Day 7 - 29/07/10

I want to concentrate on telling you about the conditions in the villages today.

The medical team went to a village called Kwasi-Tintin this morning. First thing, we were given a little tour round the village. Pastor Odai took us into a villager's house - without allowing them to tidy up first. The 'house' happened to be one room, 12 by 12 feet, in a semi-detached mud hut. In it were a washing line from side to side, clothes and pans along the wall. It houses two parents and 6 children. There is no mattress or bed, just one straw mat they lay on the floor at night time. It wasn't smelly and the mud floor was swept relatively clean. One can't imagine how everyone fits in there.
Outside the houses seem to have a barrel for the water they fetch from somewhere 20 mins walking away. I didn't visit it, but others did. It was some sort of natural point where water collects. In spring it dries up. The water they collect from it looks very dirty and the barrel had flies all around it.
Pastor Odai said how these conditions show that generation upon generation, everything will stay the same except for some one pulling alongside them and pulling them up.
We saw another room/house slightly smaller and with some sort of bed structure for a village pastor with his wife and three kids. This one was smelly and less clean. I hit my head on the door post on the way out - it's what happens when you're tall.

A "shower" in the village is a straw enclosurer where you can pour water over yourself.
Here and there are people cooking things on outdoor fire places and there are chickens and goats roaming everywhere.

During the outfield clinic one of the first things we saw was a man with a grossly enlarged foot. There were whitish growths affecting his sole and ankle. Again there was one person with enlarged thyroid ("goitre") and there were slightly less malaria cases. When at the end we handed out malaria nets a mob formed of people just desparate to get their hands on one.

Right by the pole barn/church we held the clinic in, there was a metal pump structure set in new concrete, all wrapped up and finished off with a ribbon. We dedicated this newly made water well in the afternoon. About 7 elders appeared (they looked quite old and were the only ones wearing robes) and half the village gathered round as pastor Odai filmed the event and interviewed Dr Morris and an elder before ceremoniously cutting the ribbon. Some people got on the pump and for the first time since Kwasi-Tintin was founded in 1913, the village had clean water. The joy that erupted was unanticipated. Kids and adults sprinkled water on themselves and started carrying some of us on their shoulders. Four lads picked me up and carried me all around a field and back.
Then a double mattress pastor Odai had ordered for the first couple's room we saw was fetched, complete with two yellow pillows. Understandably they were over the moon. I know I'd be if I received two Winnie the Pooh pillows for free!

The Americans among us had raised a lot of money for water wells. The whole drilling, finding water and constructing a pump undertaking costs about 6000USD. This clean water really is the most important thing. It is far more sustainable than a one off field clinic and will improve conditions immeasurably. As mentioned on Saturday, it reaches a lot of people. If 1000 in one village and it affects 7 settlements, then 7000 individual's lives will have been transformed altogether.
I am going to leave a space here for you to take a moment to think about how much this gift of clean water will have meant to these people.

(...)

The construction team finished all of the back roof today and a third of the front roof. Only four people are having to stay behind in the Okyeman hotel to finish off tomorrow, while all the rest of us are travelling back to Accra. I am typing this up on someone's blackberry in the car as we speak.
Tomorrow we are going to hold a clinic in a fishing village near the city. Reportedly it has the worst sanitary conditions of all. The people who have been on the construction team all week will now also have an opportunity to see what goes on with the other team.

The crusade service tonight still saw an altar call response of perhaps 50 people, this time almost all adults, all very heart-felt I thought. There had been testimonies from [American] Belinda (like Saturday, to the youngsters), me, my mum and Mel, and Jesse preached on the freedom the gospel gives.