Busunu Love!

This past week I spent in Busunu and had an amazing experience! It was wonderful to get perspective on different lifestyles of Ghanaians and appreciate the hardships of the rural clients of REP.
While in Busunu I split my time between participating in the activities of the women around the house (cooking, sweeping, processing shea nuts, etc.) and walking around the village interviewing clients who had received one of three trainings over the past year, beekeeping, batik tie and dye, and soap making.
I was incredibly fortunate that the family/compound I was staying with was so amazing and friendly, and I had a community leader who spoke English fluently to help guide me around to the various clients.

Busunu is a very interesting community that has had many different development projects passing through it, from various water installations to renewable energy to sponsorships from the Body Shop. It was good to see the impacts of the projects and the different approaches to development. For instance, you can have a private company like the Body Shop sponsor a women’s group who process shea nuts, you can have a government sponsored project like REP training people in new skills to start businesses, or you can have partnerships between universities and churches to fund pilot energy projects, or huge NGOs like World Vision coming in and supporting children through feeding programs and schools. This community had it all.

(this women's group says below, it is hard to read, "sponsored by the Body Shop"!)

And the community was developing and changing. The project that had the biggest noticeable impact was the renewable energy project. Over the past 6 months a large number of houses in the community were set up with electricity, consisting of 2 light bulbs. This has changed a lot about the community already. It has changed the dynamics of the family at night, they are able to cook later, and socialize more, there is a sense of security and safety, they are able to have cell phone because they can now be charged, and new businesses will be able to be started up (welders, more machinery, etc.). The price is better than the national grid and way better than kerosene that would be used for lamps.
Let me tell you a bit about it, because as an environmental engineering student, I found it incredibly interesting.
The main source of power is solar, but there is a naturally occurring plant in the area, jatropha, whose seed contains oil that can be used as bio fuel that powers the back-up generator when the sun is weak. The electricity lines are all underground, and the houses are metered to keep track of usage. The project is encouraging people to be growing the jatropha on their farms and around their homes as a fence, and then the project buys the seeds from them. They can use the seeds as their payment for their electricity, or just to make some extra money.

The energy facility with the solar panels and generator

Sakara, my guide and friend, showing the Jatropha plant (seeds below)The project is still just starting up, so they are still running the backup generator on diesel, but soon hope to move to the bio-diesel soon. Overall the project seems sustainable, and is being implemented slowly over a couple of years, with the aim of being self-sufficient. If it is successful, then they will implement it in other areas. The classic problems remain with projects like this...if a part of the machinery for the solar panels breaks, they have to send it to Germany to repair it. The idea of the project came from some pilot projects that were done in Kenya with the Jatropha plant, if you are interested in further research (which I definitely am, so if you get a head start, let me know!).
The family that I stayed with was wonderful, in particular my friend Gifty. She’s a couple years older than me, but intelligent, friendly and just such a beautiful person! She had an adorable 5 month old baby who you couldn’t help but love, and she let me help her out and get to know the way she was living in Busunu. She grew up there, but has since moved to Tamale for seamstress training and will leave Busunu in a couple months when the baby, Johnson, is older. I was sad to leave, because I learned more from her on what it means to be an African woman in a week than I have in the 6 weeks I have been here. Here are some pictures and I hope to be able to visit Busunu again to say hello to my friend again, I don’t know if she will ever know what an impact she has had on me.