“The Official Beginning of my life in Kumasi: Research, an inspirational talk with Jorge, and coffee with a hint of fish”

Hello everyone,

I am back in Kumasi with more stories of research and daily life here in Ghana for you to indulge in.

I arrived in Kumasi on Sunday after a four-hour bus ride. If you remember my original post about my last trek to Kumasi, the trip took almost 2 hours longer, a positive indication that the roads are benefiting from the on-going construction. When I arrived, I took a taxi to Kruofrum, where I am staying with a host family I met when I was studying in Ghana last year. Once I got some coffee in my system, I met with Mubarak for lunch. He was visiting from Sunyani and was still in town by the time I made it into town. After spending a few hours in good company, exhaustion from my trip began to set in, so I headed home to relax for the rest of the night.

The following day, Monday, was jam-packed and very productive. I went to campus to finally meet Dr. Donkoh, a professor of History and Political Science on campus who is also supervising my research. It was nice to finally meet her; our schedules had not matched up since I arrived in October. She was gracious to call David, a former colleague of hers who is working in the water sector, so that I could speak with him about his work. David is working predominantly in the rural water sector, and though our current research agendas aren’t exactly aligned, he was previously a professor here at KNUST and did research on housing in informal settlements and poor areas of Kumasi, which is very relevant for what I am doing. As I alluded to in my last post, sometimes areas within the piped distribution network in the urban sphere lack a connection because they do not own the title to the house or land in question where they are proposing to establish a connection. (The GWCL requires its customers to possess the title to the building in order for them to be connected to piped network and receive GWCL services.) Anyhow, David sent me some of his past published journal articles, which I will be reading this week. Dr. Donkoh also contacted her colleague Dr. Brenya, to see if I could use his office whenever I wanted to come to campus to do work. Dr. Brenya agreed and I learned from Dr. Donkoh that, ironically enough, Dr. Brenya was, until quite recently, a professor at West Virginia University before returning to Ghana to teach at KNUST. When I met Dr. Brenya, he told me that his family is still in Morgantown and he goes back often to visit them. It was exciting to meet someone who could visualize my university and with whom I can relate to.

After meeting Dr. Brenya, I went to the International Programs Office (IPO) to straighten out some fees I was apparently supposed to pay. Essentially, when I came to Kumasi during my first two weeks in Ghana, I met with Mercy, the coordinator of the IPO and she told me that typically with Fulbright and other visiting scholars and professors, the office has them register and pay tuition and fees to the university in return for the services the university is providing them. When I asked her how much this would be, she told me US$4,000, or more than 8,000 Ghana Cedis. In other words, the amount I was to pay was the equivalent of the stipend I get for three months of living here. I told her I couldn’t afford it and that I didn’t really see the benefits of paying tuition and other fees associated with studying when I wouldn’t be enrolling in courses here or living on campus. Mercy assured me this wasn’t a problem; that she understood and that it was their fault because they should have sent me the bill before I came to Ghana, which is what they usually do with visiting scholars, so that I had time to prepare my finances accordingly. I walked away from that conversation feeling assured that everything was straightened out; then two days later I received an email from the office with my bill. I replied to the email and heard nothing more- again, thinking that meant everything was settled. Then, when I went to meet with Dr. Donkoh, she brought up the situation and said Mercy had contacted her about it, and that I should go and visit her to make sure everything was as it should be. Apparently, after my most recent visit, everything really should be all set and I won’t have to pay anything.

Feeling as though I had been running around the whole morning, I sought a seat under the shade of one of the buildings on campus and proceeded to write my last blog entry and make some phone calls about French lessons and Twi lessons to begin in January and to set up meetings with PURC and GWCL members for the week.

On Tuesday morning, I made my way to campus to meet with Jorge. I initially met Jorge through Anna, who was here on a Fulbright last year. I contacted Anna before coming to Ghana to talk with her about her experience and get her advice on housing and campus life. Anna gave me her advice and happily introduced me to Jorge and Mubarak through Facebook. Jorge kindly offered to help me look for some housing while I was still Stateside and just seemed like a really great person. When I first arrived in Kumasi, Jorge was at a conference in Tanzania, then, when I was planning to move to Kumasi on a more permanent basis and begin my research, I was called back to the States for my Rhodes interview. With the craziness in both of our schedules, we hadn’t had the chance to meet yet, so I was eager to finally get to meet him. It was well worth the wait. Jorge is enthusiastic about life, very easy-going and his energy is contagious. He is also one of the most inspirational people I have met at this point in my life. I can’t recall a time when I’ve had an hour-long conversation with someone I just met and had moments where all I wanted to do was applaud or stand up and say, “Exactly!” It was like what I imagine attending a church you actually really enjoy would be like.

Jorge was really interested in my research so we talked about my objectives and what I have done since arriving in Ghana. That conversation led into a discussion about his interests in water and sustainable living. Jorge has a degree in electrical engineering and is currently working at the energy center on campus. He is very keen on renewable energy and how to deliver services so that people can live more sustainable lifestyles. He is considering pursuing an MBA for his next degree, so I asked if he has aspirations of establishing his own renewable energy company here in Ghana or in another country. His response: “You know, I’ve never thought about living in any other country; I think I was born here for a reason- a purpose. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot since I was a child and I have vowed to use my life as an example to my people.” (Do you see what I mean now about him being inspirational?) Speaking with Jorge was very refreshing and it is really nice to have people in my life that are passionate about what they do- whether that’s renewable energy, fashion, music, teaching, etc.. I think that it’s important to find what you love to do and do it. Life can be very complicated at times and nothing is ever clear cut or black and white, but I do think that finding what you are passionate about and pursuing it can be easy; you just have to be willing to try new things and not be afraid to take risks. Along the lines of this inspirational rant on not being afraid to take risk, I’d like to take this opportunity as a segue to bring up this amazing blog post that talks exactly about these topics, called, ‘The Decision Elf’ (https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/40cf0a8919cb). I don’t want to give away too much because it is well worth taking the 15 minutes to read, but here is a brief synopsis of the post: The author begins with an anecdote about how he is living in NYC with $150,000 in debt, renting an apartment for $3,000 a month with exactly $3,000 in his bank account. He is one month away from being penniless and a mere three months away from his company’s funds running completely dry. He then leads into his story about how he got to this point, which revolves around taking out loans to travel the world and being faced with two of the biggest decisions of his life (which I don’t want to give away because then you won’t have any incentive or impetus to read the article for yourself). In making these decisions, he refers to the process of being visited by a ‘decision elf’ (hence the title of the post). Each time, the decision he ultimately makes is incredibly risky and full of uncertainty, but at the end of his entry, the author states that it is always the risk not taken that is more dangerous than the risk taken. I think all of us need to be reminded at times that sometimes playing it safe and sticking with a job that you are unhappy with or whatever the case may be is more detrimental to you than taking a risk and going for what you really want. No one succeeds every time in everything that they do. Failure is part of being a human and is part of life and it’s a good thing because without failing and having to fight for what you really want, would you really fully appreciate it when you finally got it? Anyway, I digress and will continue on with the rest of this post.

After meeting Jorge, I went to the internet café to do some research. While there, this guy, who later introduced himself as Tolu, approached me to ask if I was an American. I told him that I was and he said that he was too; that he was from Oklahoma University and was studying abroad for the year in Ghana. Tolu is actually Ghanaian by birth, but has lived most of his life outside of Ghana. He lived for seven years in the UK before he and his family moved to Texas, where they currently live. When I asked why he was studying in Ghana he told me that he missed it and wanted to come back, so he decided to study here for the year. It sounded, though, that Ghana was not at all as he remembered from his childhood and he was dealing with quite a bit of culture shock. He asked me questions like what I did to prevent myself from getting bored here and if I wished Africa was better (which led into a whole discussion about what exactly he meant by ‘better’ and how I don’t necessarily believe the end goal of development in Ghana, or Africa as a whole for that matter, is to be exactly like the US or Europe, but I won’t get into that here). When I asked about what he does to keep himself occupied, he told me that every two weeks he flies to Accra to go to the clubs and to drink. This made me laugh; here was Tolu, whose motivation for coming to studying in Ghana for the year was essentially to come back to his birthplace, to experience and rediscover his ‘home;’ yet, he was filling his experience with places and activities that simulated his life back home. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against going out for a night on the town- in fact, I think that having a good balance and blowing off steam is important, and that it is also important, in order to feel comfortable, that one incorporates important aspects of their life from back home and who they are with their life abroad. That being said, I don’t think that anyone should go to another country and do those things so much to the extent that they are literally boxing themselves out of experiencing local culture and customs. I don’t mean to sound critical of Tolu; everyone has their own coping mechanisms for culture shock and adjusting. I also don’t mean to make him out as an ignorant American. He is a very nice guy and I enjoyed our conversation and his company. It was just so interesting to me to hear why he came here in the first place and his impressions of Ghana. I am curious to see how his adjustment goes over the rest of his time here.

