Some women spend up to six hours a day carrying water. Their skeletons have been compressed under the weight, leaving them in constant pain.
|
 |
Then we turn to our Ghanaian partners, a charity called ProNet, set up and trained by the British charity WaterAid exactly for this purpose.
ProNet moves into the village for a few weeks and teaches the villagers about health and
hygiene. Getting people to
change their habits isn't easy, but when it's successful sicknesses like cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea and dysentery plummet, and so does the otherwise astronomical rate of infant mortality.
Then ProNet shows the villagers how to make latrines. They purchase the materials which aren't available locally and help the villagers make about twenty demonstration models. After that it is down to individual families. We provide finance for materials needed for every family to make one latrine (a family unit typically has fifteen to eighteen members) plus communal latrines and washing facilities for schools.
|
| The difference all this makes is enormous. Traditionally,
people might have spent four or five hours a day fetching
water: now they have that time free to generate
income. They go to the valleys less often, bringing them
into less contact with mosquitoes, meaning there's less
malaria around, and their health improves in all sorts
of other ways too.
And at this point it becomes feasible to tackle
some of the other water-related diseases which are so
prevalent, like worms and conjunctivitis, both of which
quickly re-infect where hygiene is poor. We can
de-worm whole villages on the same day. And we can bring
physiotherapists in to try to free them from some of the
muscle pain which results from having carried heavy weights
for long hours in the past.
Last but not least, the young men who couldn't find wives because no woman wanted a life of weight lifting and water carrying can finally look forward to having families of their own.
|
