A "Dam" Good Day Out

March 25, 2018

I am lying on the cold floor in my room on Sunday night after my first full day without my team for 10 weeks. Can’t do my washing as the water pipe isn’t flowing which means not enough spare water to clean clothes but should be okay tomorrow. I said goodbye to the ICVs at their debrief event on Saturday and saw the UKVs off at the bus station for their 12-hour journey to Accra on a coach, followed by resting in a hostel, they should be on their flight to Amsterdam right now and then it’s a short flight to London and off in their different directions to home. I ate two thirds of a pack of mint Oreos to get me through the grief as they were such an awesome bunch of life changing, memory generating people. The next cohort of volunteers don’t arrive until the 17/04 so hoping to do some travelling in the area if I risk assess it before going and then it gets approved by International Service.

Monday to Wednesday we were in the office completing the last couple of things we wanted to do that were on our team planning tool. Anything that wasn’t completed by this cohort can be passed on to do by the next one, hence why they like team leaders to do 2 so there is better continuity.

Thursday was World Water Day so for our final guided learning session, led by one of the volunteers, we were taken to the Ghana Water Company Tamale Branch. All the staff were in their water day T-shirts with the message ‘Nature is life’ as this is their theme for this year. We watched a presentation where they showed us one of the biggest problems they are facing is being able provide purified and safe water to all Ghanaians. This year they want to focus on nature-based solutions like regenerating the wetlands, planting more trees as well as stopping illegal digging. Illegal gold mining aka “Galamsey” is still a problem here, the miners disturb huge areas of natural land in the search for gold. The dirt dug up carelessly in this process can easily find its way into rivers and during the rainy season, the lack of plants holding the soil together means the dirt is looser and will wash into rivers. This causes an increase in silt content making it harder for the machinery in the water treatment plants to purify the water, reducing the overall yield and driving up costs. In the afternoon we also visited Dalun Dam which feeds into an irrigation channel and branches out to supply several fields. The channels have various gates on them which can be closed/opened depending on the farmers need and what crop they are producing. It’s amazing to see the differences between lush green fields supplied by the dam and the dry barren bush on the other side.

Friday we got together for debrief and reminisced, preparing for our looming bittersweet goodbyes. For reasons I don’t wish to dredge up on my overall positive blog (but will do over a pint of cider and some snacks when I’m back in the UK) I might be solo team-leading next cohort. Time to mentally replenish and prepare!

The Volta River, the source of water before it's pumped out and down the pipe to the water treatment plant.

A chemical treatment vat at the plant

The main irrigation channel, you can see one of the gates that branches off into the green fields on the left. Notice the dry, barren areas on the right that don't have any man made supply.