Water

When we were coming to Africa I was not sure what to think about water here. Africa always was imagined in my mind as place where water is a problem, not only because of its lack, but also pollution and accessibility. Several things turned out to be quite different than I expected.

First of all water is still a big problem in Ghana – except biggest cities there are places where you have to walk couple of hours to closest source of fresh water. Than local sources are often polluted not only with garbage but many kinds of bacteria (which means running water can not be used to drink or clean teeth, at least by Obroni – white ppl;) ). Other problem with running water is that it’s often not available – many ppl install water tanks at their parcels and store water even when they have running water. Accra has pipes installed in most of its parts but they got broken often and there is no one who would care to fix them (we have pipes at our place too, but they don’t provide water for at least 10 months now). Because of that ppl developed different ways of managing water problem.

If you are not the lucky owner of running water;) you can do one of following things:

1. Pay quite a few money and dig a well at your parcel. We have such well at our place. It provides water which we can use for washing (except teeth), watering garden and cleaning – I think I wrote about that earlier too;). For drinking, cooking and brushing teeth we use mineral water we buy. Anyway many ppl gets well for themselves and buys poly-tanks to store water in case running water goes off or they don’t have running water at all.

I heard that some of the water you get from well can be polluted too – you can examine it at med center, but it costs a lot and they usually tell you that your water is not clean and offer you specifics that you can add to water to clean it naturally for additional amount of cash;).

2. There are many places here where you can buy water. Even on our street there is such place – they have 2 big water tanks and sell water. It’s hard for someone like to me to believe such things can exist in XXI century, but here they are… Anyway some ppl have to buy water because they don’t have any other source of it, sad but true.

There is one more thing worth mentioning about water here in Ghana. Everywhere: in shops, markets, streets you can buy water in plastic bags. Such bag consists 0,5 l of mineral water (one sold on the streets is always cold) – one bag costs 300-500 Cedi. Every one here uses them, they are sold everywhere and we got used to them quite fast. Now we drink mostly water from bags. There are many producers of water bags in Ghana – taste of water varies, most is ok, but I have encountered also awful ones;/

Side note: when buying bag of water, check if it has certificate of health ministry. It’s safe to buy and drink water bags with such certificate).

Side note2: naturally there are many kinds of bottled mineral water too, but who would bother buying them when we have water bags!

Certificate is this small mark in the top left corner of bag.