What joy it was for me to see the children of Logba Tota, Dufi & Abayeme smile when we donated solar powered lanterns, exercise and text books to them on Sunday 26th February 2017 ! They were all smiles.

Background:

The Abayeme and Dufi villages are high up the Logba mountains. We drove about 20-25 minutes through cocoa farms, thick bushes and very dangerous places to get to Tota, the lowest part of the area from off the Eastern Corridor roads in the Volta Region. Tota is the lowest of the area to which electricity power could be accessed. To get to Abayeme and Dufi, one will have to climb another 2hrs up the mountain by foot. It has therefore been impossible to get electrical power to them (at least, in our minds or those of our politicians). So even though these people are part of Ghana and actually vote too, they cannot benefit from the “national cake”. The are are farmers and produce cocoa, banana, coffee, etc which they carry down the mountains on their heads.

The communities of Dufi & Abayeme have no community centres, no form of entertainment (except the obvious adult stuff), no clinics, nothing! The children study under trees and on the floors, with no form of electricity with which to learn at night, get bitten by snakes at night due to lack of light, etc.

They have however refused to resettle down the mountain. On Sunday, my club, the Rotary Club of Accra Spintex Spintex and our friend, Dr. Kwame Acquaah from Trans-Atlantic Environmental, Inc., USA visited Logba Tota, where the children of Dufi and Avayime came down to meet us. Dr. Acquaah had brought solar rechargeable lanterns from the US to be donated. Rtn. Fred Labi of our club also provided some text books he published while our club also organized some exercise books for donation.

In all, it was an exciting moment to see the joy on the faces of these young ones as they received some exercise books and lanterns with which to study at night. Personally, I found it very fulfilling to have gone with them to make the donation.

Dr. Acquaah gave them a short message and in his message, he told them he brought then some light to be able to study at night, but wanted to introduce another form of Light to them which is even more everlasting. He took the opportunity to preach Christ to them and led as many as were willing to Christ Jesus. Our lead to the place also encouraged them to study hard and admonished parents to lead their children to be Christ-like and know that they can make it to become like Dr. Acquaah.

He also hopes to assist in getting solar powered street lights for the communities in the near future.

The chiefs of the village were thankful to us for the donations and asked that God blesses us to even do more for them.

I am grateful for the opportunity to serve humanity and my community as a Rotarian and hope that the Lord will replenish the substances of everyone who contributed in anyway! May the Lord God Almighty grant us more so we can do more and give us the grace to put more smiles on the faces of the under-privileged. You can also make a difference in somebody’s life! Start today by making someone around you smile. You can also join us to have bigger impact by donating here. We put little resources together to make bigger impacts all over the world!

By ,
Eli Evans

The fumes from these lanterns also pose serious health risks to the user. The World Bank estimates that breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes a day and two-thirds of adult females with lung cancer in developing nations are non-smokers. Kerosene produces several gases. Most dangerous is carbon monoxide, which is poisonous. Nitrogen dioxide is a throat and lung irritant, and sulfur dioxide can cause difficulty breathing. The gases are especially dangerous to high-risk groups, including people with asthma, seniors and children. That is why Trans-Atlantic Environmental is working with Accra-Spintex Rotary and people like you to help.