Wednesday was filled with interviews. I just have to preface these next few paragraphs by saying that it really never ceases to amaze me how much I learn through an hour long discussion with someone working in the water sector and how much these discussions reignite my passion for what I am doing. I’ll also divert to tell an anecdote to explain the ‘coffee with a hint of fish’ portion of the title of this blog post. Each morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is go to the kitchen and boil water to make coffee. This probably is no surprise to anyone. On Wednesday morning, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a metal pot. I should also make it known here before I continue that fish is a staple of the Ghanaian diet. I felt the inside of the pot and could still feel residue from oil used to cook whatever was prepared the night before. Not considering it was probably fish, I ignored this early warning and proceeded to fill the pot with water and put it on fire to boil. Once the water was hot, I went to my room to fix my coffee. Taking my first sip, something tasted off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. A quarter of the way through my coffee I realized that the foreign taste was fish! I smelled the water from the thermos I emptied the boiling water into and sure enough, it smelled like fish; the water had picked up the taste from the residue left in the pot from the night before. I can assure you that the smell or taste of mackerel in the morning, particularly in coffee, is not a pleasant experience. But hey, lesson learned: if a pot feels oily or is used to cook fish, don’t use it to boil water. Anyway, back to the interviews.

My first one was with Stevens Ndebugri, the regional distribution manager at the GWCL. Stevens explained to me that the greater Kumasi area is divided into 12 districts: 8 city and 4 rural. These boundaries are based not on population, but rather, are carved out based on the boundaries of Adum, one of the most densely populated cities in Kumasi. It used to be that district boundaries were based on population, which makes more sense because that system is better suited for meeting the needs of citizens living in the areas, but somewhere along the line, this changed. Each district is assigned a category based on population and the number of household and commercial water connections it has. These categories allow the GWCL to know how much water will need to be provided in the area and are particularly helpful when measuring Key Performance Indicators, such as bill collection and non-revenue water identification. There are two treatment plants that serve the water needs of the areas. The larger one, the Barakesi treatment plant, can produce 136,364m3 of water a day; while the smaller plant, at Obuasi can produce 13,636 m3/day.

 As the distribution manager, Stevens is in charge of facilitating the following tasks: repairing leaks in the existing piped network, connecting new customers to the network (including preparing estimates for how much it will cost for the new connection), monitoring the flow rate of water in the city, managing water pressure, and making sure that work is carried out in the most economical way possible. When asked about some of the challenges he faces in his work, he mentioned logistical problems due to budget constraints. He told me that there are major problems will billing and revenue collection, as well as the government granting the full amount of proposed annual budgets.

I then transitioned the conversation to the distribution network. I asked Stevens if he knew where the piped networks began in the city and where they ended, as a way of beginning to determine the geographical location of some of the communities where tanker services are filling the supply gap. I cannot possibly tell you how excited I got when Stevens’ response to this question was, “Let’s take a trip to the GIS office; we have maps of the distribution network.” I wasn’t just enthusiastic about this because one of my majors was in Geography, but because 1) I wasn’t expecting the office to have a thorough, detailed map of the distribution network, and 2) I definitely wasn’t expecting, with all the talking I hear and reading I do on budget constraints the company faces in its operations, for the GWCL to have a GIS office. The maps I got are amazing and are going to be so helpful in determining communities where I can carry out the fieldwork portion of my project. I then asked Stevens the decision making process for the GWCL in deciding where to establish new connections and expand the network into communities currently off the grid. He told me that the company does a cost-benefit analysis. The GWCL “wants to make money” (direct quote), so the ability of a consumer to pay is taken into consideration. According to Stevens, the government subsidizes the cost of water and consumers currently do not bear the full price burden of water. In Stevens’ opinion, the government’s current external debt (debt acquired through accepting loans and funds from external sources, namely foreign actors) is too high and presents difficulties for GWCL operations because, as mentioned earlier, the GWCL’s budget is approved and partially funded by the government. When the government cannot manage and repay its debts, it affects the money it has available to finance operations and institutions such as the GWCL. When I asked Steven about the tanker trucks and water vendors that are helping fill the supply gap in communities without piped water, he directed me to Scipiou, the district manager of the GWCL East office.

Before heading to the East office, I made the trip to the PURC, which was just up the street from Stevens’ office. I had arranged a meeting with Mashoud, the Regional Manager of the PURC, earlier in the week. My meeting with Mashoud was different than other interviews I have carried out to date. He had just returned from a field visit, so once he arrived, he invited me into his office. His first action was to offer me a seat, followed by grabbing the remote and turning on the television in his office. Though he muted the TV, I noticed his eyes wandering frequently to the screen throughout our discussion. The most entertaining and unexpected, for me at least, portion of the interview occurred when our conversation was interrupted by a phone call about a sheep deal. Whenever I go to talk to an official of the GWCL or PURC, there are frequent interruptions for phone calls, which I understand completely; I mean these guys are professionals, graciously taking time out of their work day to answer my questions, and have work to do, so they need to take phone calls when they receive them. But a call about arranging a sheep for slaughter at a funeral was a new one for me. I was pretty entertained. I mention the TV and the sheep deal not to seem negative about Mashoud or unappreciative of his time, because I’m not bothered by either of these things. Rather,  I share these descriptors to paint a picture of my experience and to demonstrate some of the unplanned occurrences that I feel make daily life for me here so vibrant, fulfilling, and different than my life at home.

I told Mashoud about the nature of my research and that I wanted to ask him about the PURC’s initiative to establish consumer services associations, as well as mechanisms in place to handle complaints from those serviced by tanker trucks not deriving their water from GWCL filling stations. Mashoud told me that the PURC was a young organization (which depends on how you look at it: the PURC was established in 1997; their complaints procedure in 2000; and the initiative that I am investigating- Consumer Services Associations/Committees- in 2001/2002) and that it still has a long way to go to successfully implementing its mandate in this area. When I asked him specifically about Consumer Services Committees, he told me that they were seemingly non-existent; one had been established in Obuasi in 2010, but was facing a lot of challenges due to issues of funding: the five members who sit on the board of the organization are paid a small allowance by the PURC. According to Mashoud, the PURC is having a lot of problems with organizational funding, which is affecting the functioning of the association in Obuasi and the establishment of more in the region. Honestly, I was pretty dumbfounded by this response. I mean I know that funding is a huge challenge faced by the water sector in Ghana, but couldn’t forging productive relationships with local development agencies, such as the District Assembly (DA), help to alleviate this problem? When I posed this question to Mashoud, he said that the DA could absolutely help by assuming the role of acting as watchdogs on behalf of consumer interests, but people are not ready to make such sacrifices. When I asked for clarification, he explained to me that in the past, in fact just recently, the PURC held a workshop, which members of the DA attended. The workshop had all of the perks of a typical conference: snacks, coffee, tea and lunch were provided. Yet, at the end of the workshop, numerous District Assemblymen approached him to be paid for attending. I believe their motive was that attending the workshop should count as a work day since they were carrying out their duty as a representative of the people by being there, but how could the PURC possibly afford to pay everyone? And, the question beckons, should they? Should representatives expect to be paid for workshops that are going to help develop their professional capacity to better serve their constituents and improve water services to their communities? When I asked Mashoud about the PURC’s relationship with tanker associations in the area, he told me that their engagement with these providers has declined since 2008 due to different priorities. At the end of the interview, Mashoud brought up Obama and asked if I had seen the speech he gave at Mandela’s funeral; I told him I had not (I am sure that is going to make Paul Hoffman cringe when he reads this considering our excursion together to South Africa; admittedly, I have not been as much of a news junkie as usual). Mashoud then mentioned his surprise at the audience’s reaction, or lack thereof, to what he considered a very motivational and eloquent speech by Obama. This sent us into a discussion about politics in America and the use of power by leaders around the world. Mashoud told me he couldn’t understand why there are people with the means to create change and have a positive impact on the world, but instead choose to spend their money on having five houses in three different countries, fancy cars and things to demonstrate their economic status. He then looked at me and said, “I mean look at you. Here you are with little means, but are still using your passion to try to cause a positive change in your own way.” He brought up the example of Mandela and how he used his life to create a major change in the world and questioned why more ‘big men’ didn’t follow his example. It was yet another inspirational end to a conversation.

