Aframano village: update

Aframano is a village in the Ashanti region of Ghana, with about 520 people, divided into 68 households.  The villagers are farmers, and their principal crops are cassava, plantain, corn, yam, groundnuts, and tomatoes. The crops mostly feed the community, but they sometimes produce a surplus to sell.  Some of the people are indigenous to the Ashanti region, but a large number are migrants from northern regions that have become too dry for farming. There is a primary school with six classrooms and a junior school with three. These buildings are solidly built by the government, but the houses are generally built from mud and sticks, or from mud bricks. They have thatched roofs, or sometimes corrugated steel roofs. Electricity lines pass nearby the village but the village is not yet connected to it. When I went in 2017, they said they expected to be connected within 3 months. Now, in 2020, they are still waiting.

At the time I visited in 2017, the villagers' only water sources were the nearby Danyame, Nobuso and Afram streams. These streams do not dry up completely during the dry season, but they become very polluted, with agrochemicals and sewage. You drink that water, I asked, and the villagers who had accompanied us to the stream immediately demonstrated that they do. The village had had a borehole, but it had been broken for a few years. The community practised open defecation.  There were no latrines in the village, apart from two four-seat latrines in the schools. They consist of a big trench with some tree branches across it, to provide an area to squat on. The most common diseases suffered by the villagers are malaria, diarrhoea and dysentery, probably mostly water or hygiene related. The community told us that about two out of ten babies die of water-related disease before age two.

About half of the adults have mobile phones, though. As they have no electricity, they have to bike the phones ten kilometres to the town of Kofiase to charge them. A few villagers have solar panels which can charge a phone, as well as sometimes having an integrated torch.

Ashanti Development profiled the village and we drew up a budget to repair the borehole and provide 60 latrines (one per household). Latrines are as important as the borehole for improving health. I decided to fundraise for Aframano, and started in April 2018. My colleagues, friends and family were incredibly generous. I had an very large donation of £1000 and two large ones of £400.  But the bulk of the donations are the tens of smaller ones given by a lot of different people.  All told, including my matched funding, and the gift aid we get on behalf of UK income-tax-paying donors, we raised £15581 by November 2018.

During 2018-2019 the work was completed. I documented some of the beneficiaries.  Cecelia has six children, so eight people live in her house.  They are delighted with their latrine.  The youngest child is four years old, and I was curious to know if he had learned to use the toilet by himself. "Yes, but I have to open the door for him first", she told me, and close it afterwards. I was concerned that a small child could fall through the hole, into the 3 metre pit. But I was told not to worry about that :-)

Sisovalice's household latrine is sited at the top
of a mound, where digging the 3m hole is easier

Sisovalice says she has used her latrine every day since it was installed on 13 November 2018. So have the 9 others that live in her house. In total, 61 latrines were built in Aframano. Because the soil is very rocky, it has been one of the most difficult latrine projects. Many holes had to be aborted after hitting rock at 2m, and the latrines re-sited.

By providing latrines and hygiene training about how to use them, the expectation is that the 20% death rate before age two will decrease dramatically. Training is important, because people may be reluctant to change their habits if they don't understand the benefits. Without latrines, there is very high incidence of diarrhoea in Ashanti villages.

I talked with about about 6 different households, including that of the village ``assembly man'' (local councillor), Kwasi Alale. He's aged 33 and is in his third term of being the assembly man. He has been re-elected in between my visits. He struck me as a very calm and sensible person, so I am pleased for Aframano.

Borehole in Aframano

At the time of my first visit there was a broken borehole in Aframano, installed by an NGO that never came back. We repaired the borehole and "mechanised" it.  This means providing a 5000 litre plastic tank and an electric pump to fill it. As the village isn't yet connected to the mains electricity, the electric pump is powered by a diesel-powered electricity generator.  Later, when the mains electricity is connected, the generator will serve as standby for power cuts.  The pump runs for two hours to fill the tank, which lasts one or two days before it has to be filled again.

