be an important resource in this dry, often drought-plagued area. Less evidence of rainwater harvesting was seen here in Ghana than in travels across the continent in East Africa's Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Why rainwater harvesting is not as ubiquitous in the Upper West region as the country's East Africa counterparts is likely attributed to a number of factors (such as economic resources, climate and weather patterns, development efforts just to name a few) but here a regional NGO has installed a rainwater harvesting system at the elementary school.

Another rainwater harvesting/water draining example in Felicia's home compound.

A water tap stand in Lawra's town center shared by the neighboring residents, regulated and managed by the community's water management committee, and abundant throughout the year.

Rebecca told a story about the first time they attempted to drill down and tap the underground river that was flowing beneath the village - fish popped out of the first hole they drilled!

The other side of the water resource picture-underdeveloped sanitation practices are prevalent in Ghana. This stream of waste pours out the walls from the chief's palace in Lawra. Even though this town has a developed central water system there is still a disconnect about the need for improved access to water, improved health and disease reduction not being just about a piped and pumped water source but also about changes to sanitation infrastructure and attitude.

A community toilet facility with an entrance on one side for women and an entrance on the other side for men. Inside each stall there is nothing but a trough that directs waste out the hole you see in the picture at the base of the structure.

A VIP (ventilated improved pit) latrine at a local elementary school introduced and built by a regional NGO. This particular stall is not in use but there are others in the row, especially for the girls that have been very well received and used.

One problem with these advanced solutions for sanitation in the Upper West region is that they are not always well received, understood or ultimately used properly. Traditional practice allows for people to "go into the bush" when nature calls, and being confined inside a building, or worse allowing toilets inside a house or compund is uncomfortable, foreign, undesireable and to some people not fathomable. Culture and religion and education all play roles in the roadblocks to improved sanitation efforts in Ghana's northern regions.

Another challenge facing the VIP latrines at the elementary school, some elements were constructed from wood, which are now, a year later, not surviving the onslaught of destructive termites that are native to this area. Local knowledge, building techniques and input are important when choosing designs for appropriate technology implementation.

The VIP latrine (the vertical pipe is the ventilated portion of the design, complete with mesh that prevents insects from going in or out of the system) buildings were also outfitted with gutters for rainwater collection.

This is one way of washing clothes in the Upper West region; in the shade of a tree near a borehole.

Safe drinking water in Ghana is available in .5 liter plastic bags sold for pennies in every local shop and by vendors on the street. Rebecca and the woman below demonstrate how to buy it from a boy passing by, rip off the corner with your teeth, spit the plastic to the ground and enjoy (this one was ice cold)! Plastic bottles of water can be found but these bags are the common (and cheaper) product.

This indentation in the floor of a room in the palace is a storage space for water, although this design and practice is less common now, replaced by the widely used plastic jerrican.

Felicia (on the right) and fellow community leaders inspecting a borehole that is not working. The only borehole in this part of the village and it's failure has forced people to go to the river (which is almost completely dry) or walk a few kilometers to another part of the village to get water.

These natural ponds are seasonal and shrink by the day as the dry season progresses. In some places these are intentionally built reservoirs aimed at being a solution for both human and livestock access to an open water source.

A Single Drop