After meeting with Mashoud, I made my way to the GWCL East office to meet with Scipiou and talk with him about tanker trucks and different associations that fill at GWCL stations and operate in the area. He told me that tankers are privately owned and operated and that some opt to join associations. Luckily, there were some guys who drove some of the trucks at the office, so I got to talk to them about some of the areas where they deliver water. Knowing that there is no better way to learn than by doing, I then asked if I could join them on their route to deliver water the following day and received the answer, “Of course you can! You just come tomorrow morning.”

So that’s what I did. The following morning I went back to the East office and joined Kwabena and Iman, who operate their own tanker service, on their route for the day. Iman, the owner of the truck, has been in the business for about 6 years now. Our first stop was to go to the university to fill three water tanks on the engineering campus. When I was talking to one of the guys there who works as a member of the cleaning service, he told me that apparently water hasn’t flowed to that part of campus for the past week and the borehole is broken. He was less than impressed by GWCL services and didn’t have very positive things to say about the company.

On the way to campus, I asked Iman how he determines the price that he charges consumers for water. Because they drive literally all over the area and have to go back to the filling station to refill multiple times a day, fuel is a heavy driver of price. On average, Iman told me that he charges GHC 90 (approx.. $45) for 1,000 gallons of water; GHC 120 ($60) for 1,500 gallons of water; and GHC 140 for 2,000 gallons of water. However, I learned through the course of the day, that fuel is just one part of the equation when determining price. Iman also considers how easy the job is and sometimes he will just base the price off of how he feels it should be (what that exactly means, I don’t really know). Iman also told me that he pays the GWCL GHC 8 per 1,000 gallons of water to fill at their station. In other words, each time Iman fills the truck, he pays GHC 24 ($12) to fill his 3,000-gallon tank completely.

When we arrived on campus, Kwabena parked the truck and both men went through the process of unrolling the hoses, which they then connected to a tube that would pump water from the tank, through the hose and into the polytank. I didn’t know before watching the process that the tanks are equipped with a motor that mechanizes the pumping process. This makes sense though because a lot of the tanks that they are filling are either on rooftaps or elevation stands to create the pressure needed to flow through pipes. I noticed that there is a pretty good amount of water lost through the process of transferring water from the tank to the final destination. The connection between the hoses wasn’t a perfect fit, so a lot of water was lost that way. Also, there would be times when Kwabena would say the polytank was full, but Iman wouldn’t be able to close the tap fast enough, and the tank would overflow. Another issue I noticed was that in terms of preserving quality of the water, the polytanks of the consumer that are being filled don’t always look as though they’ve been cleaned. For instance, when we were on campus, I climbed to the roof with Kwabena to watch as he filled the polytanks there and when I looked in the tank, I saw some debris floating around. I should have asked when the last time they cleaned the tank was, but I didn’t and it looked as though it could stand to be washed out.

After filling the tanks at KNUST and collecting the payment, we went back to the filling station before heading to our next two stops: Kyere-Truba and Antoa. Both of these communities are much more off the beaten path and harder to get to than KNUST and neither has piped water connections. The roads going to Truba and Antoa are unpaved, dirt roads and the ride was quite bumpy. There were also a few inclines and declines and I thought on more than one occasion that the truck was going to tip over when we were driving through them.

Truba is a newly established residential area. In fact, we delivered water to a construction site. The homes built and being built in the area are really big and I think it safe to assume that the area was being built up to cater to more middle to upper class Ghanaians. In Antoa, we delivered water to a polytank of a home and a construction site within a schoolyard. Truba and Antoa are located in dense, lush forest and it was a beautiful, albeit bumpy, ride.

As you can see, things are going really well here and I am making great progress with my research. I will be in Kumasi until Sunday, then will travel to Accra for some meetings and to finalize travel plans for Brent and I. Just one more week until he comes; I would disclose what I have planned for us, but it’s supposed to be a surprise, so you’ll have to read the next post to hear all about our adventures!

Until next time,

Chelsea

"The first week back in Accra: Research briefing at USAID and my first set of interviews"

The first two days of being back were more of an adjustment than I was expecting. I was really jetlagged and missed my family and friends at home, but I’ve gotten back into the swing of things here. Monday, I went to the Embassy to apply for my residency permit. I am thrilled that I get to call myself a legal resident of Ghana in a few weeks, once my paper work comes through. Not that I am an illegal resident now, but once my permit is approved, I will have an ID card and everything. Le-git.

