Water Well Project

In 1987 the Traverse City (Michigan) Church of Christ began a water well drilling project in Ghana, West Africa .  They were made aware of Cholera, Guinea Worm, Schistosomes and other parasitic infestations that were afflicting hundreds of thousands of Ghanaian people, as a direct result of the source of their drinking, cooking and bathing water.  Often the only source of water for remote villages is pond water.  Almost all surface water in Ghana is filled with the parasites mentioned above.  Once a person drinks the contaminated water they ingest parasites and bacteria and suffer the consequences.

If a person ingests Cholera bacteria they begin dehydrating.  Their small intestines begin to pass off tremendous amounts of water.  Cholera symptoms begin with diarrhea, violent bouts of vomiting, fever and then a coma that ends in death.  The population of a village can be decimated by an outbreak of Cholera.

Guinea Worms, on the other hand, usually do not kill, but instead cause excruciating pain and sometimes cripple a person for life. Guinea Worm, first swallowed by a “Cyclops” or water flea, transform into a third stage larvae.  The Cyclops, ingested by a human being, is consumed by the stomach’s juices and the larvae of the Guinea Worm are released.  They remain in the stomach for up to three months, mate, the male then dies.  The female bores through the body and makes her way to the extremities, usually the lower leg or foot, but it can go to any part of the body.  Once settled, just under the skin, she begins to grow.  She grows, by eating the flesh of her carrier, into a five foot long worm, about as big around as a piece of spaghetti.  While growing, she causes severe pain and cripples the carrier, so that they are not able to work.  These are simple subsistence farmers.  Pain hinders their farming, causing them to survive on less and keeps their family from eating!

As the worm matures, a painful blister appears on the skin of the carrier.  When a person puts the affected part of the body in water, the blister breaks and hundreds of thousands of tiny first stage larvae are released into the water.  The adult female worm then comes slowly out of the body of its carrier through the sore made by the broken blister.  It usually takes several weeks for the worm to completely exit the body. 

Schistosomiasis, also called snail fever or bilharziasis, is thought to cause more illness and disability than any other PARASITIC DISEASE, except malaria.  Almost unknown in industrialized countries, schistosomiasis infects 200 million people in 76 countries of the tropical developing world.

Schistosomiasis is caused by a FLATWORM that spends part of its life in a freshwater snail host.  Multiplying in the snail, a microscopic infective larval stage is released that can penetrate human skin painlessly in 30 to 60 seconds.  The larvae grow to adulthood and migrate to the veins around the intestines or bladder, where mating occurs.  The eggs produced may lodge in these tissues and cause disease, or they are passed out in urine or feces, where they reach fresh water and hatch to infect snails.

As a result of these things, and the desire to serve their fellowman, the Traverse City congregation determined to drill water wells to provide fresh, clean water for the people of Ghana .  This project has been operating since 1987.

During the dry season (November - Mid-May) the drilling crew drills water wells.  After the drilling season is finished, they return to the wells drilled to build cement platforms and install hand pumps on each well.

VILLAGE OF HOPE CHILDREN’S HOME

In 1992 the Traverse City church took over the work of the Village of Hope (Village of Hope) children’s home.  The Village of Hope was started a couple of years earlier, but was falling apart due to lack of funding, and poor oversight. 

When Traverse City took over the work, there was one half finished house sitting on 17 acres of land.  There were ten children living with two Ghanaian families.  One of the families lived in a home built from a shipping container and a small cement block room added to it.  There was a husband, wife and five children living in that home.  The other family had six children of their own, and the additional five orphaned children.  They were living in a three room house.  The families were in desperate need.  The individual who started the project had not sent money for several months, and the two families were starving.  Josiah Tilton and his family were living in Ghana at the time.  When they heard about the plight of the families, they spoke to the Traverse City Elders about taking over the work, and began negotiating with the individual who started the Village of Hope.  Eventually Traverse City was given the oversight.

The Traverse City Church partnered with the Vertical Center church of Christ in Tema, Ghana.  They gladly accepted the oversight of the operation of the Village of Hope, and they appointed a committee to search for a suitable Director.  Fred Asare, a young Ghanaian man with a Business Degree from the University of Ghana, was chosen and accepted the position.  Fred immediately began the work of finishing the original house; finding a loving couple to be the house parents; and then proceeded to place the children in the newly finished home.

There were many, many orphaned children running the streets of the Capitol city of Accra, so Fred and the Elders decided another house was needed.  Unfortunately, there was a problem with the deed to the property where the original house was built and the courts would not allow anything more to be built on it.  So the brethren in Ghana began looking for a new piece of property where they could build.

After finding new property in Fetteh, which they purchased with funds entirely raised in Ghana (over $11,000), the Traverse City church of Christ raised the funds to build three new houses.  Soon the houses were up, and filled with new house-parents and children.

Today there are five children’s houses with a duplex under construction.  There are three staff houses.  One house was built by the West Side church of Christ in Searcy, Arkansas, for the mission couple they supported in Ghana.  A second house was built by International Health Care Foundation of Searcy, Arkansas to house a nurse.  The third house was built by the Ghanaian brethren to house the Village of Hope director.  In 2001 a guest house was built by the Ghanaians for visitors who come to the Village of Hope.

In 2001 International Health Care Foundation began construction of the Andrea Browning Clinic which serves the Village of Hope and the surrounding communities.

Fred Asare, with the approval of the Elders in Ghana, has visited the States on numerous occasions in order to raise money for a school building.  The school currently includes Primary and Junior Secondary schools.  The completed school will be a three story building that will additionally include the Senior Secondary (high) school level.  The first floor is finished, and is complete with a networked computer lab and a library – all from donated sources.  In September of 2003 the school opened.  As of March of 2006, there were 304 students in attendance (grades pre-school through grade 9). 

Early in 2004, teenage students from Harding Academy in Memphis, Tennessee came to Ghana to help with the children at the Village of Hope.  They saw the need for a building to house the nursery school that the Village of Hope operates and returned to the States and began raising funds. Within a short time they had raised almost all that was needed to build a four room pre-school.  Above is a picture of the building under construction.  To the left is a picture of the completed building.

RESULTS:

Since we began the project:

DRILLING:

• Over 600 boreholes with 380 water producing wells have been drilled.

• More than 280 villages and towns,over 1 million people (1/20th of the Ghanaian population), now have fresh water.

• This has helped people  to have fresh, clean water, and healthier, happier lives. 

• The incidence of Guinea Worm has dropped dramatically in the villages where drilling has been successful.

• The infant mortality rate (3 of 10 children dying before age five) has dropped to less than 1 out of 10, in the villages where drilling has been successful.

  VILLAGE OF HOPE:

• The Village of Hope has grown from one house to five houses (and a duplex under construction).

• A clinic serving the Village of Hope and the villages around the Village of Hope (a population of over 40,000) has been built and is in operation.

• A nursery school (with funds raised by students from the Harding Academy in Memphis, Tennessee) has been constructed and is in operation.

• A school is now providing education to students from primary ages to grade 9.

• A street children's project provides daily necessities to needy inner city children.

• God has been glorified, souls have been won, and many lives have been touched and helped.

In addition:

• More than 600 new congregations have been established in northern Ghana.

• Through the work of the Village of Hope and Greg Larson (a missionary sponsored by the West Side church of Christ in Searcy, Arkansas) several congregations have been established around the Village of Hope.

• More than 17,000 people have been baptized into Christ.

• Congregations have been established in 44 villages that had previously been Muslim villages.

The church has been the fastest growing of any religion, not just in Ghana , but in all of West Africa

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