Mount Sinai SHS students desperate for clean drinking water
The campus of the Mount Sinai Senior High School bustles with quick footsteps each morning and evening as students carry buckets from their dormitories to fetch water from two streams outside the school.
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That is because clean water for drinking, bathing and other chores such as washing clothes and preparing meals for the students has remained a distant dream.
The students often have to brave the cold weather on the Akuapem Ridge each morning, waking up as early as 4 a.m to rush to the water bodies.
Those who fail to wake up on time are unlikely to get enough water to take their bath and go to class.
A long distance for water
They, therefore, trek about 90 minutes to fetch clean water from the campus of neighbouring Okuapemman SHS or Akropong, and back.
“To get our share of the water, we sometimes use torchlights to go to the streams late in the evening or wake up at 2 a.m . Often, we see snakes and scorpions on the way”, the Girls’ Prefect, Helena Boateng, told the Daily Graphic.
“There are days the streams have tiny worms and because we do not boil the water, some of the students develop skin rashes or itches”, she added.
Carting of water
After fetching water from the streams, the students carry their buckets of water on their heads and climb up the rocky, steep hill back to campus.
I visited the school recently and saw the struggles the students go through every day as they fetch water from the streams that are also used by pigs reared close by.
I met 15-year-old Sabina Azaglo, a form one student, and her peers with buckets, on their way to fetch water from one of the streams known as Abrewanko.
Sabina told me that waking up as early as 4 a.m. to fetch water was becoming an unbearable task that was taking a severe toll on her health and studies.
“My body is in constant pain as it is strenuous carrying water up the rocky hill”, she said.
Like many of her schoolmates, Sabina said anytime she went to fetch water and was on her way back to school, she often had to pause about 10 times to rest before continuing. And on days that Sabina was unable to wake up early like other students, she would go to the streams but would walk back either with little water or an empty bucket.
“If that happens, I have to buy a bag of sachet water from my housemistress to wash down before going to class. When my housemistress is unavailable, I buy or go to friends to beg for either two or three sachets of water”.
Too little water to keep body
If Sabina is unlucky enough to get help, she has to feign sickness as an excuse to stay in the dormitory and skip class. “That is so distressing for me as girl”.
Helena, the Girls’ Prefect, recounted that having no water to wash down prior to and after class was not unique to Sabina.
“There were times when some female students could not get water and had to beg for two or three pails of water to wash their armpits, legs and private parts,” she said.
“Some students have become used to this practice we call polish on dirt or POD,” she revealed, adding “we inherited it”.
When I asked how common the practice was, she replied: “Some of us frequently resort to POD, particularly when the rains fail and the streams dry up”.
Polluted water allergy
“When the streams dry up, out of frustration, we organise ourselves and use cutlasses and hoes to dig the bed of the stream and have to wait for two or three days for enough water to gather,” she said.
Those assertions were strongly confirmed by other students who gathered around this reporter to share their experiences on the water problem.
For 17-year-old Harnet Addai, a form three student, anytime she used the stream water to wash down, she experienced terrible body itches. She shyly showed me some dark spots on her legs and arms that she attributed to bathing with unclean water.
Jokingly, she lifted her dress up to show me marks on her thighs. “Have you been to the hospital to see a doctor?” I asked and she answered: “A doctor at the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital advised me to stop bathing with unclean water”.
“I cannot resist scratching myself after taking my bath with the stream water”, Harnet stated, explaining that once she was on vacation, the itching stopped completely. She is not the only one who has that condition.
Queuing to fetch water
After hearing some of their concerns with the use of the stream water for bathing, I accompanied some of the students to the streams.
Walking down the rough path leading to the valley where the two water bodies were, the struggles the poor students go through, descending and climbing the rocky hill, dawned on me.
It can simply be described as a strenuous daily activity any student would wish way. Down in the valley, we met some of the students already there fetching water from the stream.
I watched the students in a queue, waiting for their turns to the fetch water, and it was a frustrating scene.
Those who happened to have taken the lead were lucky to collect the ‘best’ water, stepping on big stones placed in the streams or standing on a thick plank placed across another stream to fetch the water.
As they dip their buckets into the stagnant water, they get muddy but they have to overlook that, most of the time using their empty buckets to push aside the dry leaves and particles in the water. The more they fetched the water, the muddier it became.
Cooking meals with stream water
It is not only the students who bear the frustration in their search for clean water at the school. The school’s kitchen also depends on the streams to prepare meals for the entire school.
“Days that the school is unable to buy a tank of water from the Ghana Water Company, we have to depend on the stream for water to cook meals for the students and their teachers,” the school’s Headmaster, Mr Samuel Siameh, told the Daily Graphic.
He stated that potable water had become a scarce commodity that had for years remained a challenge.
“The water problem has compelled the students and management to resort to purchasing sachet water for drinking, and that is adversely affecting teaching and learning”.
The Senior Housemaster, Mr Reuben K. Tordzro, added: “Water from the streams contain some impurities that could be harmful to students, particularly those with sensitive skins, some of whom itch after bathing with it”.
Dysfunctional boreholes
The mission school was lucky when its parent-teacher association and a philanthropist constructed two mechanised boreholes and a treatment plant in 2009 and 2010. However, today, the two boreholes are dysfunctional as the two pumping machines that pump water from the wells have broken down; a situation Mr Siameh attributed to the high content of iron in the water.
“The water is highly contaminated with iron, which keeps corroding the pumping machines”, he stated.
The way forward
At the time of the construction of the two boreholes, the school had no option than to utilise the available piece of land that contained a high concentration of iron.
The other piece of land the school had was claimed by a landlord who sent the school to court but the court ruled in favour of the school.
“Now, if we get the support of the government, corporate bodies and philanthropists, we can address the challenge to help our students to focus on their studies”, he said.