Life on the Rocks
Akaweasko built her home by herself four years ago. She lives alone. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS
Some people think she's crazy.
Her mother can't figure her out.
But Akaweasko Inwe doesn't care. She's happy on the rocks.
She's lived on this rock outcropping — a 10-minute hike from the nearest village — for four years. What's more impressive: she built it herself. It's not going to win any awards. The mud bricks are melting with age and the roof is a pile of sticks and stones and rags. But one thing separates Akaweasko from many of her fellow villagers: her house is still standing.
In Ghana, where rain and flooding destroyed 35,000 homes, Akaweasko's is still squatting solid. The houses that collapsed were built from mud bricks and many of them lacked solid foundations. After marinating in standing water for weeks, the ground and walls softened, and the houses crumbled like sandcastles.
When the floods covered the path to the nearby village, she stayed put. When the rains battered and hissed off the stone outside her hut, her roof leaked, but never fell. "I didn't sleep until it stopped raining," she says.
For reasons she can't really explain, Akaweasko built her hut high up on this jumble of boulders. The rocks are as big as Dumpsters and scattered across this part of Northern Ghana.
Maybe it was the solitude, or maybe the view. She simply says she likes it here. That's enough for her.
Her mother begs her to live with relatives. Her teenage daughter lives with family in the village. And neighbors cast sidelong glances at her as they walk by below. But she doesn't care. This is home. And she's not budging.
Her kitchen is en plein air. She does her cooking from atop her perch. Her pots and pans and kitchen utensils are scattered about on the rocks. Food for the lean season is drying in the sun. But life here isn't easy. Her biceps are laced with veins, riding on well-defined muscles. Her hearing is almost gone, and guests have to shout questions at her.
In a region where communities build houses on the ground, Akaweasko has chosen to buck the system. And for this lady on the rocks, she's withstood glares and questions and a flood. None of that matters, though, because she still has her home.
Lane Hartill is the West Africa regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. He has visited CRS programs in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Lane is based in Dakar, Senegal.
