Joined by my younger brother Matthew, he and I headed up to the village of Mowire, where I spent two months in 2008 teaching photography at an elementary school. I have now returned to oversee the excavation of a school well, paid for by donations of friends and family. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this process! Most of the photographs with me in them were taking by my brother who is also a photographer.
Here is a collection of photographs of children at the Triumph School and some of the new spaces at the school, such as the library and “main office” under a mango tree. In seven years the school has grown from 30 students to over 350 so they need to keep expanding the classrooms. The existing classrooms are overcrowded and efforts to build new classrooms have been halted mid construction due to lack of funds. This aside, the children love to learn and seem to really enjoy school, regardless of this crowded learning environment.
To view more photos from this collection, please visit- http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157621154182994/
Peter and Galdys Oduro have two biological children, Priscilla and Deborah, though their house is filled to the brim with children of friends and family. They house anywhere from 7-10 other children in their home and 20+ in a boarding house next to the school. When the children are not in school they are helping out around the house, fetching water, cooking meals, and attending the Oduro family run church service that takes place in the kindergarten classroom.
To view more photos from this collection, please visit- http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157621154360762/
In the evenings when the children are finished with their homework, they sometimes convene by the boarding house to practice dances that they will perform at school celebrations and other local events. On one specific night before dinner, I presented the children in the home and boarding house with makeup I brought over, courtesy of the Glamour Beauty Department. We did makeovers, I painted a million finger and toenails and the night ended with a glamorous Ghanaian catwalk outside.
To see more photos from this collection, please visit- http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157621154433498/
Here are some photographs of the children from the home and school collecting water. They go at least two times each before school (around 6am), during school if necessary, after school at least three times and then before dinner a couple more times. I joined them as they made these rounds and documented the process to give a sense of this tiring routine and why I so passionately want to change it. There is also a shot of me doing this chore while the kids were in school.
To see more photos from this collection, please visit- http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157621154694572/
One main aspect of this campaign to bring clean drinking water to the Triumph International School is that of teaching a group of women at the school how to maintain the well if there are any mechanical problems once it has been installed. This would empower them, by making this well and the school self sufficient and giving these ladies a change to learn a new skill and trade they most likely will not get the chance to in everyday Ghanaian life. My good friend Tre Shallowhorn is a filmmaker and graduate student at NYU and agreed to help document the process of this well and the people at the school. Here are some shots of Tre and I interviewing various people around campus.
To view more photos from this collection, please visit- http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157621154882616/
Please read the text below, explaining the course of events and the next steps. For a visual understanding, please look through the photos within this blog as well as at the links below.
As most of you know, I recently returned from a month-long trip to Ghana. The purpose of this trip was to oversee the drilling of a well, which I spent the last twelve months planning and fundraising for. Warned by many of the obstacles that I would face conducting business in another part of the world, with both time and financial constraints, I still hoped that it was possible to finish this project and give the gift of clean water to the Triumph International School and Orphanage. Despite my high hopes, though the project is now very close to being finished, unanticipated challenges prevented me from completing the drilling of the well. The last couple of weeks in Ghana have been very stressful and unpredictable, and now that I am back in New York, I’m able to process and communicate the details of my recent trip.
With only two weeks and $6,000 U.S. dollars, I worked to organize a team of contractors, drillers, electricians and plumbers and make this project come to life. One location was chosen, near the center of the school’s property, and the drilling began. After a couple of hours, the drillers believed they had hit water and ended the day early, planning to return the following day to finish the job. They promptly returned the next morning, drilled for the entire day and found that they had guessed wrong – they hit a dry well, and there was no water in that spot. To make matters worse, their machine needed repair and it would be many days (and many negotiation talks) before they would return for a second attempt. In the meantime, we had a professional geologist/civil engineer come to the school and do a “sighting” of the area to find other, more accurate spots to drill and hopefully hit water. Once he confidently identified the new location (promising that we would hit water in no more than 30 meters), we had the electrician and plumbers set up the overhead tank, the electric wiring and lay the plumbing so that when the drillers finally arrived, everything else would already be in place. We also started a well maintenance training program for some of the women at the school so if there were problems, they could be fixed in-house, empowering these women to take control of the situation.
Originally I had planned to construct a borehole well, which, while still requiring the children to physically pump water out of the ground, would eliminate the need for them to carry the heavy loads of water long distances, and would ensure that the entire school could have access to unlimited water during the school day, for free. These plans changed when the idea of a mechanical pump was introduced, which would only require that the children turn a tap on to get water – no more strenuous pumping and painful carrying of jugs and buckets. This sounded like a better investment. The price did rise by including these other elements but it was still within budget so we went ahead with the new game plan. By the end of the week everything was in place and we were just waiting on the drillers to return. Finally, the drillers returned, said a quick prayer over the new spot and broke ground. Seven hours later, and two hundred and fifteen feet down into the earth, it happened again – no water, in this location. This time, we were out of time and out of money.