There are three taps, so that people can fill buckets from a tap fed by the tank. There are also three overhead outlets, so that the user can dispense water into a basin on their head. Villagers have to pay for the water, in order to pay for the diesel. The price is 20 GHp (3 pence in GBP) for a 20 litre container like the ones in the photo. At the moment, this price is just enough to pay for the diesel, but not enough to save for repairs. When the electricity is connected, the running costs will decrease so that a fund can be built up for repairs.

A water committee has been set up to run the borehole, including to collect the money and buy the diesel, and eventually to keep enough money to pay for repairs. A controversy arose a few months after the borehole was installed, and that delayed my reporting to my donors because I wanted to visit the village to get to the bottom of it. I did that in January 2020, and I'm very happy to report that everything is working very well. Pictured are (standing up) Haruna Mahmood (Unit Committee chairman for Aframano), Nicholas (Ashanti Development operations manager), Kwasi Alale (Assemblyman for Aframano), and (sitting down) Martha (volunteer), me (volunteer), Nana Pommah (Aframano Queen mother), Benedicta Traa (Aframano Water Committee treasurer).

A schoolchild called Matthew

During my first visit in 2017, I met Matthew in Aframano, a very charming child who spoke good English. His story was a big part of my motivation for sponsoring latrines and the borehole in Aframano.  He had told me that he went to the stream to get water for his family each day, before school. He would get up at 6 a.m., and do three round trips, carrying two large tubs of water on each return journey. The journey to the stream takes about 10 minutes, and I guess the return trip is more like 20 minutes if you are carrying 20 or 30 litres of water. And the water looked horrible. When I visited, the village pigs were grazing and wallowing in it. But it (and another similar stream on the other side of the village) is the only water the village had at that time.

In 2018, I asked to see Matthew again, and he could remember our conversation last year. I asked him what he thought of the latrines and the borehole. He thinks they are great.

Hand-pump or mechanised?

A controversy occurred after the mechanised borehole in Aframano was installed, and it raised an important question for me:

Why are we providing a mechanised borehole, instead of a manual (hand-pumped) one?

Manual is better?

The manual pump seems to have several advantages. It is cheaper to install. More importantly, it is cheaper to maintain. The village will still have to sell the water in order to have a fund to maintain the borehole, but presumably the repairs will cost much less, so the water committee can sell the water more cheaply.

But the mechanised borehole has some advantages. In spite of being more complex machinery, it is less prone to failure, because it is not vulnerable to the vigorous treatment that the manual one gets. Children especially tend to be rough with the manual pumps. Also, if the underground water source has great capacity (like the Aframano one, which can deliver 65 litres per minute), this can be more easily exploited by an electric pump than by manual pumping. This means that it can serve many more people, and benefit from economies of scale. The Aframano borehole serves not only Aframano village, but also many communities that live within bike or motorbike distance.

But it seems everyone
wants mechanised

These are the reasons that our operations manager Nicholas is very convinced that the mechanised borehole is better. I've asked many people, and I have found that opinion is really divided. When I visited my niece Natasha in Zimbabwe, she introduced me to an engineer called Trevor working on a road bridge project. We gave him a lift from the bridge back into Harare. On the journey I told him about the issue in Aframano, and asked his opinion about mechanised versus manual. He said that in Zimbabwe they always put a manual pump for a community. They only use mechanised boreholes where there is a well-defined organisation (such as a school or clinic) that can manage it. He pointed out a community borehole as we drove past, and we stopped to look at it. There were many people waiting to use it, and I could see it was free. He said it is probably maintained by the local council.

