Blogs
Blog Post - Charles Kurth
The Blue Youth theme for 2016 is Water, as Ghana is a hot and tropical country where clean and readily available water can be an issue. So water does pose a serious problem for Ghana as a nation. Often people hear don’t have access to water and when they do it isn’t clean. The cholera and droughts of previous years are indicative of this. However as we are paired with Homer HS in Alaska it is difficult to see what issues we have in common. America is a highly developed country where water is a right and no a luxury, where as Ghana not everyone is entitled to water and sometimes people have to shell out a disproportionate amount of their income on water.
Currently in Ghana most people have access to water in some shape or form, not all can wash freely without paying for a public wash house and most bathrooms are shared. We however here at Lincoln School hold a higher standard of living than most people in this country therefore this is a nation of polar opposites. Ghana is a country where the classes are miles apart, with the lowest having no sanitation and potable water with the highest having swimming pools and plenty of water to go around.
Interestingly enough Ghana is currently developing the drainage and sanitation system hopefully making urban flooding a thing of the past. Flash floods are also responsible for the killing of thousands of crops every year. Secondly more and more is being done to devote funding to the drilling of bore holes to provide more water for a quickly expanding population. However droughts are becoming more common and therefore water shortages do pose a threat. I think educating the people to be more conscious of climate change is very possible, in Ghana you have a very naive and malleable population which is common in undereducated countries. Evidence of this can be seen in a massive public health campaign years ago effectively stigmatizing smoking and making it a taboo and dirty thing to do in the street. The same principals can work with water conservation. Secondly government legislation could be difficult to introduce and maintain as corruption is widespread.