After applying for my permit, I spent the rest of Monday working on a powerpoint presentation. In one of my previous blog posts, I wrote about a site visit I went to with Global Communities. USAID is one of the funders of the project I went to see, so many people from the USAID office in Ghana and in Washington came to the visit as well. I met Andy Karas, the Deputy Director of the USAID mission to West Africa and have kept in touch with him since. He extended me the opportunity to come and brief staff members at the USAID office on my project and the research I have done to date. My presentation was scheduled for Wednesday, so I spent Monday and Tuesday putting together a powerpoint for it. The presentation went well. In addition to briefing the team on my project, I had been asked to comment on the impacts of tariff increases on the urban poor. This definitely wasn’t something I had any prior knowledge of other than what I have heard in passing, so I looked up some of the tariff proposals from the electricity and water companies in Ghana and was pretty shocked by what I found. In Ghana, there is an agency called the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, or the PURC. Essentially, the PURC is tasked with regulating and monitoring utility service providers to protect consumer interests. They have other functions, which I will highlight later in this post, but for all intents and purposes of this topic, their role will remain just as their name suggests: a utility regulator. All proposals for tariffs and tariff increases must be approved by the PURC before they can go into effect. This year, the electricity and urban water companies proposed tariff increases. For example, the Volta River Authority (VRA), one of the electricity companies of Ghana, proposed tariff increases of 128%. The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), the company in charge of urban water provision, proposed an increase of 112%. It is worth noting, however, that the PURC only approved an increase of 52% in GWCL water tariffs. While there are some differences in rationale of the proposed increases of the Volta River Authority and the Ghana Water Company Limited, both institutions highlighted the inflation/the devaluation of the Cedi (Ghana’s currency) as a driving factor. Since water is my area of interest, I’ll focus predominantly on the GWCL proposed tariff increase. In addition to inflation, the GWCL also proposed an increase in tariffs as a way to elevate revenue generation, which would thereby be used to increase operational efficiency and invest in maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure. In other words, what all of this jargon is saying is that the GWCL is going to collect more money with the intentions of using that money to ensure that water access to customers in the urban sphere have more reliable access to water. At present, most of the country is on a rationing system because the current production capacity does not meet demand. The latest figures released by the GWCL, which was presented via a powerpoint at the 4^th Ghana Water Forum, showed the average daily water production is .708Mm³. However, the estimated Aggregate Demand (from Domestic, Commercial, and Industrial consumers) is 1.13Mm³. To put this into perspective, the amount of water that needs to be generated to meet current demand, but cannot be generated is more than half of current daily water production. With population growth and competing water demands between agriculture, households, industry and other generators of economic growth in Ghana, the fact that current capacity is already so hampered is quite a daunting reality. Moreover, I read an article just today detailing the findings of a study carried out by the Water Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-WRI). The study found that Ghana will see a general reduction in annual river flows of 15-20% by 2020 and 30-40% by 2050.[1] Recharge of groundwater will reduce between 5-22% by 2020 and 30-40% in 2050; amidst these reductions in availability of supply, the demand for water for irrigation purposes will increase by 40-150% in 2020 and 150-1200% by 2050.[2] When one considers that surface sources are the main source of water for most rural dwellers in the country and the national water strategy pushes for the development of boreholes and other technologies for groundwater extraction as a means of improving access to water in the country, these statistics are, for lack of a better term, distressing.  To cope with present scarcity and the shortfall in supply, the GWCL services customers on a rationing schedule. For example, water will flow through the pipes in Community ‘A’ on Monday and Wednesday; Community ‘B’ on Tuesday and Friday; Community ‘C’ on Thursday and Saturday, etc., etc. In theory, this is supposed to be an effective system (well as effective as it can be given the situation) because if a community knows when the water will flow, then that gives them time to collect enough water to store it for use on the days that the water doesn’t flow. However, today I learned through interviewing the water director at the PURC, that the GWCL isn’t doing a good job of making the rationing schedule known to the public, to the extent that people do not know when the water will and will not flow. Financially speaking, it would appear that tariff increases would do a lot to fix this problem. Currently, GWCL funds are derived through the following means: the largest portion, $30 million, comes from external funders; $2 million is provided through the government (which is reportedly never released on time to the company); and $3 million is generated internally (revenue collection by the GWCL, etc.)[3] Official estimates from the GWCL state that the company needs $100 million (US currency, not cedi) a year in infrastructure investment in order to achieve Millennium Development Goal targets of 85% improved access to water countrywide.[4] A total of $717 million is estimated to be needed to increase urban coverage to 100% by 2025.[5] If one looks merely at the economics of the situation, then, yes, increasing existing tariffs as a means of revenue generation for the company, which could then be reinvested into the country’s infrastructure, would improve the services received by customers currently. However, pure economics fails to consider operational inefficiencies due to mismanagement of funds and poor performance on behalf of employees. There are numerous problems with the performance of the company in terms of revenue collection, such as not collecting revenue on time (not always for lack of payment by consumers, but for the lack of employees going and collecting it or charging consumers incorrectly). Personally, I, and many other people I talk to working in the water sector, don’t think tariff increases are going to solve the problems faced by neither the GWCL, to improve urban water service, nor consumers. Until GWCL improves upon the bureaucratic barriers that are impeding water delivery and uses the money that is collected through revenue in existing tariff structures for wise investments, then I hardly doubt throwing more money at the problem is going to fix it.

 In my research on tariff adjustments, I learned that when Ghana was restructuring its water sector in the late 1980s, the government approved a formula for an annual tariff adjustment that would resolve some of these problems. However, the formula was never applied due to political reasons and over the years, tariff increases have been ineffective because they never result in the revenue needed to remedy the problems. I think that the original reformed proposal has potential. I hesitate to call it the end all be all solution to the problem because for one, the formula would need to ensure that increases were adjusted for inflation. Secondly, the GWCL would have to show that they were reforming institutional impediments that are negatively affecting services to citizens. A practical way to begin the process of such reforms is to first identify the problems, which has been done by numerous policy documents and agencies already, from the consumer level. Why not administer a survey amidst GWCL customers where they can rate their current service level? Global Communities employed such methods through the use of a community score card and found it quite useful for evaluating existing projects and directing future projects. I hardly think that consumers would be happy to have an increase in the amount of money that they pay for their service when (1) their wages are not also rising and (2) the level of their service delivery remains poor. I am interested to learn more about the increases in tariffs and how they end up impacting consumers while I am in Ghana. I anticipate that there is the potential for my research to uncover how tariff increases on GWCL supplied water, mainly that which is distributed through tanker trucks and other water service vendors, is impacting the population I will be working with.

So after briefing the team on my research to date and tariff increases, I took some time for comments and questions at the end. The comments that were made were in regards to looking at non-revenue water and GWCL efforts, a gender perspective on water access and different coping strategies, as well as the roles and functions of CONIWAS, a coalition of national and international organizations working in Ghana. All of these are great suggestions and I will consider as many of them as possible, but the honest truth is that there are so many issues that deserve investigation, both in the urban and rural spheres of the water sector in Ghana, but I can only do so much in the limited time that I am here.

The following day, which was on Thursday, I went to the PURC office in Accra to conduct some interviews. I had met Francis, who is a complaints officer at the PURC, at the Water Forum in October, so I called him and he graciously agreed to meet with me. As a complaints officer, Francis essentially acts as a liaison between urban consumers dissatisfied with their service and the GWCL.  As I was learning of the organization of the PURC and the process of filing and dealing with consumer complaints, I began to realize that this was just the mere beginning of unraveling a very complicated procedure. To begin, the PURC differentiates between consumers and customers. Everyone is a consumer, but not everyone is considered a customer. A customer is someone with a GWCL connection, which also means that they have to have titles to the building or home where the piped network in question is. Customers also have to have a water meter, which measures volumetric usage of water and is used to determine billing amounts. Francis only deals with complaints lodged by individuals who fit the description of a ‘customer.’

Essentially, as a utilities regulator, the PURC is only mandated to regulated services of urban customers, which boils down to those connected to the GWCL piped water networks in the city. When I learned this, I asked Francis what happens to those water consumers whose main supply is provided through secondary and tertiary providers, such as water vendors and tanker trucks. Francis told me that there is another department at the PURC that deals with such problems, which led me to my second interview that day, but more on that later. Continuing with our interview, I asked Francis about the general procedure for lodging a complaint. To file a complaint about water service, a customer can either call, write to, or walk in to the PURC office. They then provide their basic contact information and details of the problem. From there, the process of how the problem is resolved, and how quickly it is resolved for that matter, depends on the nature of the issue. The PURC will first contact the GWCL to make them aware of the issue, then a formal complaint will be lodged. When I asked Francis the average amount of time it takes to settle a dispute, he told me roughly 1 to 2 months. However, under government law, disputes are supposed to be settled in no more than 5 working days from the time they are lodged by a customer or the PURC on behalf of the customer. Clearly, there is something wrong with this picture. On the upside, the GWCL cannot disconnect a customer’s water connection while the dispute is in the process of being resolved. Moreover, if a customer is dissatisfied with the response of a service provider or how they propose to settle a dispute, they have the right to reject this response and reinstate the process from the beginning, BUT, the customer must state the reasons for their rejection of the proposed solution. I then proceeded to ask Francis about some of the most common challenges or complaints that consumers approach him about. He listed the following:

·      GWCL Officers will bill a customer for more than the meter states the customer has actually consumed

·      The GWCL will disconnect customers, claiming that they have not paid their bill, when in fact the consumer has paid

·      The GWCL will present customers with a bill for the year, rather than on a monthly basis (monthly billing is supposed to be the standard operating procedure). This is problematic because when a consumer is billed for the year, rather than on the monthly cycle, they are charged using both block tariffs, and therefore have to pay more. According to Francis, the current tariff structure is as such: a consumer pays a fixed price for consumption of water between 0-20,000 liters; there is then a different price fixed for water consumed that is 20,000 liters and above. In one year a household is obviously going to use more water than they use in a month, so the amount that they are charged does not reflect a fair price under existing tariff structures.

