Salt Miners of Ada
By Drew Hinshaw, Angela Osei-Poku and Cynthia Azere

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Boni Kope is a salt mining village close to the Songhor Lagoon in the Ada District of the Greater Accra Region. The people mine salt in the dry season, between January and April and farm in the rainy season from May to December. To the residents of Boni Kope the salt is their blessing; it may also be their curse.

In the arid flatlands of Ada, migrant workers and local residents wade knee-high into salt ponds, scraping out the rough, granular salt into piles as tall as themselves. Even the wind tastes of salt here.

As the sun prepares to rise, 30 year-old Rebecca Abayateye prepares her five young children for school and starts to cook the rice and stew she will sell in the afternoon at her chop shop cafe. She gathers the ingredients and goes to the corner in her kitchen where she has stored the most precious commodity in the community - water.

Rebecca, the villagers and the migrant salt miners have no real access to clean water. Miles away from Boni Kope is a dam on which both humans and animals depend. It has dark brown, undrinkable water. Parliament has yet to award the bid for a pipe water system it approved last year.

Rebecca's morning is spent mining salt from 4 AM to around noon and then opens her café. She makes at least 30,000 cedis a day, but spends almost half of the money buying water. One bucket contains fifteen liters of water and costs 1,000 cedis. She uses about 12 buckets a day for cooking and drinking. She buys the water from a trucking company that brings unfiltered water scooped directly from the Volta river.

At 1,000 cedis a bucket, a worker who sells 1-2 bags of salt a day makes between 20,000 to 30,000 cedis and could easily spend over half of her income for the necessary twelve to fourteen buckets daily.

 

Whenever the water tankers are delayed, which according to villagers happens often, they have to drink the dirty water. Rebecca says they have no other alternative.

"We don't fall ill anymore because we are used to the water", Rebecca says. Residents believe that the salt content in their bodies protect them from infection.

Not everyone has the stomach for the dam water. Eric Ayiku, 27, is a native of the village and visits often to see his parents. He complains that he develops stomach pain after drinking the water. Ayiku now works with Danosa Gold Mine in Tarkwa. "Any time I come home I experience stomach pain because I'm neither used to the untreated water from the Volta River nor the dirty water from the dam", he complains.

As the price of water has risen, Rebecca has found herself feeding more of her poorer café customers on credit that they seldom pay.

They have tried digging wells but the wells produced salty water. The salt workers also need fresh water to bathe.

They wear the effects of their labor and the climate on their skin: on their arms and legs, salt sores and blisters.

Rebecca's arms are covered in salt sores, and fevers are a common occurrence for her. The older miners live with salt-caked, bloodshot eyes and most will go blind in their fifties.

"The diseases are many, from the salt," said Agbloh Larweh, an Ewe miner losing eyesight in his fifty-eighth year. "As you work in the ponds for a very long times, it affects your sight. Even a drop of this salt, if it gets in your eye, it can destroy your sight."

Access to clinics is limited here, and so preventive measures are doubly important. To avoid constantly developing scars, sores, and fevers, workers must bathe themselves at least once a day, on return from the mines. The eye must be washed out many times daily, and even then, some degree of blindness is inevitable. Consequently, water is the central health issue here.

Rebecca is frustrated. The water supply company blames the poor quality of the road for the high price of the water; she blames her District Assemblyman, Eric Kpalam, for not intervening--either to improve the quality of the road, or confront the trucking company itself.

"Whenever this village has a problem, the people call for help and they don't come," said Rebecca. "We have one assemblyman for six villages. I can't say the last time he came here."

Many migrant workers in the area believe the current NPP administration has ignored the situation in Ada as the country's mining industry develops unevenly.

"They have politicized everything," said Eric Ayiku, a migrant worker whose labor takes him to mines around Kumasi and Cape Coast, where he says living conditions are far better. "In NDC days, the price of water was very cheap. And today, the price of crude oil in the market is very expensive."

Ayiku suspects that the administration has allowed the Ada mines to fall into disrepair while improving mines in other areas at a disproportionate rate.

"In the gold mines of the western region, you have access to all the amenities," He said. "Even in the salt ponds of the central region, they are doing far better than Ada."

With few options, and little prospect for development, Radio Ada, a community-centered news station, has become a voice of reason, consolation, and support for the salt workers, adding the complexity of a wider perspective to the debate.

"Some funds have been given to sister salt communities in the central region to develop salt - and in the Volta region," said Kofi Larweh, Director of Radio Ada.

As for improving conditions in Ada, "If there is confusion, people stand to gain as individuals. That is why they say, 'there is a presidential initiative on salt,' but at the end of the day you are not seeing it. From past experience, some individuals stand to gain more, and maybe those individuals are powerful."

But national politics operate far from these isolated, under-developed salt ponds. Among the villagers, Mr. Kpalam's popularity is shaky. Some naturally feel that his inability to change this situation is a part of the problem, while others are forgiving, citing the complexity of the problem.

"When we need help, we appeal to the district assembly," said Isaac Torgbenu, opinion leader for the area. "I've been interacting with them for a long time, and when we put in a request, if the materials are there, they will help us." As for the performance of Mr. Kpalam, himself, Torgbenu said, "so far I will not say he's doing a very good job, because he can't do anything if there's nothing there. He has to work with the materials that are there.. Anytime there is a problem, I go to him, and he comes. So I can say the work relationship is very cordial, and if the materials are there, they will come."

Asked if Mr. Kpalam has turned a blind eye to his community, Radio Ada Assistant Manager, Isaac Jah said, "I don't want to put it exactly so. I'm a Ghanaian so let me tell it in a Ghanaian way. The hen that refuses to brood over its eggs for a long time finds the egg in the soup. I don't know if you understand me. The hen is supposed to sit on the eggs for twenty-one days before it hatches. If you are the type of hen who is interested in food and you are very lazy, one day, when you begin to lay eggs, they will put that egg in the soup. I think you understand me."

Although two companies have announced their intentions to place a bid for the pipeline approved by Parliament, the seasonal influx of migrant workers and the area's isolation makes the project a less than profitable venture.

There is no plan to desalinate water from the Gulf of Guinea that skirts the salt mines and no plan to develop a project to irrigate the arid farmland that supports the area during the rainy season.

"The lasting solution to this problem is getting pipe water into the community," said salt miner Elizabeth Fudji. Asked to whom she channels her grievances, she added, "We know that God is on our side- and if he is on our side, then pipe water will come."

In the meantime, "people are dying like that," Dameh Issac said snapping his fingers.

District Assemblyman Mr. Kpalam did not show up for any of three scheduled interviews.