The residents of communities that will be affected by the Bui Dam in Ghana have several concerns about being resettled. They worry about when and where they will be relocated, how they will sustain themselves without access to fishing, whether their children will have schools, and if their way of life and culture can be maintained. While they accept that they must move, they want to ensure their future livelihoods and quality of life will not be negatively impacted.

1. Affected Communities That Are Yet To Be Resettled Concerns of People Affected By The Bui Dam, Ghana

2. They said they will move us but we don’t know when and where they are going to resettle us. The project is going very fast, they say the dam will be completed in 2011 but they could not tell us when and where they will resettle us. They may have good plans for us but we have sleepless nights thinking/worrying about they will resettle us. They need to discuss these things and their plans with us. May be that will reduce our fears.

3. We hope our children will have good schools at the new settlement

4. I don’t know how long it would take to grow and eat fresh coconuts. I will miss my home.

5. Thoughts about what happened to the people affected by the Akosombo and Kpong dams, scares me. I feel like crying for my grandchildren, because this dam will take away all we have worked hard to keep for our future generations. It is like uprooting a big/matured tree and trying to replant it. You cannot guarantee that it will survive. We are going to start all over again; getting to know the land, the people, the culture, …..

6. Would they settle us near the river? Can I continue to fish. I need to be resettled near the river where I can go fishing because that is the only work I have done all my life.

7. The Chinese contractors burnt my cashew farm. They said they will compensate us but I cannot harvest cashew this year to take care of my family until they compensate us.

8. Whatever they give me cannot compensate for my life here in this village. We understand and accept that we have to move. We cannot refuse to move even though we are not happy, but all we ask is that, whatever they do, they should not make our lives miserable. We don’t want to be like the people of Akosombo 30 or 40 years from now. I am an old lady; it is our children and grandchildren that we are concerned for. They are the ones we are fighting for. I am not fighting for myself .

9. How can we take care of our families, pay for the education of our children in secondary school if they stop us from fishing? Stopping us from fishing is like taking our food out of my mouth.

10. Bui dam affected communities that have been resettled

11. 1. We like our new houses but the rooms are too small 2. They did not finish the houses before they moved us so some of us are staying with our friends until our rooms are ready 3. Life here is good but our husbands can no longer go fishing. That is our major problem 4. I am frustrated because I cannot do my job, fishing. Our new settlement is too far from the river and that is bad for me as a fisherman. 6. I had 3 rooms at my village but they gave me only two small rooms here. Now we cannot fit in the room so some of my children sleep in the kitchen

12. I am a fisherman and I cannot stop finishing We sneak to the dam site to make and set fish traps.

13. They closed our main access route so we cannot visit our relatives who live across the river or go to the market across the river.

14. They are going to construct a hand-pump well for us

15. They built a 3 classroom block for our “day –nursery” school and they a building a community center for us

16. The Bui National Park is home to about 350 to 400 black hippopotami, antelopes, monkeys, lizards, and many other wild life. More than half of the park (their habitat) would be flooded by the Bui dam. This means that most of the wild life the park was created to protect would once again be vulnerable to hunters. “ They were sacred to our ancestors, they became our totem. Don’t let them vanish from our forests “(C onservation International) . Photo: Courtesy Edmond Akoto-Danso ( iwmi, Accra )