When I heard about these problems, I was in shock. I mean I have read policy documents and other academic reports detailing the inefficiency of revenue collection by the GWCL, but I have never heard of these issues. It is completely unjust. Moreover, the amount of time it takes to fix any dispute is just unacceptable. Allow me to provide an anecdote to illustrate my case in point. When speaking with Francis, he procured the documents of a complaint that was lodged recently by a customer. In late September, on the 26^th to be exact, a customer who receives water through the GWCL in Accra East came to lodge a complaint. At the time the complaint was made, the water had not flowed through the pipes in the man’s homes for three weeks. In the document, the PURC stated that an inspections officer from the PURC went to the home of the man to investigate the problem. The inspection was made in early November; by mid-November, the problem was still not fixed. The customer, who at the time was in China on business, made a call to the PURC from China to complain that his family at his estate in Ghana were still not receiving water. The day prior to my interview with Francis, which was December 4^th, the man requested the GWCL send an investigations officer because his tap still had not produced water. Three months after the original complaint was lodged, the man and his family still did not have water in their home. The questions in my mind are many about how this could possibly be the case, but the one I would like to raise here is the following: now this is an assumption of the man’s socio-economic status based on the fact that he was in China on business and had the means to place an international call, first to his family to check on the status of the problem, then to the PURC to lodge another complaint from China, but I find it a safe one to make considering the average Ghanaian does not travel abroad frequently for business, nor tourism: if service delivery is so fickle in the home of a middle to upper class Ghanaian, living in the capital, and the resolution of the problem takes so long, how different is this same situation in communities where the average per capita income is lower? I mean I think everyone knows the answer to this (it’s a worse situation), but the question beckons: how much of the way the current system functions is due to considerations of political economy (political allegiance to the party in power ensures water access to a specific area; areas closer to government officials and governmental residential areas receive better water services than others, etc..) rather than mere socio-economic conditions of an area? How and where do local governance structures fit in to the picture? Along these same lines, how much do these factors impact the rationing schedule I mentioned earlier in this post and its publication to the beneficiary communities?

My interview with Francis was very helpful and I felt that I learned more from the hour or so that I spoke with him, perhaps than I had over the course of the few weeks I have been sporadically reading policies. The information I gathered from Francis then led me to meet Kwabena, who is the water manager at the PURC. I wanted to follow up with Kwabena about the gap revealed by Francis in managing complaints procedures; while Francis and his team address concerns of urban consumers receiving services through GWCL piped networks, who is addressing the concerns of those outside of this purview? To my understanding, and indeed the whole premise of my Fulbright proposal, it is consumer associations who are tasked with this, but so far, these groups had not been mentioned in any discussions I had with Francis or other water sector professionals. I was hoping Kwabena would be able to resolve my confusion.

When I asked Kwabena about the consumer associations that were supposedly established by the PURC, I learned the following: at the PURC level, there is the Consumer Services Directorate, which was technically the department where Francis works. Then, at the district, regional, and community level, there are smaller, more localized consumer services associations. Kwabena then told me that for those consumers who rely on tanker trucks, water vendors and other tertiary service providers, there are different organizations tasked to deal with their complaints. If a customer has a problem with water from a sachet or a bottle, they lodge a complaint with the Food and Drugs Authority. This is because all water that is packaged is supposed to adhere to quality standards under the Ghana Standards Authority and once water is packaged, it falls under regulation of the Food and Drugs Authority. Those who have complaints about their water from tanker services can go to the PURC to complain. However there is a Catch-22 to this: the PURC only handles complaints from those whose water comes from a tanker truck where the tanker has derived the water from a GWCL filling station. For those who receive water from a tanker truck that uses a source outside of GWCL filling stations, there is no person or organization within the PURC that handles these complaints. Essentially, these consumers are on their own. Kwabena told me that this is because the PURC does not regulate tanker trucks. While the PURC has established tanker truck guidelines, which regulate water quality only, there are so many tanker trucks that are filling the supply gap in Ghana that they are difficult to regulate. Quality regulations focus on the cleanliness of the tank the water is being transported in and whether the vehicle is appropriate for transportation. There are no regulations in place for tariff and pricing schemes because much of the price that is charged is calculated based on the distance the water must be transported from source to the customer. As the PURC doesn’t trace the water to its source if it is not from a GWCL filling station, regulating the price of water by these tankers just wouldn’t be possible. The PURC tries to encourage trucks to join tanker associations to make regulation easier and more feasible, yet membership in such associations is purely optional, not mandated, so regulation cannot be guaranteed. Kwabena also told me that it is also difficult to regulate tankers outside of the GWCL network because many people are drilling their own boreholes, pumping water from the borehole to tanks, then distributing this water to consumers outside of the GWCL network. This is not only disturbing from regulation and consumer services standpoints, but also from a management standpoint. Note the article previously mentioned in the article. There are no restrictions or limits on the amount of water that can be pumped from these boreholes. Assuming that they are high-yielding, which is a common challenge for water provision through the use of boreholes in Ghana, then the user will need to be frugal with the rate at which he derives water from the borehole in order to prevent the depletion of groundwater and ensure a sustainable supply of water.

After speaking with Kwabena and Francis, I feel I have a lot more clarification of the problem which I am investigating and it made me that much more eager to schedule more interviews and read more policies.

After a productive two days, Friday was Farmer’s Day, a national holiday, so I decided to take the day to take an art lesson and visit a friend. The following day I caught up with Bri, who works for CWS. I hadn’t seen her since I was in Ghana last December, so it was great to get to get caught up with everything that has been going on in each others’ lives over the past year.

This week I am in Kumasi. I have two interviews scheduled with people working in the GWCL and PURC here. I am also going through the process of finalizing my accommodation for next month, as well as looking into Twi lessons, French lessons, art classes, and the best way to go about hiring a translator once I get into the field work portion of my research. It is going to be quite a busy week, but Brent will be here on the 21st and we will be touring the country for the ten days that he is here, so I am looking forward to it.

That’s the short of things here. Until next time,

Chelsea

---

[1] Awal, Mohammed. “Ghana: River Level in Ghana to Reduce in 2020.” Allafrica.com/stories/201312010135.html. 29 November 2013.

[2] Ibid.

[3] www.gwcl.gh.com

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

“From Ghana to America, then back again: Dreaded Charter Flights and The Rhodes Interview”

Hello family, friends and fellow blog followers,

Sorry it has been so long since my last post; these past few weeks have been quite a whirlwind.

Here is a quick recap:

As I think many of you know, over the course of the summer, I was busy working on applications for the Marshall and Rhodes Scholarships. Both of these scholarships are nationally competitive and fund up to 2 years of graduate study in the UK. (More in-depth information for the scholarships can be found here: http://www.rhodesscholar.org/; http://www.marshallscholarship.org/) The process of applying is as such: you spend your summer writing, re-writing, (and re-writing some more) personal statements and proposals for programs of study, procuring letters of recommendation (3 for Marshall; 8 for Rhodes), and going through university interviews to get institutional endorsement. Then, the application is submitted by October 1^st. Candidates who pass through the initial application screening by the committee are then invited for an interview. In early November, I was notified that I had not been selected as a candidate to interview for the Marshall Scholarship, but was invited to interview for the Rhodes Scholarship. I could not interview via skype or phone call, so that meant that I needed to fly from Ghana back to the US. Luckily, West Virginia University paid my travel expenses because it is such a huge honor for the university to have a Rhodes finalist; WVU hasn’t had a winner or a finalist for the Rhodes in 18 years- since Carolyn Conner Seepersad won the scholarship in 1995. So, two weeks, one computer hard drive crash, many hours spent reading in the library, numerous emails to the ASPIRE office of WVU to make travel arrangements, and two flights (one of which was a charter flight from JFK to BWI that I honestly, all drama aside, thought was going to crash) later, I arrived in Baltimore, Maryland on November 16^th. I was met by my dad and Brent, as well as a colder climate than Ghana. Straight from the airport, we went to my grandparents’ house for lunch, then my grandmother and I took off to the mall to go shopping for clothes I would need for the cocktail party and my interview (both are part of the interview process for Rhodes). I am proud to say we found a blazer, cocktail dress, and shoes in only an hour; I repeat: in one hour. Any girl, and to prevent from being deemed sexist, any guy who shops a lot, will tell you that finding dress for a formal event in an hour is a feat; yet alone the shoes and jacket to go with it. I was also elated because I absolutely loathe shopping and, admittedly, was ready to leave the moment we parked the car.

