The short version is we’ve made it to the northern region of Ghana. A lot has happened regarding new wells, repaired wells, and medical equipment for the Tamale Hospital and Eye Clinic. The journey has been challenging, but we are getting things done.
Stephen Shipes and I arrived in Accra on Friday, March 27th. We left New York City an hour late and arrived in Ghana an hour early due to strong tail winds! I wish I could leave late and arrive early more often. We saw two schools in Accra. Both schools have a connection to employees of the Carter Center. The first school is called Lila’s Child Care Foundation.
Lila's school is helped by Jim Niquette, Director of the Carter Center, and several Rotary Clubs in the USA. Jim’s school takes street children who are breaking up rocks to make gravel or selling goods in the middle of the street and gets them prepared for elementary school. Jim will convince their parents that the children deserve an education instead of making less than $1 per day running between cars selling toilet paper, gum, bananas, and other wares.
The second school is Elohim Academy. Frank is one of the drivers for the Carter Center. Frank bought land and built a school in a very poor section of Accra. I was impressed with the high level of instruction at the school. Elohim Academy teaches elementary and middle school students. They hope to build more classrooms to teach high school students in the future. Frank took a mortgage loan to buy the land on his salary so that poor children can have a future. Frank told me that “We need to help. We can’t take money to heaven when we die. The children are our future.” Both schools need help and support.
The drive to Kumasi was harder than I ever remember. The road is in a constant need of repair. Accra and Kumasi have grown larger and the roads are worse with more potholes. It has been two years since I was in Kumasi. Kumasi is about 150 miles away, but it took a hard six hours of driving to get here.
I went to the Barker & Seibel School in the slums of Kumasi. I was impressed with a new principal, Vivian, who has moved home from England to help the school. She’s reduced the school size down to about 350 children. There’s a canteen and kitchen area now that is really nice. The kids were in school on Saturday to learn. I was able to teach Sunday School at a church in Adomkwarme and preach at Come Preach Christ Church in Amanfrom. The people are worshipping in a sanctuary which has lost its roof in a bad storm.
We drove to Sunyani on Monday morning. We met with the Sunyani Central Rotarians. We are excited about the new $72,000 Rotary matching grant to do work in the Brong Ahafo and Western Region of Ghana. We are hoping that it is approved soon by the Rotary Foundation trustees. We discussed a potential women’s center project. We also agreed that our hands are full. Child slavery in the fishing villages is not on our agenda even though Sunyani Central Rotary has a Rotarian who works for a charity that tries to give the kids working on the fishing boats a better life.
The Sunyani Rotary Club will celebrate improvements to a local school from a Rotary matching grant. We also discussed the buruli ulcer disease. It is a flesh eating disease. It is becoming more dangerous in southern portions of West Africa. We agreed that we would try to find support to reduce this disease with safe water projects in the future.
We met a borehole driller, Rev. David Donkor, with Living Water as well who may drill boreholes for our existing and future grant. He has a drill rig and crew that can drill deep boreholes if the rock is not too bad. He has a heart for providing clean water.
Jim Niquette, Stephen Shipes, and I had a lot of good conversations on the road. The most frequent topic was how to make the biggest difference in people’s lives with the smallest amount of money going to feed overhead of certain charities and governmental organizations. I will value the time spent with Jim Niquette of the Carter Center.
We arrived in Tamale, Ghana in time to meet John Nadolski of Living Water. He had a team from the USA celebrating work over the past year and looking for new places to drill boreholes or wells. It was a great conversation. We talked about micro-finance projects, schools, clinics, the Methodist Church in Ghana, guinea worm disease reduction, and so many things. John told us that everywhere he went someone knew me.
Stephen and I are staying with Dr. Jim Murphy during our stay in Tamale. We will be focusing our attention on the Tamale Teaching Hospital and Eye Clinic. One of the medical containers still needs to be emptied, organized, and distributed. The hospital and Tamale Rotarians kindly left me some work to do! The celebration will be on Friday at 10 AM to dedicate the medical equipment.
We want to get to Singa where a water system has been completed in the “Overseas area.” It takes seven hours just to go one direction to this remote area of Ghana. We hope to go on Saturday. I also hope to get to the Walewale area where we are building a church so we can preach there on Sunday. We’ll be in the Bolgatanga area next week for a few days to check on thirteen wells in that area.
Wish us well. We are wanting to make a difference at the hospital today.
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