Girl Goes Ghana

One of the things that has been hardest for me to get used to in Ghana is my utter lack of privacy compared to what I was used to at home. One of the weirdest ways that this lack of privacy manifests itself? People dig through my trash. There is no garbage man in Ghana who comes around weekly to collect waste. In my community, there aren't even garbage cans. A few people burn their trash, but most (including me) throw their garbage into a specific spot in the bush which has more or less been designated a community dump. It actually works much better in my community than it does in many others; there is very little trash scattered around the village. This is a little stream in Ho, my market town. It smells about like it looks. Luckily, my community is nothing like this. However. The day after I threw away my first bag of trash, I was stunned to see kids running around town playing with things that I had thrown away. An empty floss dispenser, bits of paper, a piece of a br...

Most of you probably know that I'm in Ghana as a health volunteer, but I don't think many are aware of the fact that officially, I am a Health/WATSAN volunteer. WATSAN means Water and Sanitation. When I first arrived in Ghana, I wasn't quite as excited about that part of my job as I was about the other parts. I was much more interested in educating people about malaria and HIV than I was about improving water and sanitation practices. However, the longer I am here, the more I recognize that issues with water and sanitation are a massive part of the health issues here in Ghana. For example, a lot of babies and children suffer from frequent diarrhea that could probably be prevented with regular hand washing. But if bringing water to the house entails walking five miles with a fifty pound bucket of water on your head, hand washing might not feel like such a priority. A lot of people are aware that burning trash at home is associated with respiratory issues, but if there is ...