I have spoken to a handful of engineers and hydrologists about this issue of not hitting water and it turns out that it does not mean there is no water in the area. The fact that there is water in the area is demonstrated by the presence of nearby wells which yield water and are no deeper than 90 feet. Unfortunately, these wells are still a considerably distance from the school, which is what originally inspired me to take on the project of constructing a well at the school. The water table, which is where we would want to ideally drill to, is constantly fluctuating in depth so getting a precise estimate of where it is shallowest is the most important step. Therefore a new investigation of the area, with better technology and more detailed research ahead of time will prove to be the key to finding the best location to drill. I am currently in conversation with a couple of engineers about facilitating this new sighting in order to continue this project. There is water at the school, it’s just a matter of properly identifying the strongest location.
As disappointed as I am that the well is not yet complete, I know that the reality today is that many people find themselves in this position – there is a global water shortage and one billion people around the globe do not have access to clean water. I was hoping to change this statistic in a minute way, and I still plan to see this project through. People have to drill multiple times to find a spot that yields the most water so this situation is not out of the ordinary. With everything else in place, all that’s left is a plan to do a new and more thorough examination of the area to find a spot and to drill (and find water). During the month of August a friend of mine will be spending a couple of weeks volunteering at the Triumph School and will be my liaison to this project, and will supervise the final stages of this project
I am hoping to now raise more than $4000, to cover the remaining project costs. I think if we all rally together this is very possible. One idea is to sell some of my new photographs from this recent trip to begin to raise funds- to view these, please visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157621157421972/ and you can also view some images from my first visit to the school- http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157605758721614/. I’ll be selling 8 x 20s for $45 and 11 x 14s for $80. I am also welcoming donations of any kind, and similar to the previous donation collection, all donations are tax deductible. To make a donation, you can go to http://www.amurt.net/about/donate.html and place a donation through them (including The Ghana On Tap Project if there is room to specify) and then shoot me an email so I can keep a record. If anyone has thoughts, suggestions, inspirational words, or anything else they can share with me, I would be extremely grateful. I look forward to seeing this project to completion, and have no doubt that this school will see water sometime in the next couple of months.
To view more photographs for this section, please visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_borowick/sets/72157621026801043/
Nzuelzu is a small village, started over 500 years ago and situated in the middle of Lake Amansuri. It is supported entirely by stilts made of central wood with a raffia walkway. To get to and from Nzulezu you must travel via canoe from a small dock in the village of Beyin, one hour away. The population of Nzulezu is roughly 500 men, women and children, governed by a village chief and a handful of village elders. Although the town is very small, with only one “main street,” there are two churches (Pentecostal and Catholic) that stand side by side. There is one school, grades K-6 and if the children plan to go further in their education they must enroll at the public school in Beyin and commute via canoe everyday. The “school yard” consists of four logs, two per side on the “field”, making up football goals as they stick out of the shallow areas of the lake. Although they live on water, their main source of income is agriculture. They own some land 1 km north of the lake where they grow a variety of vegetables and fruit which they sell in Beyin and the surrounding areas. There is also little exposure to the outside world with no television and poor radio reception. Also, they generally do not like the tourists who visit their village. My colleague Tre and I ventured to Nzulezu together and spent quality time with the elders, who ultimately granted us access into the community and we took some photographs, promising to send them copies, of course. Our tour guide was shocked by their openness and kindness towards us, which is apparently a very rare occurrence. The photos below are from Beyin, where we stayed the night, and Nzulezu images follow.
With two days free during my first weekend in Ghana, my colleague Tre and I set off for an adventure in the Western Region. It took us seven hours to get to Beyin, riding in three different tro tros, making it to the village early enough to catch some rays on a clean beach, something fairly difficult to find here in Ghana. There is no good trash disposal program so you can find plastic and wrappers scattered on the ground, and even some in the ocean. Not only was the white sand relatively clean and soft here, for the first time I experienced the Atlantic as a warm body of water. This is far from the harsh cold water I remember on the New York side of this ocean. The beauty of Beyin cannot be expressed in words, so here are a couple of photographs.
A couple of months ago a woman named Pam Cope contacted me. She had heard about my experiences in Ghana last year and my plan to return and bring the gift of clean water to a school of children. She also feels connected to the children of Ghana, but her cause is far scarier than mine. She learned about the child trafficking and indentured servitude of thousands of children on Lake Volta (in the Volta Region in Eastern Ghana). Many of these kids were sold by their parents and relatives to lake masters who exploit them and use them as extremely cheap labor in the thriving fishing industry here in Ghana. Children as young as five are sold into this slavery, working on canoes, detangling nets and other dangerous tasks below the surface of the lake’s cloudy water. Many do not return to the surface, disappearing forever. They are also beaten severely and starved of basic human necessities, such as food, sleep, proper hygiene and education. Pam Copes organization, Touch of Life Foundation saves these children and takes some of them to this home, The Freedom Center, where they get the opportunity to experience freedom and real childhood. They not only offer them a home to stay in, but a chance to catch up on education that they missed out on, while on the lake. Because many of these children were sold by their parents, it is incomprehensible to think of returning them to their families, at the risk of being sold again. Touch of Life continues to raise money to save these children and provide them with a new chance at a normal life. To read more and/or to donate, check out their website- http://www.touchalifekids.org. After learning of this organization, I wanted to help in whatever way I could, and offered to take portraits of the children they had saved. Some of these are posted here.
From Glamour to Ghana...and back again! 