From Story to Sanitation (2023)
From Story to Sanitation (2023)
Who could have imagined that just a phone call would end up transforming the life of an entire family at Gbegbeyise, a densely populated community situated under Shaibu-Gbegbeyise district in the Ablekuma West Municipality of the Greater Accra Region of Ghana?
Indeed, it came as a shock to me from the onset, but then, in the end, the unimaginable became obvious.
Yes, certainly this was a dream that came true, only made possible through the power of journalism utilized by an agent of change.
So how did this happen?
It all started on the fateful day of July 8, 2023, after a day’s hard work, while I was on my way back from work.
All of a sudden, my mobile phone started ringing, and when I checked, it was an incoming call from a colleague news editor responsible for managing one of the major online news portals in Ghana and beyond.
Roger has never contacted me for quite a while. What could have prompted him to initiate such a call at this time? I kept wondering to myself.
Eager and curious to hear him out, I quickly answered his call, and to my surprise, he alerted me that he earlier got a call from an official from the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources who is urgently looking for me to answer a few questions regarding a recent report I’ve authored on WASH, which had received a massive publication on various major online news portals.
He then sought my permission to go ahead and share with him my contact information so he could give me a call and speak directly to me about the news report.
For a short moment, I was a bit hesitant not knowing what to do simply because first, I wasn’t sure about the particular story he was talking about, secondly, I was scared that perhaps one of my stories might have gone bad and I’m now being sought for to be haunted as any journalist would feel but upon second thoughts, I gave my consent.
Then, two hours later, my mobile phone starts buzzing to my surprise with an unknown caller on the line. At that time, I had already reached home and was just relaxing on a sofa to cool off.
The unidentified caller identified himself to me right away as a representative of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources, specifically working with the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area Sanitation and Water Project.
According to him, he is only contacting me in regards to a media report I filed on June 23, 2023, titled “Living without a toilet at home: The traumatic tale of a 15-year-old typhoid fever patient.”
Human Rights Reporters' Joseph Wemakor story on 15-year-old typhoid patient gets results
Who could have imagined that just a phone call would end up transforming the life of an entire family at Gbegbeyise, a densely populated community situated under Shaibu-Gbegbeyise district in the Ablekuma West Municipality of the Greater Accra Region of Ghana?