I stayed in Maryland through the weekend, then on Monday, my brother, Jon, chauffeured me to Dulles airport to catch a flight to Morgantown, where I would be until Thursday for interview preparation. For all of you northeasterners and others who have traveled via Dulles airport, you know how far removed and how much of a genuine pain in the ass it is to get there. My flight wasn’t until the afternoon, but Jon and I left mid-morning to make sure that we had plenty of time to get there; it’s a good thing we did because we definitely got a bit lost and had to do about 20 minutes worth of back tracking once we figured out we had deviated from the correct course. I arrived an hour before my flight (literally, right when I needed to) and luckily, there wasn’t a lot of people there, so I made it through security and to my gate with plenty of time until my flight left. I took a charter flight from Dulles to Morgantown. If I never have that experience ever again in my life, I will absolutely be O.K. with that. The plane was small and there were only about 12 passengers. I’d like to take a minute to pause and deviate from my line of thought to pose the question of whether, economically, it even makes any sense to have such a small flight, but I will refrain from going any further than that. To me the whole concept of flying doesn’t make sense: anything that heavy should not be able to fly, yet alone stay in the air once in flight. When you fly you really are putting your life and your faith in fate (and physics, aerodynamics, engineering, some other technical subjects I know nothing about, and a pilot who (hopefully) went to a great flight school, of course). Nothing will remind you of that more than a small charter plane fighting its way through wind gusts (or a small charter plane with a pilot who likes to make the descent suddenly, rather than gradually- as was the case with my flight from New York to Baltimore), which was exactly the situation I was in. I was extremely happy and thankful when we arrived at the Morgantown Regional Airport safely. I had to refrain from kissing the ground. Candidly, I don’t pray nearly as often as I should, but God definitely heard from me on the five flights I ended up taking over the two weeks I was home.    

For those who don’t frequent the Morgantown airport, I have to take a line or two to describe it: The smallest airport on Earth. There are no terminals; passengers disembark the plane at a tarmac, then walk to the building, where immediately to the right of the entrance is the mechanized belt for baggage claim, straight ahead is the ‘arrivals hall’ and to the left is the exit of the building. Two positives: you definitely don’t need to worry about getting lost/being unable to find whoever is meeting you at the airport, and you don’t have to think twice about whether your luggage will arrive.

Cate, who works in the ASPIRE Office at WVU and helped me throughout the application process for Rhodes and Marshall, met me at the airport and took me to Hotel Morgan, my home for the next three nights. The rest of the week was filled with Skype/phone calls to past Rhodes scholars (including Senator Hoylman of New York who was a Rhodes Scholar from WVU in the 80’s and Dr. Seepersad who is now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin) to solicit their advice, mock interviews with professors of different subjects at WVU to simulate and prepare me for the interview I would have that Saturday, a mock cocktail party to prepare me for the one I would attend that Friday, advisor meetings and other meetings with various faculty of the university, including the Provost, the Dean of Eberly College, and the Director of Athletics, who was also a Rhodes finalist from WVU in the 1980’s. I also got to catch up with a few friends (unfortunately not everyone I was hoping to see), which was great. It was a busy week and I was pretty exhausted by the end of it.

Thursday afternoon I left from Morgantown, on yet another charter flight. We first went to Clarksburg to pick up more passengers before heading to Dulles. From Dulles I took another flight to Philadelphia, where the cocktail party and interview would take place. From the airport I hopped on a train to the Radnor Hotel, which, yes, was almost as pretentious as it sounds, but I was more than happy and willing to be pampered with such luxurious accommodation. I arrived around 9:00 PM and had a message with a phone number to call. It turns out Alec, one of the other candidates left his number for other Rhodes candidates so we could all meet before the process and have a drink together. I thought this was really thoughtful and nice of him. So after dropping my bags in my room, I went to the hotel’s restaurant to meet Alec and Ryan. They are both incredible and friendly people. Ryan, 24, is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (WVU’s rival, ironically enough). He is very interested in community development, peace and conflict resolution, youth engagement and service learning, and has traveled to Africa- including Ghana, so we had a lot in common. Currently, he runs an office at Pitt to connect students with different organizations in the community as a way of incorporating service learning and civic responsibility in the experience of university students. When the New Year begins, he will spend 5 months as a Congressional fellow. Alec is a senior at the Naval Academy. He plays on the Academy’s football team and is involved in neuroscience research with Johns Hopkins University. At the cocktail party the following evening, I met the other eleven candidates for the scholarship, all of whom were amazing, intelligent, and humble people. There were four women (myself included) and the rest were men. With the exception of Alec, who was proposing to study Biomedical Engineering at Oxford, all of us were hoping to pursue social science programs. Some that I remember were Psychology and Theology, Refugee and Population Studies, East Asian Studies, Government and Politics, Languages and Literature, and Public Policy. Schools that were represented include: University of Pittsburgh, Stanford, Harvard, Swarthmore, University of Virginia, Villanova University, New York University (the guy who represented NYU attended their campus in Dubai, which I thought was very interesting), University of Chicago, the Naval Academy, and Weslyan University. There were others, but I can’t remember them all. I also met the 6 judges who were all former Rhodes Scholars, from different walks of life. The District Secretary, who is one of the judges, but from my understanding doesn’t have a vote, was a professor of English at Haverford College, which is where the interviews were held. Then, there was a woman who is a researcher and developmental economist at the World Bank, with a specialty in African development. There was a gentleman who is a professor of finance and economics at the University of Maryland in College Park; another man did something with finance, markets and sustainability (it was very unclear to me what his job title was) in New York- what I do know for sure is that he did his thesis work at Oxford on social perspectives of gay marriage from 2002-2005. The third judge was, and I promise you I am not making this up, the former Director of National Security under the Obama Administration, Admiral Blair. The sixth judge was a recent graduate of geochemistry at Oxford. She is now doing a PhD at Princeton (I think that’s the right Ivy League) studying sea salt as a way of reconstructing the climate record over the past million years. I was so excited to be in a room with so many intelligent people with such fascinating backgrounds and interests. I have to admit though, I did walk out of the cocktail party feeling a little bit of intimidation and anxiety about the following day. It wasn’t because I felt I didn’t measure up to the other candidates or anything like that; in fact, I felt very in my element because everyone had their own interests and had exceled because they were passionate about what they did and sought opportunities to pursue whatever it was they were into. I was more intimidated by the judges: I mean seriously people, can anyone reading this honestly tell me that they wouldn’t be intimidated to be interviewed by not only 6 adults who are highly respected in their fields, but who are Rhodes Scholars and have obtained positions in agencies like the World Bank or held posts as the freaking Director of National Security of the entire country? I know people are just people, but let’s face it: accolades, accomplishments, titles, awards- however you want to call it- can be intimidating. I was also anxious because there is no way of knowing what kinds of questions they would ask me or on which topics. Literally, anything is fair game for the interview. So it’s a bit difficult to feel prepared going in to that type of atmosphere. I did take some small comfort, though, in knowing that the 11 other people around me were probably also feeling the same emotions.

The cocktail party was a lot more laid back and intimate than I anticipated. The party was held in the lobby of one of the buildings on campus. There were hors d’oeuvres and non-alcoholic drinks, which surprised me because one of the things that I read in articles of blogs from past finalists was how imperative it was to only have one drink and to sip it slowly (sorry to be blunt, but DUH. Rule #1 in any situation: don’t go to a formal social setting, especially where you are making your first impression, and get drunk.); then there are always the discussions fellowship advisors have about whether to drink or not. It’s all a blend of opinions based on what is and isn’t proper etiquette that can cause candidates extra, unnecessary anxiety in my opinion. So it was nice that there wasn’t alcohol there because it really made it a no-brainer. We all mingled and got to know each other, as well as the judges better, then Laura, the District Secretary, made an announcement about what to expect with the interview and selection process the following day. Everyone would pick an interview time slot at the end of the evening for the following day. Interviews would begin at 8:00 AM, last about twenty minutes, and end around 1:20 PM. There was a potential for people to be called back for a second interview if the judges felt they needed clarification on something from the initial interview, if they felt they focused on one topic too long and didn’t get to ask a candidate about anything else, or if they were trying to decide between candidates. Really, the judges could call someone back for a second interview at their discretion and just because one was or wasn’t called back for a second interview didn’t mean that they were or weren’t selected to receive the scholarship. So when the cocktail party came to a close, we all drew times and for those of us staying at the Radnor, went back and grabbed some food.

