Feb 20, 2008 12:19 am US/Pacific
Assignment Africa: The Search for Water
GHANA (CBS 5) ―
CBS 5 anchor Dana King recently completed a trip to Ghana in western Africa. This week she reports on the trouble of toxic e-waste, the struggle to find clean water in remote villages, the journey Americans often take to find a bit of their own heritage in the history of slavery, and the clash between an ancient belief in witches and the standards of modern justice. Below is Part 3: The Search for Water.
Villagers watch anxiously as a million-dollar rig searches for something priceless: clean water. If they have water, the villagers will be relieved of an enormous burden - walking long distances each day for water.
It's a journey that many make before the sun is even up, a routine gathering of girls mostly, who learn early on how to balance a five-gallon bucket. There's no pushing, no harsh words, no impatience. The weight of the water is only part of the burden. Many of these young women walk three miles one way, to fetch water that is contaminated.
We walk with them to a watering hole, where cattle are wading in for a drink. In fact, the cattle use the spot for everything, and so do the village women who do their laundry here.
Yet, people still drink here. Kids fill their bottles with this water. Woman fill even larger containers. For many, it's their only source of water, and water engineer Braimah Apambire says with it, comes disease. He tells us about 80% of diseases among children are related to contaminated water, sanitation, and poor hygiene.
Doctors are treating one girl for a water-borne illness that you may have never heard and certainly never seen before now. It's a guinea worm. It looks like dental floss and lives in the body until it decides to exit, when it can come out anywhere. This girl has the worm in her knee.
She says she first knew she had it when she saw a sign of it coming out of her leg. When I ask her if she knows how she got the guinea worm, she responds it's because she drinks the water from the dam.
Guinea worm is painful, and if left untreated, it festers. We met an old woman who has had guinea worm much of her life. It is beyond treatment. All she can do now is keep it clean and that requires bottled which she can't afford.
That's why the drilling rig means hope to villagers. There's about an hour of sunlight left and the anticipation is palpable because this is the second attempt to find water for this village today alone.
Night has fallen and the crew continues. They know that in order to have a productive well, it has to be at least 80 feet deep. That will insure it will not be subjected to seasonal changes and be free of surface pollution. So they will go deeper. They dig three meters at a time and then measure the flow.
The following morning, it happens. The waiting is over. The crew has hit a deep well of water. The drill crew is just as excited as everyone else in the village.
The finished pump will bring more wealth, better health, and precious time to spend on something other than the never-ending march for water.
For more information on aid to Africa, call World Vision at 510-525-5665 or email
amason@worldvision.org.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
See Part 1: eWaste in Ghana
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