After that experience, I was really wondering if we had made a mistake in Aframano, but since then I've seen lots of evidence that, for reasons I still don't fully understand, the mechanised borehole is considered much better in Ashanti. Here is what I have observed:

• In Amangoase village, Ashanti Development had provided a manual borehole in 2011. In January 2020, I went with Penny to visit again. We spoke to Ama Serwaah, who had been Unit Committee chairperson for many years but has recently had a stoke. She has stood down as chair, but is still active in the village. She told us that they had decided to sell the water at the usual price -- 20 GHp per 20 litre can -- and during the period 2011 to 2018 they had collected a fund large enough to mechanise the borehole. They completed that in 2018. This suggests that communities want mechanised boreholes.
• The same thing has happened in Dida. Ashanti Development installed a manual borehole in 2007, and the community mechanised it in 2018 using funds collected by selling the water. The price there is also 20 GHp per 20 litre can.
• In Pepeasi Saviour village, they have a privately-run mechanised borehole. The price is the standard one for this region (20 GHp for a 20 litre jerrycan). I asked villagers whether this was affordable. I was told most people bought water, but some did not and continued to use a stream. I asked how many? "80 percent buy it, 20 percent cannot afford it", I was told, in a surprisingly clear answer. I admit that 20 percent not being to afford it seems a lot,  but it isn't clear that a manual borehole would be cheaper because it would necessarily have fewer customers and therefore reduced economy of scale.

Why not solar?

Wouldn't solar power be a good solution, asked Nicholas, our operations manager. It would have much lower running costs (no fuel, but still some funds would be required for repairs). Solar panels are becoming much cheaper, and Ghana has no shortage of sunlight. I don't think we would even need batteries to store the electricity; the pump could be run during day time.

Future solar engineers

Nicholas agreed that this is a good way to go, but he argued that there is not enough solar power expertise in Ghana. When the equipment goes wrong, it will be expensive to do repairs, and the village concerned might have to wait a long time before an engineer can come. The engineers would have to come from Accra, and it might be difficult to persuade them to come to a remote village if they have easier and more lucrative work in the city.

Hmmm. But solar is the way to go. The whole world is moving away from fossil fuels, towards renewable energy. If Ghana needs more solar power engineers, we need to solve that problem. Perhaps it's a career opportunity for the huge number of enthusiastic, optimistic, inspiring, hardworking children in this region.

Borehole controversy

During my first visit to Aframano in November 2017, I had given my WhatsApp number to some of the people I had met there. The mechanised borehole was completed in March 2019. Everything seemed to have been a great success, but in June 2019 one of the people in Aframano sent me a WhatsApp message that was disturbing.

"Because of corruption, most of the people prefer fetching water from the streams around instead of the portable water you and your people gave us," he wrote.

I was devastated by the news, and worried that my efforts and my donors' money had been spent in vain. Ashanti Development's operations manager Nicholas tried to reassure me that this was not the case. Aframano is a remote village and it may take time for people to get used to the way the water system works. A water committee has been appointed by the village elders, and everyone had the opportunity to speak out against any member. The appointed members had no opposers. The purpose of the water committee is to collect the funds for for buying the diesel (and eventually, the electricity, when it is connected). Water is sold at 0.2 Ghana cedis (4 pence) for a 20 litre container, which is the same price as all the mechanised boreholes we have commissioned.

My first thought was that the problem was with mechanisation. Perhaps it was a mistake to provide such a sophisticated system, that would have high running costs. Perhaps a simple hand-operated borehole, such as the one they originally had in Aframano, would have been better. But I've become convinced that mechanisation can work well in Ashanti.

The problem is that it is hard sufficiently strengthen the village institutions to be able to manage the funds effectively and fairly. It takes time. The way Ashanti Development approaches that is to encourage them to form the water committee with a trusted person as chair and another one as treasurer. The village chief and the Assemblyman are not members of the water committee, so that they can help resolve disputes that the committee itself can't resolve. It's all about transparency, and checks and balances.

