Mampong School for the Deaf

We hustled (3 hours) south back toward the Gulf of Guinea and then west toward Akropong to Mampong to visit the school for the deaf that a system and education were done in June 2022.  The amazing part of this (and the Cape Coast installation) is that the entire health education class is done in sign!

Mampong has 531 children and is a government school - no affiliation to the PCG.  The school has really taken the water system and distribution seriously and is generating about 350 gallons of safe water a week in the first 6 months.   The water room is really a nice set up - Michael and team did a great job with this one.

Our visit was short due to darkness and our need to get back into Accra.

The highlight of the visit were the kids being enamored with Chalmers iWatch.  These kids cannot speak and only can sign.  They had never seen an iWatch before.  They really got excited when I snapped a photo of them (the kids) and texted it to Chalmers and the kids saw themselves on the watch.

GREAT WAY TO END OUR 15 HOUR DAY!!!

 

Lake Volta Video

 One of the largest man made lakes in the world!

Breakfast snack on the way to Anum

 Corn maze steamed in a leaf….

Spellings / Grammar / Complete Thoughts

 I am not proof reading the posts - real time - excuse any spelling/grammar/complete thoughts errors.

Anum Sr High Presby School

Anum is one of 34 Sr High Schools the PCG partners with the Ghanaian government.  Anum has 3,000 students and is a boarding school.  It has a rich history dating back to the early 1900s and a couple of the original buildings, like the chapel, are still on the campus.

Drying clothes on the ground in the sunshine.

With 3,000 students the school has a lot of challenges with that many students - water not being the least of them.  The campus has 4 bore holes, a water feed from Ghana Water Company, and we heard today at one point (in recent times) was able to lift water from Lake Volta up the hill to the campus.

Today we saw other challenges as well.  such as the campus took a series of lightening strikes which knocked out several pumps around the campus - including the one that feeds the LWW system.  EAch bore hole has two pumps to it to lift and distribute the water.  We were disappointed in not seeing the system in full run mode - but understand the challenge.

The system at Anum is a reverse osmosis system because of the high iron content of the bore hole water.  Very common in the hills and mountains of Ghana.

The upside of the visit was we got to see a group of students, who had taken the health education class with Rose and Regina, give their demonstration, i.e. the read out of what they learned.

We think the school’s admin can get their arms around the various challenges related to water, but as we learned with Kibi (similar scale) it does take planning, thinking about distribution of the water, etc.  Teiko, Kofi and Rev Asante are very supportive of the school’s admin team - which is helpful!!

Correction - Teiko’s start date as Director DSS

Teiko became Director of Development and Social Services in October 2020.

Travel to Anum

We left Accra before sunrise today to make the 3 1/2 hour drive from the costal region of Accra to the mountains around Lake Volta.  Anum is a school of roughly 3,000 children.  We are here to meet the people of Anum Presby School where we put a system and training in 2019 (prior to COVID).

The grounds of the school sit on the shores of the lake.