Bye Bye Buipe

As I mentioned in my last post, the focus of my work here is now changing. I have now moved out of Buipe and will be living in Tamale (sort of). My plans involve a fair amount of travelling so I will be a bit of a nomad for the next few weeks. Here is how things are looking and what I will be up to...

Next week: I am going to be meeting with some organizations that are working in water and sanitation in Tamale. My goal for these meetings is to get an idea of how different organizations approach working with the district governments and how this can possibly be improved. From what I saw in Buipe, organizations were taking care of water and sanitation work and the district water and sanitation team was completely non-functional (and there was no incentive for them to be more functional).

I will be spending the second part of next week and next weekend visiting a place called Fulfoso. This town was given a water system by UNICEF. I visited this town a few weeks ago and although I was told the system is working the water was not flowing (curious, very curious). I was told later that there were not only issues with the system, but that the committee formed to manage the system was also not functional...also not what was told to me when I visited the town. I am interested to live in this place for a few days and try to get a better sense of what is/isn't working and try to better understand the reasons why.

From there I will be spending two weeks visiting two other districts. The goal of these visits is to be able to compare the situation in these two districts with what I observed in Buipe. Both of these districts were a part of the same UNICEF project that was in Buipe. I am going to research how well their water and sanitation teams are functioning and try to learn how UNICEF has affected these teams.

Then it is time for report writing and final meetings. It is really crazy as I sit here to think that in a few weeks I will be thinking about wrapping up my placement. I am certain that the next month is going to fly by and it is looking like things are going to get busy. I am really looking forward to the next month and will be sure to keep you posted on my travels!

Baboons Bamboozle the Bewildered Borderless

Last week was our mid-placement retreat in Mole National Park followed by a weekend of country meetings with the other EWB volunteers. It has been really great this past week to reconnect with other JF's and to hear all about what other people are working on as well as to reconnect with motivations and reasons for coming to Ghana. This past week has allowed me to think about what I want to bring back to Canada from my experience here and what I am going to focus on for the rest of my placement.

I am currently in the process of figuring out how I will be spending the rest of my time here in Ghana. I have been experiencing a number of challenges learning about the water sector in Buipe as the water and sanitation team that I was going to work with at the District Assembly is not functioning. I have been able to learn a lot about reasons for why this team is non-functional and have gained some insight into some of the structural problems that exist with the district water and sanitation teams (DWST's). 

One of the reasons for this situation is a reliance on donors to "take care of" water and sanitation in the district and because of this attitude there is a lack of incentive for the DWST's to function. UNICEF has been active in my district for the past 3 years implementing a project called I-WASH with the goal of Guinea Worm eradication. Through this project UNICEF has been responsible for all water and sanitation work in the district for the past few years. As a part of this project DWST`s were supposed to play an active role in the project delivery teams at districts. However, in the case of Central Gonja, where there was not a functional DWST to begin with, instead of building DWST capacity, the I-WASH team has replaced the DWST. So now that UNICEF`s funding is up and the project has ended there is a significant gap left that the DWST should be filling...key word is "should".

Long story short, I am planning on visiting some other I-WASH districts and learning more about how functional different DWST`s are and how other districts are managing UNICEF leaving. I will keep you posted on my travels and further details on what I will be working on for the next six weeks. 

Finally, as you were perhaps somewhat intrigued by the mention of baboons in the title of this post which has been so far completely without baboon reference...

The first day that we were in Mole we saw a baboon pass by with a baby on her back as we were having a retreat session. This was a very exciting moment - cameras were taken out to appreciate this wonderful little nature experience. This was prior to learning that baboons are the sandwich-stealing peacocks (circa the Calgary zoo) of Mole Park. I now have a fear of baboons coming flying out of nowhere to steal juice/food/anything/everything. I feel somewhat mislead by Disney to believe that baboons are wise creatures who help to being baby lions into the world, and not the crafty aggressive critters that I have encountered.

And in other animals news from Mole...