In Aframano, my informant's issue was that there had been a previous water committee operating the manual borehole. They had collected 2 GHC (about 30p) from each household per month, for a few years, and yet they appeared not to be able to repair the manual bore hole. When we set up the new water committee, Nicholas had told them that a condition was that it must consist of new people that were not on the old committee, and there must be public consultation so that anyone could raise objections to any names. So we think the new water committee is better.

By talking to a lot of people during my visit in January 2020, I have become persuaded that the new water committee is likely to be successful in the long term.

Meeting with Martha (kindly translating), me,
Nanna Pommah and Benedicta Traa

I met three members of the new water committee, and discussed the way they operate it. I talked to the chair, Nana Pommah, and the treasurer, Benedicta Traa. Later, I separately met with another member, Yaw Sanbour Byen (aka Addea Nimah). They said that they charge 20 GHp (3 UK pence) per 20 litre can, which is enough to pay for the diesel, but not enough to build a fund for repairs. When the village is connected to the electricity, the running cost will be lower, so they expect to be able to start the repair fund then. The 20 GHp price is standard among the villages in which we have worked, so I think the water committee is charging the right amount. They reported that they did have some breakdowns during the first year of operation. They estimated that there were six or seven, and each one lasted about three days. People would have had to go to the stream during this time. In one of the incidents, there had been heavy rain and wind, and the lid of the tank had opened a bit, allowing a bird to get in. The bird hadn't been able to escape, and contaminated the water. They drained down the tank and washed the inside.

I asked again to speak to Cecelia, to whom I had spoken when I visited Aframano after the latrines had been built. She had told me about her latrine. Now I asked her about the water. She confirmed what I had heard. She thought the price was fair, and preferred to get the borehole water at GHp 20 instead of the stream water. She also told me about the bird incident.

I wanted to meet Matthew, whom I had met in December 2017 and again in February 2018, but he had moved to senior school outside the village and wasn't there. So I met three more children, in one-to-one meetings, and I asked them the same questions ("pipe" means borehole, and "spoiled" means not working):

• Do you live in Aframano (or, instead, a neighbouring village)? 
• Do you fetch water for your family? Does your family use the water from the pipe, or do you go to the stream? 
• Are you always able to obtain borehole water on the days you want it? How often is the pipe spoiled?

Meeting with Joshua

Joshua (16) lives in Aframano, fetches water for his family, says the borehole is not working once per month. Thomas (14) says he fetches water three times a day, carrying the jerrycan on his head. He says the borehole doesn't work twice a month. I asked him who fixes it. A man comes from Mampong (20km), he said. Kailtus (16) has four brothers and three sisters, and the whole family moved to Aframano from Ghana western region about 10 years ago. He gave me similar answers.

Finally, I met with the person that originally sent me the WhatsApp message. I'm not revealing any details about that person, because I don't want to compromise him. His main point is that he wants Ashanti Development to supervise the water committee while it is learning how to perform its role. That is already in hand. Nicholas visits every couple of months, without announcement. And I intend to go on visiting every year.

Indeed, the manual pump had been repaired

My informant also asked me to find out what happened to the money the previous water committee had collected. That seemed hard for me to do, but as I am now on friendly terms with the Assemblyman I gently brought it up while we were walking together. "They did repair the borehole. Don't you remember you drank from it?" Yes, I remembered, but I hadn't realised that was their work. I thought Ashanti Development had done that.  But in fact it was the community by themselves. After we started working on the latrines, the community had got the borehole pump repaired. Then two weeks after, the mechanism had broken again. By that time, we had already begun to work on fitting an electric pump, so we didn't repair the manual mechanism again.

Perhaps ironically, the highest praise I heard for the borehole and latrine project came from my WhatsApp informant. During our discussion, he mentioned in passing that he had noticed that classroom attendance at school had improved noticeably, because children's health was much better due to the latrines and borehole. I stopped him and asked him to repeat that. Yes, he said, there has been a huge improvement in village health now that people are not defecating in the bush and have clean water to drink. I had heard this story about how toilets and clean water improves health many times, but always second hand, or third hand, from other volunteers or people associated with our NGO. This was my first time to hear it from someone within a village, the village I had fundraised for, and to hear it without needing an interpreter.