My interview was slated for 10:05 AM, which I was really happy about. While I was still in Ghana trying to prepare for my interview, one of my advisors had sent me a horde of, well maybe a horde is a bit dramatic, but she sent me a lot of articles written by past candidates on their experiences. Some of them contained horror stories about how important the time of the interview is and how much it impacts the final decision: too early and the judges will forget you, too far into the process, they will have already made up their minds or be too exhausted to be able to fully consider you. I don’t know if any of this holds any truth- my guess is that it’s a load of shit (sorry to not be more politically correct) that comes from people being nervous or making excuses for a bad interview- but in any case it was definitely in the back of my mind and I felt relieved to have such a perfect time.

When I got to the building on campus where the interviews were being held, there was a room where we could all wait until our interviews. I’m glad I didn’t get there much more than 30 minutes early because you could just tell people who were waiting for their interviews were nervous and some who were still there and had already had their interviews were going through what they did wrong or could have done better. Not the best vibe to keep the nerves down, so I called Courtney to catch up with her, and I was really happy that my dad and Brent, who drove all the way up to Philly to support me, made it there before my interview, so I got to spend a little bit of time with them beforehand.

Walking in to the interview, I wasn’t really nervous, well at least I wasn’t anywhere near as nervous as I thought I was going to be. I felt quite calm and collected. I think by that point I knew I was as prepared as I could be. Getting to meet the judges the night before, while it was a little intimidating, also put me at ease because I wasn’t walking into a room of complete strangers. So on to the how the interview went. Let me preface this by saying there really is no way to prepare for a Rhodes interview; the best advice I received prior to my interview turned out to be right on point: the interview is not a question and answer session; it is not a test to see how much you know or don’t know about the world or your proposed area of study; rather, it is a chance for the committee to see how you think, how you arrive at a solution when a difficult question that will test not only your knowledge, but your ethics, is posed, and how you react when you have absolutely no idea about a topic you are asked. This much was made apparent with the first question I was asked by the developmental economist from the World Bank: “You are in a position where you are in charge of managing water resources of a country. Resources are scarce and you have to decide who gets water and who doesn’t. What do you do and how do you do it?” I wish I could watch a video tape of my interview because I know that I fumbled my way through that answer. I mean, at the age of 22, coming from a position where even when I have lived in Africa, I have always had the privilege of having access to potable water, how could I possibly have a good answer to that? Granted, I have had a glimpse of coping mechanisms in times of scarcity at the community level, but I truly believe that no matter how many years I work in places like Ghana, no matter the level of education I attain, no matter how much overall experience I have, I will never understand what it is like to live in conditions of scarcity and how to make difficult decisions about how best to allocate scarce resources until I actually live in those conditions. To illustrate my point: I am reading currently reading, Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, by Brian Fagan. He opens the book with a personal anecdote about trekking through the Kalahari Desert with three San hunters on a hot morning at the end of the dry season. As he succumbs to the heat, taking regular pauses from their expedition to take swigs from his water bottle, he is amazed at the seeming lack of thirst or fatigue of his fellow hunters. Unbothered by the searing sun, they continue on, without faltering, further into the desert. When they come to a dry watercourse and a group of trees “that cast the only shade for miles around in the seemingly waterless landscape,” one of the hunters thrusts his wooding digging stick into the soil, his efforts producing a puddle of potable water. Drinking from this miraculous oasis, discovered only because the San hunter had a knowledge of his environment and how to survive in such extremes, passed from generation to generation, Fagan writes that he has, “never felt such a close, sensuous connection with the most vital elixir of life.” This moment was a defining one for him that not only led him to realize the significance of water, but led to his interest in human relationships with water throughout time. It is this type of situation experienced by Fagan and his subsequent revelation, to which I refer when I state my conviction that unless or until I have such an experience- and it doesn’t even have to be in Africa; there are circumstances such as those encountered by Fagan, all over the world, including the United States-that I can be able to have an idea of how to answer such a question intelligently.

 From there, questions involved the same theme, of winners and losers, but on the topic of climate change. Then, the Admiral changed the subject from managing scarce resources and climate change to education and my impressions of the education system in the United States. This then led to the question: “So you have to figure out a way to teach climate change in schools. What are four components of the educational plan you would devise to teach the subject?” I got to the second pillar of my plan: teaching both sides of the climate change argument, before I was then asked a set of rapid questions that included, “What do you mean both sides of the debate?” “Are you implying climate change isn’t real or that people don’t believe it’s happening?” “Should both arguments be taught with equal weight?” “What science exists to refute climate change?” After that discussion, the questions went back to the role that water plays in markets and vice versa, before ending with a question about whether we should institute a population policy as a way of effectively managing our water resources (the only question, might I add, that I was actually pleased with my answer). The very last question I was asked was this, “Did you have any questions that you were expecting or hoping the committee to ask you?” My mind just blanked. What I should have said was, “I would like you to ask me why I want to go to Oxford on the Rhodes Scholarship.” Here’s what I actually said, “Um, what I do with my free time?” (and, unfortunately, the inflection is no mistake in that sentence;) I later kicked myself a little for that one and hoped they would call me back for a second interview, but hey, as they say, “hindsight is always 20/20,” and in all honesty, I believe everything happens for a reason so the Rhodes just wasn’t meant to happen for me right now. After the last candidate had her interview, we had a break until 2:30PM (roughly an hour), at which time we would have to reconvene so the judges could come and call back anyone for a second interview, if they selected anyone at all. So by 2:15, everyone was back in the holding room, anxiously awaiting in expectation for the District Secretary to walk into the room to announce candidates for second interviews. When 2:45 came around and there was no sight of the judges, we decided to watch Pirates of the Caribbean to keep us occupied and try to keep us from being nervous. Yeah, that didn’t work. Three o’clock came and went; 3:15, 3:20, 3:25. At the cost of sounding dramatic, minutes really did feel like hours in that room. It was awful. Then, at 3:30, they called one of the candidates for a second interview, which lasted all of 5 minutes. Ten minutes later we were all called into a room and they announced the winners: a guy from NYU who will study Refugee and Migration Studies and a guy from UVA (who was called for the second interview) who will study either Government and Politics or Public Policy (I can’t remember exactly). In any case, I was very happy for them both. Though the end result wasn’t what I was hoping for, it was an amazing experience and I am happy that I had it. I met a lot of great people and got so much out of the interview process. The first question posed, which essentially boiled down to: “How can we/do we effectively manage scarce resources in a way that is both efficient and ensures equitable distribution and access?” is one that has led me to completely reframe and rethink the way I approach my interest in water security. As naïve as it seems, and indeed I think is, I had never thought of it in this way. So I am very grateful to have been challenged in the way I think and approach my work. I am looking forward to exploring this further through my research here in Ghana over the next 7ish months.

After the intensive week of traveling and preparing for the interview and going through the interview process, I was absolutely exhausted and took full advantage of my last week at home to veg out and relax, spend time with my family and friends, and have a second Thanksgiving of course. Time flew by and before I knew it, Friday had come and I was on a plane bound first for New York, then to Ghana.

Well, for sake of the length of this post, I’ll sign off here. Be expecting another blog post detailing my first week back in Accra and the official beginnings of my research!

Until then,

Chelsea

"Taps On, Lights Off"

Hey everyone,

I know it’s been a while since I last wrote. These past ten days or so have been busy. I am going to do my best to recap everything.

