Why water makes us sing and dance in the woods
They sang and danced for joy and although i did not clearly understand the Frafra language they sang in their enchanting voices nonetheless almost opened the floodgates of my watery eyes. The goose bumps, however, came and stayed.
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With verve and oneness they sang as a choir ready for a choral competition or the recording studio. The sweet and melodious music by the women would be the envy of any music director or recording engineer.
Both women and men took turns to dance vigorously and with skill to the tune, in the middle of a circle that was formed, with each dance receiving applause and shouts (more like shrieks) of appreciation from the singers.
I had to steel myself and not be overtaken by emotions. I had to be a man and not shed tears before strangers. Albeit, I was caught up in my emotions seeing the people of New Woligum in the Kassena Nankana West District in the Upper East Region sing and dance with so much passion and vigour.
The Kassena Nankana West District was created in 2007 from the then Kassena Nankana Municipality and lies between latitude 10.79◦ north and longitude 01.10◦ west. The district is located in the north-western part of Bolgatanga, the regional capital and has 11 area councils.
It shares boundaries with the Builsa and Sissala districts in the South-East and South-West respectively and the Bongo District in the North-East. Paga, where the famed crocodile pond is, is the district capital and a border town between Ghana and Burkina Faso. The predominant language spoken in the district is the Nakam but few people speak Kassim and Frafra.
I was in a team of six journalists and other officials of World Vision Ghana, a non-governmental organisation with a focus on child wellbeing, who were on a visit to find out whether some interventions made earlier had made an impact on the lives of the people. The spontaneous singing and dancing of the indigenes answered the question before it was asked.
How could people living in so remote an area [45km west of Bolgatanga] that was more or less cut off from the rest of the country, be so contented and express so much happiness, though they lived in what could easily be termed poverty?
They were expressing their joy at having access to clean water all year round, something they said was impossible few years ago.
Help from above
So they sang in Frafra -
We were in our houses having challenges.
So we went to the assembly but they could not help us
We went to the assemblyman but no help came.
Then we went to World Vision
And now help has come to us in abundance.
Before then they sang another song, Ba’an zoya, meaning sickness is gone, in which they described how after receiving knowledge on why they did not have to engage in open defecation, they had ensured personal hygiene, as a result of which sanitation-related diseases could no longer be found among them.
Mr Addepala Agasiya, a pump mechanic, said “when we came here there was no water and we had to cross two rivers to fetch water.” He added that because the water was not clean they experienced vomiting and diarrhoea among other water-borne diseases, all of which had not been experienced in the past three years.
Madam Akelobira, a pump maintenance volunteer, spoke passionately, and said hitherto, the women in the community had to comb one community or another just in search of water before World Vision came to their aid.
She indicated that as a result of the scarcity of water, their dawadawa business which required a lot of water suffered. “By the time we got water and prepared the dawadawa, the market would have closed so we could not sell at the market and we made a lot of losses,” she said.
“I am very grateful to World Vision for what they have done for this community. When you look at the heap of sand over there, that is where we had our hand-dug well where we fetched water, but looking at this borehole (pointing at it) I have nothing to say but to ask that you clap for World Vision,”Mr Akine Apasia, a community member said with a gleam in his eyes.
A schoolgirl, Evelyn Akokpoga, said she had to travel very far for water to bath, which made her always get to school late, adding “there are times your teacher would cane you because you had come to school late.” She, however, indicated that since the provision of a borehole, she could even get to school earlier than those living around the school.
Mr James Abagna, a psychiatric nurse, also told the visiting team that a lot of progress had been made in ridding the community of open defecation due to a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) training given them on April 30, 2015, by World Vision.
