When Akisneem Abachela’s family feels well off, they celebrate Christmas by brewing pito beer made from sorghum and eating goat meat. Otherwise, they tighten their belts and keep it simple. “When resources are scarce, we only kill guinea fowl and cook rice to celebrate Christmas,” says Abachela, an elderly widow who lives in the Garu district of rural Northern Ghana.
This year, she hopes that income earned from the sales of vegetables grown on her allotment will boost the family Christmas celebrations. Abachela, who shares her family compound with some of her sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, is able to grow and sell fresh green vegetables thanks to a special solar-powered borehole pump that was installed in her village by Oxfam two years ago. The income helps pay for essentials such as groundnut paste and school-related costs for her grandchildren.
The borehole is part of wider efforts to help families on the frontline of the climate crisis build their resilience to it.
Ayawin’s eldest daughter, Myma; Joshua Aywin cools down
Before it was installed, Abachela and neighbours in her community used open wells, some of which were fitted with manual pumps. But this water was muddy and had to be filtered and boiled before drinking. Now, instead of expending energy, they can simply turn a tap. An electric pump, powered by photovoltaic panels, draws potable water from deep below ground and stores it in two 500-litre holding tanks.
“We no longer buy vegetables; we plant herbaceous vegetables, beans, okra and other vegetables for domestic use,” says Abachela. “All we buy are groundnut paste and other ingredients that we can’t grow.”
A lifelong semi-subsistence farmer, whose husband died 15 years ago, Abachela describes herself as “old and weak”. She has had enough of walking for miles for water in bygone days or operating a handpump. “We no longer have to walk far to get water and that has brought quite some relief,” she says with understatement.
Northern Ghana has just two seasons – dry and wet. In the dry season, temperatures reach 40C. But climate breakdown is making life even more challenging, with the world’s poorest people bearing the brunt. According to a report jointly published by the United Nations Development Programme: “Evidence abounds in Ghana that temperatures in all the ecological zones are rising, whereas rainfall levels and patterns have been generally reducing and increasingly becoming erratic” – a situation experienced firsthand by Abachela and other local farmers.
Droughts and floods in the wet season have an impact on the main crops of maize, millet and sorghum. When the rains are good, the fields are lush and green from May to September. But in the dry season crops can’t grow and the land lies fallow, bare and red-brown. The only shade is from baobab and shea trees. During this dry season, residents of Kpatua grow a few vegetables that they water by hand. Before the solar-powered borehole, the villagers grew these in the only suitably damp earth – that of the riverbank, over an hour’s walk away. Cattle often trampled and ate the vegetables before they could be harvested. Now, 68 villagers grow greens in a shared 1.6-hectares (four acres) garden, fenced off from livestock, sited very near their homes. The plot is irrigated with water from the adjacent solar-powered borehole.
“The water is the best thing that has happened in my life,” says Joshua Ayawin, who farms and keeps cattle, goats and guinea fowl. He is also responsible for maintaining the solar panels. He washes dust from their surface, blown there by hot harmattan winds from the Sahara. In this desiccated landscape, where architecture rises organically from the ground, the 10 shiny black and silver panels look particularly striking.
Thanks to the well water, Joshua and his wife Felicia grow okra, leafy greens, sweet potatoes and onions in their dry-season allotment in the communal garden. “We’re eating vegetables every day and we even have surplus to sell [in the market in Garu],” says Joshua. As with Abachela, the income goes towards paying the costs of education for their children.
The water has also brought an extra, surprising, dividend: the guinea fowl now lay more eggs, meaning extra family income – and enhanced nutrition for the children.
As well as alleviating poverty and improving diets, easy access to water has had obvious health benefits and made life more bearable. With soaring temperatures, parched, dusty ground, the chance to wash with cool water is a bonus that Felicia appreciates. “[Before the borehole pump], during the heat, if you wanted to cool your body with water, it wasn’t possible, you had to live with it,” she says.
She explains how they would become thirsty and dehydrated and the children would suffer stomach upsets due to dirty water. “Since then, all these things have disappeared and I don’t see them any more.”
Help fight the climate emergency
Families on the frontline of the climate emergency urgently need your help. Donate now to Oxfam’s Green Christmas appeal. Visit oxfamapps.org.uk/greenchristmas to donate