I guess I should start with last week. Last week, I met with the country director of Global Communities, Alberto Wilde. Global Communities is an international organization working on water and sanitation projects for peri-urban and urban poor communities in the Greater Accra region. Alberto was very friendly and extended me a warm welcome. We sat down and talked about some of Global Communities’ work and their projects, as well as some of their funding portfolios. He invited me to see a site visit this Saturday (tomorrow). Since Global Communities is funded largely by USAID, some workers from the USAID office in Washington are flying to Accra to see some of the projects. Although my research is based in Kumasi, which is in the Ashanti region, I am excited to go and see some of the communities where Alberto and his team are working and to learn from their experiences.

Alberto then introduced me to Joseph, the manager of the WASHUP (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) project, and Francis, one of the field agents for the organization. Joseph has worked for both the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), which is the sector in charge of rural water supply and sanitation in Ghana, as well as the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), which is responsible for urban water and sanitation supply in the country. He had a lot of interesting insight for my project. Namely, how am I defining the ‘peri-urban communities’ that are the focus of my study? This was a fantastic point. In the background reading and research I have done on national water policy, urban water policy, and rural water policy in the country, as well as the discussions I have had with sector professionals thus far, I have come to find that in Ghana, there is no standardized definition of peri-urban. Really, this population is just now being mentioned in policy documents; it received brief mention in the national water policy, which was formed in 2007, and has been mentioned in the most recent policy on community participation and behavior change in the urban water sector, formed just last year in 2012. Honestly, it seems that urban-poor and peri-urban are used interchangeably in national documents. Yet, depending on who you ask, these populations are not the same. For instance, to Global Communities, peri-urban communities are those that are forming at the fringe of cities; they exhibit characteristics of both rural and urban settings and are not receiving services, as they are not recognized by the government as legal settlements; the urban poor are those living in shanty towns alongside developments in the city. Water and sanitation provisions in these areas are marginal, but their establishment as a population is recognized by the government. The urban poor also consist of migrants who are living in these areas in informal settlements. Yet, when I spoke with WASHTech, an organization implementing technical solutions, such as drilling boreholes and building rope wells, peri-urban settlements are made up of migrant communities. So, as you can see, there seems to be a lot of overlap between these two populations and I am still in the process of defining peri-urban for purposes of my research. In one sense, I am eager that there is no standardized national definition that differentiates these two populations because that gives me the freedom as an objective researcher to observe citizens of both areas and then decide which population I would like to focus my efforts on. On the other hand, the lack of a definition is a challenge in more ways than one. How can a policy be formed with intentions of serving a portion of the population that is disadvantaged from water services from national agencies, such as the GWCL and CWSA, if there is no national definition of who is to benefit from such policies? As a researcher, it is a challenge because while I do have the flexibility of establishing my own definition based on my observations, impressions, and background reading, I will also have to contend with the best way to conduct research that is relevant to informing national policy makers. My goal for my research is to collect data and produce a paper that I can present to sector professionals and policy makers that will spark a dialogue on these issues. I’m looking forward to seeing how much I can do in the next nine months to accomplish that goal. I feel I am off to a good start.

The following day, I went to a water conference hosted by the Resource Center Network (which I referenced in my last blog post). There were two presentations: one was an evaluation and impact assessment carried out by WaterAid on the Governance and Transparency Fund, a 5-year project funded by the EU to build capacity of local government and citizens to deal with challenges of water access. The other presentation was done by a consultant of UNICEF on gender in the WASH sector. Both presentations were well done. It was a long day; the conference started an hour late, which is technically on time for Ghana time (not being cynical in the slightest, I am just stating the obvious). But, I met a lot of really great people and will probably go to the next one if I am able to do so.

The rest of the week was filled with some mishaps. The hard drive on my computer crapped out on me. Technology and I just haven’t had a great working relationship so far this trip. It always seems to happen at the worst time, not that there ever is a good time for it to happen. The hard drive on my first Macbook crashed right in the middle of finals week my junior year, right in the middle of me writing a paper, which was a final, for my class. That was rough because at that time I didn’t think to utilize an external hard-drive. Luckily, I was able to recover some, though not all, of my documents thanks to an RA that I was working with at the time. Still thankful to Tim two years later. This time, my hard drive crashed the day after I found out I was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, which requires a lot of prep. On the upside, I had backed everything up to an external hard drive and there are internet cafés here so it’s not as though I’m completely sans computer. Also on the upside, there is an Apple store at the mall in Accra, so it was good that it happened while I am here and not in Kumasi. I took it to the Apple store and the technician working there told me that the connecting cable in my hard drive disconnected and that if I brought in my external hard drive on Sunday (two days later), then he could fix it. So, on Sunday, I took a trip to the mall. What Evans (the technician) ultimately did was removed the hard drive from my computer, put it in an external carrying case, and made my computer temporarily useable. Whenever I need to use my computer, I plug in the external hard drive and it will work. As first this wasn’t a problem; my computer was working well. Lately, I have to restart it every hour or so while I am using it because it freezes. I just need it to make it for one more week, then I can get it repaired and buy a tablet to be on the safe side. Oh technology.

As I am sure most of you are aware, not everyone in Ghana has piped water in their homes. Many people fetch water every day from a standpipe, well, or borehole and store it in multiple containers in their homes. Where I am living, we don’t have piped water, but have access to a well at our neighbor’s home and a standpipe in our backyard that turns on sporadically. When I say sporadically, I mean that it does not turn on every day and then when it does come on, it could be at 3:00 in the afternoon, or 2:00 in the morning. I told my sister, Ama, who fetches the water, to wake me the next time the tap comes on so that I can help her collect water for the house. So, Friday night the tap came on around 11:00PM and Ama woke me up to help her. The electricity was off, so the process was more complicated than it would have been otherwise. We had two small wind-up lanterns to guide our path from the tap to the water’s final destination. We literally filled every bucket in the house- the bathroom water containers, the kitchen buckets, and even the largest cooking pots we had. I went through the monotonous, exhausting process of filling, pouring, then journeying back to the tap to refill my bucket, repeating the process. My bucket was only half full, yet my body swayed under the weight of the water, as I used muscles I never knew existed. As we hoarded the water, unsure of when the tap would come on again, I gained a lot of respect, even more than I already had, for Ama, Magdalene, my host family and women of Africa in general. They do this everyday- tired or not, sick or not. There is no other choice. What’s more, and what really made me feel a sense of injustice, is that I learned from Magdalene that this water cannot even be consumed without first being boiled. I should have thought of this considering everyone in the house, myself included, drinks from sachets of water that are bought in bulk and then sold on the roadside. Can you imagine having to fetch water every day that is not even able to be consumed? Imagine not having piped water in your home, going to a well every day to fetch water, then not even being able to drink it without first putting it through some method of purification. It’s hard to envision, yet that is exactly the reality of so many people here; I want to make clear that this is not the case for everyone, but many do live under such conditions.

I also learned that water is billed on a fixed monthly price; rather than paying for the amount that you use, water users, such as my host family, pay a standard rate every month. This is a terrible idea in my opinion. To begin, it is unjust for consumers who do not benefit from a consistent supply, such as my host family, to have to pay for more water than they use, let alone even receive. The tap could turn on every day or just two days out of the month, and still, my host mother would have to pay the same amount. Secondly, and taking rate of flow out of the picture, does a standardized cost for water encourage efficient use? Does and can a fixed monthly cost encourage conservative consumer behavior? Is a set tariff the most effective way to manage scarce resources? These are important questions, to which I have no real answers and can, at this point, only speculate. Hopefully, I can begin to form some salient hypotheses on these topics over the next 8 months I am here.

Collecting water with Ama caused me think differently, too, about water security at the household level in the urban sphere in Accra. It is so easy to look around Accra, a bustling, rapidly developing metropolis, and forget that there are problems providing the most basic of provisions here. From a geographer’s perspective, Ghana is a prime example of uneven development. I wish I could capture how it feels to drive through Accra and turn off a main road right into a community without access to running water or that is prone to floods for lack of drainage ditches. Granted, each country has these problems to certain extents. For those of you from Maryland, I’m sure Baltimore comes to mind. No matter how long I am here or how many cities I see, I am sure that these stark disparities will never fail to make me question how we can improve current systems that lead to such inequalities. 

Until the next post,

Chelsea