Tadieso latrine renewal

Isaac and Theresa

Tadieso is a village near our base in Gyetiase, and is one of the first villages that benefited from latrines when Ashanti Development started its work about 15 years ago. But the methods we used then are not as good as the methods we use now, and some of the latrines had fallen into disrepair. So last year there was a project to renew some of the latrines.

Today I went to Tadieso, to document the new latrines that were commissioned about two months ago.

The concrete cover
has fallen into the hole

Christabel came with me to help me and translate. We found Theresa and her son Isaac, and they were happy to explain to us. Isaac's brother had been using the latrine at the time. The latrine consists of a dug hole, covered with a concrete cover in which there is a smaller hole through which to defecate. The concrete cover had become cracked, and it broke and fell into the hole while he was using it about two years ago. Fortunately he was not injured, but the latrine could no longer be used.

The family used a communal
latrine for about two years

After the latrine was destroyed, the family used a communal latrine about 50 metres away from their house. It consists of a big dug hole and some wooden poles spanning it, to allow the user to squat above the hole. But it is not private, and there is a danger of being stung or bitten by animals. Three months ago the new latrine project was finished, and now they have a new latrine, next to the old broken one.

Gladys, Sarah, and
their neighbour

We also met with Gladys and her mother Sarah, in another house. Their story is the same. One morning about a year ago, they saw that the concrete cover had broken and fallen into the latrine during the night. They had not noticed it had become cracked. Now they also have a new one as part of the latrine renewal project.

Georgina, Jennifer, Isaac,
and Veronica

These two families are in Tadieso Mission, which is one part of the village. The other part is Tadieso Main, so we went there to document another example. We met Georgina, her daughter Jennifer, her grandson Isaac, and his grandmother Veronica. Veronica looks amazing for 60, and I said so, which once translated by Christabel somehow provoke great laughter. The rest of the interview was very cheerful, with a lot of amusement at my questions, and a lot of fun. I did manage to understand the basic story, which is similar to the other ones. Their toilet had not fallen in, but it was deemed close to doing so, and they were included in the renewal project. Jennifer is doing science and was writing about measurement, and she showed me her notes. "We use measurement all the time in our daily lives", she had written. "For example, the grocer measures the weight of sugar when he sells it." Education in Ghana seems to rely on sources that were created in England during the 1940s.

Plastic collection

Plastic pollution

I've noticed that there is quite a lot of waste plastic strewn about Gyetiase village, and when I've given children plastic water sachets they often throw the empty sachet on the ground. So for both environmental and educational reasons, I thought it would be good to organise a competition among the junior school children (ages 12-15) to collect plastic rubbish. There will be prizes for the people who collect the most.

Toys for prizes

I asked a teacher if he thought it was a good idea, and he was enthusiastic. We decided we could give the children from 2pm to 3:30pm to collect the plastic the following day, and have the prize-giving immediately afterwards. The teacher would organise and inform the children from Form 1 and Form 2, totalling about 50 children.

My son Sebastian had given me some of his surplus toys to take to Ghana, so I decided to use some of those as prizes.

Based on the suggestion from the teacher, I also bought some pens and exercise books locally, and some mathematical instruments (ruler, protractor, triangle, etc.). We decided to give 15 prizes, so that the children would have a one-in-three chance (approximately) of winning one.


I was amazed and pleased at how seriously the children took the competition. After about an hour, they all arrived with big sackloads of plastic. But the prize-giving was hard to organise.

Calm before the storm

We had 18 prizes in total, and 49 children. I tried to select those that had the biggest collection, but it quickly descended into chaos, with a lot of shouting "me, me". I think that we got it approximately right.

The village looks quite a bit cleaner now.

Some of the plastic we collected.
Each sack is full of waste plastic