Meeting the community of N-Nalog, with the chief (far left) and the assemblyman (far right)

“How many boreholes do you have?” Sitting on a wooden bench surrounded by a large group of men and children, we pitched this question to the community of N-Nalog. It was around 5 pm, and the sun could be seen to be losing power as it made it’s way behind the vast fields we were sitting at the edge of. I had spent the day with George, the district director of community development, visiting communities all over the district. N-Nalog was our last stop on the way back, about 10-15 km outside of Saboba town. We had also luckily ran into the assembly man (elected representative) of the area, who joined us for the meeting.

“No borehole.” Sitting on a low chair, the elderly man who is the chief of the village replied to us in Linkpapa. He told us how once a borehole had been dug, but many people got sick and poisoned from it because it was on a fluoride deposit. As a result, that one borehole had been capped shut.

The banks of River Oti.

“Ah! Where do you get water from, then?”

“We get it from the river. But it’s far!” River Oti is at least 5 km from this place, probably more. The women would be carrying upwards of 25 L a day per person in the family.

“And what do you use it for? The water.”

“Bathing, food, drinking…”

“And before drinking do you do anything to it?”

The man from the community who spoke some English laughed. “No, we’re not doing anything. We just take it.” After further questioning, the man told us that the kids are often sick, usually with vomiting and diarrhea. I also asked the assembly man why the water was not boiled or treated before drinking. He replied that there is no time for the women to do it as they are fetching water often, and that they have to be doing other things around the house.

Water is a huge issue in Saboba. As of last year, the water coverage in the district was 38% (so out of the 62,000 people in the district, less than 24,000 have adequate access to potable water). As a result, water-borne diseases and parasites are common; and some of them can be extremely debilitating. Guinea worm is one of most concern, and only recently through an intense ongoing eradication campaign has the occurrence in Ghana decreased.

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“They wanted to drill 30 boreholes. That ahh, World Vision.” I was walking outside in the scorching heat with Douglas, one of the most dedicated district officers. We were making our way to his office, in the Works (engineering) department. Douglas was telling me about how at the end of last year, World Vision approached the district assembly with their 2010 budget that allocated the drilling of 30 boreholes in the district.

Saboba has had two EWB volunteers in the past who have spent one year each with the district assembly. Both had worked with Douglas’s office. Two years ago, Nick Heminez (click for his blog) had developed a water-prioritization tool with Douglas. Using a series of different factors for a community (water sources, coverage, distance to source, guinea worm, diarrhea, money, etc) the excel database assigns each community a score. This score can then be compared across communities to see which is in most need of a borehole, based on all these important factors. Douglas and I were discussing this tool.

“So how did you tell them which communities?” I asked about World Vision’s request.

Douglas replied they had used the water tool, combined with data that had been collected in February 2009. “I sorted it from largest to smallest,” Douglas said.

My heart jumped, I wanted to scream with joy. 30 communities got water access, and those who needed it the most. I know Nick’s placement at the time had been extremely frustrating, but here over one year after he left, boreholes are being drilled in critical areas.

There is no way of knowing that if the tool wasn’t there, the priority communities would have received boreholes anyway. It is very possible, since Douglas has a really good memory of communities’ individual situations. So did we (EWB) result in this happening? Maybe. I think we played a part, but the human factors stop us from knowing for certain. But the bottom line is that Douglas selected the communities, not EWB. World Vision is drilling boreholes, not EWB. This is the sustainability we’re talking about.

Oh, as a side note: World Vision, despite their short-comings, are doing good work here in Saboba. There is a problem, though: they are using an inefficient, imported, expensive hand-pump model called India Mach II. As a result, due to lack of capacity and unavailable parts the district cannot repair the boreholes World Vision drills. This is a huge problem, that Douglas often complains about. The district assembly uses the cheaper (and frankly, better) Afridev pump using local parts. Whoever calls/contacts World Vision to find out why they use these imported pumps – and comments on this post – will get an authentic Ghanaian souvenir from me! Click here to email them.

“So why isn’t the data updated?” I asked Douglas.

Douglas said there was too much to update. Working with Douglas, I have removed some of the less important indicators from the water tool and integrated it into the broader database we’re working with now. I’ve also added a function that assigns scores for communities that need borehole repairs, as well as those that need sensitization on water issues. We’ve talked about different channels of information from communities, such as assembly men/women. What happens next?

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The trends in education. The purple line are standardized test scores, and the other three are enrollment numbers at different levels of school.

June 30th. Saboba.

I spent about 2 hours with the Director of Education, Phillip, in the morning. We have been interacting a lot, while I develop the Education section of the database with his department. I was showing him the work that has been done thus far, and we went through some scenarios of where certain resources could be allocated (ie. where to post the next qualified teacher) based on the graphs generated by the database. One thing that really stuck him was a graph that showed rising enrollment over the last 3 years contrasted with the falling test scores.

Later in the afternoon, Phillip was giving a closing address to a Junior-High-School quiz competition, with a number of Ghana Education Staff present. I was sitting in my office, but his voice carried from the assembly hall and I heard him say: “If you look at the enrollment for 2007, 2008, 2009, it’s going up. But your performance is going down. Why?! What can we do, because this is a big problem!”

A chill shot up my spine and I had goosebumps from excitement. It’s not huge, but it’s a step. This is behavior change at it’s core: messy, slow, erratic, but in the end, powerful.

Where would you assign teachers, if resources were limited?

July 2nd. Saboba.

I arranged a meeting between the District Coordinating Director (one of the head honchos) and Phillip, along with officers from Education, Thomas and Patience from the district assembly, and Dan Olsen (EWB team lead visiting from Tamale) where we started a dialogue between the two directors with regards to the database.

“With this information on my computer, when I talk to regional about Saboba I can show them I know what I’m talking about.” Phillip continued: “If we had to build a school, and the politicians say they want it one place, with this we can say ‘there is no argument.’”

“Ah, no, the politicians can still have their way,” the Coordinating Director said half-jokingly. He was right, there are too many ways to circumvent the system. But that’s true to a degree all around the world, and it will take time for the system to gain more power over individuals. And it’ll take strong individuals willing to invest in the system – like Phillip, like Douglas – to make that happen.

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When I’m demotivated, frustrated, angry, or feeling a host of other emotions characteristic to working here, I turn to these small successes to keep me going. They aren’t sexy successes we can put up on donation cards like many NGOs do, they aren’t easy-to-understand successes that appeal to our desire for common good.

In my opinion, however, they are symptoms of progress towards critical change at the lynch-pins of a massive system. We are trying to change something so massively huge with a history, culture, and people so intricately complex that there are no easy answers; to anything. But this is true “development.”

Imagine… because of one small change and one sharp officer (Douglas), 30 communities got boreholes allocated. That’s water enough for 9000 people. 0 Guinea worm cases – directly correlated to water source – have been reported in the district of Saboba this year. We cannot cannot attribute these things to any one factor. We can try and have an idea, but ultimately the fact that they are happening is good enough.

The change we are trying to catalyze, in people, in the system, in the processes… when successful its effects reverberate across the board and the benefits are huge. But there is no one person, organization, or initiative that can be responsible. But why is that important?

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