Ghana Day 5 - 031712 - Water

Ghana Day 5 - 031712  - On Water

If anyone is actually reading this, I'm sure that you're tired of hearing where and when we have been, so I thought that I'd try to tackle a topic and tell you what we found different about it in Ghana, and what the culture and new rules were.

We began our Ghana journey at the airport, and, related to water, all seemed normal.  They had adopted the UK labeling of "Toilets" rather than the US "Restrooms", but all was easily identifiable and functioned in a familiar way.  

We had been pre-informed that we would need to purchase bottled water, rather than to rely on the tap water that was available, but also contaminated with pond water little micro-creatures and bacteria, which also seemed easy to understand.  There are one-liter bottles of mineral water available in restaurants and in every market, but the most common form of water comes in cases of 24 half-liter bags which are sold everywhere, and unfortunately discarded everywhere after use.

These are pretty durable, square packets of filtered water.  One bites off the plastic of one corner, and drinks from them, either using gravity to dispense, or squeezing the contents into your mouth.  Somewhere between sucking on a water balloon with a leak, eating some type of astronaut food, or being on the receiving end of a pastry bag.  As silly as it sounds, this takes a bit of getting used to, avoiding too much pressure when the bag is pierced, resulting in a fountain effect on one's clothing.  No big deal, it's only water, and it is 95 degrees at all times. 

The country has a network of public or private water outlets that the locals seem to just call "The Pipe."  The volunteer center that we stayed at upon our arrival, as well as our host home, both have full plumbing and running water, so they are plugged into the system much as we are in the United States, with the exception that this public water is not potable and may contain bacteria and especially dangerous water-borne parasites.  For this reason, it is suggested that visitors use filtered water, except for washing and showering. 

Both of our lodging locations also had flush toilets, although they seemed concerned that one not flush toilet paper, and rather place it in a paper receptacle close by, similar to those used for sanitary paper products back in the States.  We've come to find that we were expected to provide our own toilet paper, which is considered optional, and not used by locals.  I don't know the mechanics of how that works, but it is becoming pretty clear that TP is a "visitors" thing. 

I previously mentioned that there are numerous street vendors, especially at traffic intersections, and these pags of water are one of the more popular items.  It is 95 degrees at mostly all times, and fairly humid, so one dehydrates quickly.  There is no air conditioning used in any vehicle that I ever saw, so the windows are all always open, making this traffic commerce easy to accomplish.  A pint bag of water is 10p or about 6 cents. These are constantly being passed through auto windows by vendors carrying a case of 24 on their head. 

The orphanage does not have running water, but luckily, there is a "pipe" down the street, about 2 blocks distance.  One or twice each day, we trek down the road with containers, pots and a large Igloo water container, and fill these at the pipe, carrying them back to fill up a 50 gallon plastic barrel of clean water in the yard just outside the main door.  This is used for drinking, from the Igloo cooler, for cooking, laundry and for showering the younger children, (a topc that I'll cover in a future blog).

There is a large quart-sized handled pot in the clean water to scoop it for various uses which include refilling the drinking water thermos container (not that it is cold), and filling various pots and containers for cooking, doing laundry by hand, and washing dishes. 

We washed dishes for a meal feeding 125 kids using about 2 gallons of water, half of it in a large wash bowl, the other half in a similar sized clean water bowl.  Using a steel scrubber and some pretty harsh bar soap, the dishes and pots were cleaned on the "dirty side" of things, and rinsed on the "clean side"  For the past two days, Penny and I have assumed this task of hand dishwashing, which is tedious, but frees up the staff to prepare for other activities or for putting kids to bed. 

By the way, we never came across "hot" water in our travels.  On the many sinks that had two faucets, the left one was disabled and dry.  Of course, the cold water is never ice cold because of the climate.  The showers, similarly, were just cold running water, but we came to appreciate that.  The alternative that some volunteers from other programs described is called a "bucket shower" and involves carrying a bucket of cold water from some distant location and using this gallon or so to wash and rinse, hopefully without a return trip.

Laundry, similarly, is accomplished using a multiple bucket system of increasingly clean wash water.  The first is used for soaping and hand washing, and the subsequent ones for rinsing, using a clothes line for drying.  In this weather, things dry quickly.   We also noted an ironing board present in  some central location in the home that we saw.  The men, primarily, were fastidious about ironing their shirt and trousers.

From time to time, for no apparent reason, the water shuts down for hours, or occasionally a day, so it is important to have a small supply on hand to cover this probability.

We will have a new perspective on our water resources back in the States.  Our tap predictably provides both hot and cold water, showers can be adjusted to any temperature, and there are no long walks with water containers on our heads.  The ground flight attendant at the New York Delta gate was correct.  We will really appreciate the US infrastructure when we return.