Ghanan Rainforest

‘Domradio’ says that a German high school teacher from Bonn (North Rhine Westphalia) just donated 1 million dolars to different educational projects in Ghana. Now she’s working on getting another 1 million. To support her project some family members and friends even sold self-baked pastry, made jelly or crafted things to sell and gave the money to her.

“Domradio” says that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Albano now criticized Europeans for not even disposing off their waste properly if it contains dangerous substances – like electronic waste does. Instead we just throw it away “somehow” and thus risk that it could pollute nature, get used by criminal organisations to finance their crimes or even deported to Accra in Ghana where people force child-laborers to get precious material out of electronic waste even by means that injure these children, make them sick or contaminate the water they are going to drink and use to water food crops.

The monthly German newspaper “GEO” says that in Ghana poverty and unemployment both are very high among young citizens. In cities also pollution causes some problems. Now a boy in his early teens who is living in a Ghanian village found the ideal solution to both problems. He collects cans he finds lying as waste on the street, cuts them into pieces and uses the metal pieces to make toy cars out of them. Some he keeps or gives them away as presents, but the rest he sells.
—-—--
Re-upload: “https://secure3.convio.net/ra/site/Donation2?idb=254787134&df_id=1441&1441.donation=form1&JServSessionIdr004=z0to9lrcg4.app332a” and “http://www.therainforestsite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=4”...I know I often mentioned these two websites here, but it’s just because they are known to be trustworthy and people who aren’t even members can get involved, too.

>The German news show “Tagesschau” says that Ghana’s economies depend on the exports of gold, cocoa, aluminium and diamonds. As this year prices have dropped all around the world – and as Ghana has faced a very long enery-crisis – many people became unemployed. As now there is going to be a change of government some fear that this will make political uproars more likely and easier.
>”Fodwatch” now gave out a warning that you should be careful when it comes to buying one of these chocolate-santas. Testings showed that while the cocoa they use – also the one imported from Ghana – is okay many of them contain mineral oil…and some even contain high amounts of this. While the word “mineral” actually sounds hamless at first – you find it in “mineral water” or in a German advertisement for orange juice, stating how many important minerals it contains – mineral oil actually is a substance used to keep cars running. For the mere outward appearance of their products many producers of chocolate extract it from recycled paper.

The German news show “Tagesschau” now talked about the problems Ghanan villagers and farmers have due to the greenhouse effect: Due to the changing climate farmers simply don’t know when to grow and harvest what anymore. For decades now you could plant for example maze in this very month and it would grow perfectly. Now if you plant maze at around the same time, the earth is much too dry, there isn’t enough rain and the plant can’t develop fully.
For decades you knew exactly how long it would take for the plant to grow. These days the climate is different and the plants either grow slower or faster than they used to. This leads to farmers starting harvest too late and being able to harvest nothing but useless, rotten fruits. In other cases they start way too soon. The fruits in cases like these are underdeveloped, non-edible and thus useless, too.
Thus many women want to support their farming husbands by going to the capital of Accra to earn some extra-money. Uneducated as they are however – most of them never attended school as back then it just wasn’t common for small villages to care about the young ones getting school education – they usually find nothing but hard, unhealthy, physical work that is paid very low as for jobs that are paid a bit better they require at least some form of graduation-certificate.
One lady for example now needs to regularly see the doctor. She once had a job in Accra that required her carrying heavy baskets over quite a distance and that also required her cleaning the floor in a ducked position – which of course did her spine no good. Back then she had a baby she needed to carry around while working there. Being exposed to so much heat and UV-rays outside for hours, the child often was very ill.