The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana
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Hello, I'm Amber. Hello, I'm Ryan. And you're listening to The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.
I'm Nick Miles and in this edition... We are doing this every day, every day, every day. And I tell you right now in Ghana, we've got a lot of youth rising up to do the same. No one man cannot do it all. It always takes a collective to get the results we are all looking out for.
The movement of young professionals sweeping Ghana clean also.
There's lots of magical ways of opening and turning off the lights, different illusions around the place. Even for an adult, it gives them that feeling of the wonder of being a child and of being excited about things.
We go to the tree houses for people living with chronic health conditions.
And getting to this point was a long process. So to them, it was just a very amazing feeling to finally see the birds flying free in the wild.
The Hawaiian crow, which has been released back into the wild 20 years after the species went extinct there. We start in Ghana, where a group of boys have formed a clean-up crew to tackle the out-of-control mounds of rubbish that have become an eyesore and a health hazard in cities and towns across the country. In the capital, Accra, waste has been clogging up drains and spilling onto the pavements, helping spread waterborne diseases like cholera and malaria. Only 10% of waste there is disposed of properly. The new group, called the Buzz Stop Boys, want to change that. They meet a few times a week, armed with brooms, shovels and dustpans to clean the streets. The original team of five has now grown to nearly 50. They've been called heroes by local celebrities and a group of teenagers from the UK even flew over to help them. Heneba Kwajusafo started the Buzz Stop Boys last year. Richard Hamilton caught up with him and started by asking him if the problem wasn't the local government's responsibility to solve.
Yeah, it is. Of course, that is what everybody would say. But for us bastard boys, we are looking at it from the perspective of the effect of the environmental disaster. We are looking at it from the angle that even though it is the responsibility of the local authorities to do what they need to do, we all face the consequences of malaria, cholera, typhoid. and all of that. Anything that affects the environment goes a long way to affect all of us. So our campaign is forcefully about the fact that we are trying to get a collective involvement because so long as we all face the consequences of the environment, yes, no one man cannot do it all. It always takes the collective to get the resource we are all looking out for.
And are you surprised by the momentum that this movement has taken? I mean, there seem to be a lot of you now involved and you've got support from celebrities and other people as well. So did you expect it to be this successful?
The level of support is not something that I anticipated. The environment does not discriminate who is rich and who is poor. It affects all of us on every level. So I believe this is a message that goes to a lot of people to begin to look at it from that angle to say that, yes, I agree. And I think it always takes all of us on a collective level to change the story.
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Speakers
25 identified
Nick Miles 7 min
Chelsea Java Salas 2 min
Heneba Kwajusafo 2 min
Craig Langren 2 min
Narrator 2 min
Ryan Seacrest 2 min
Camilla Mills 2 min
Dr Noemi Roy 2 min
Ben Morris 1 min
Miranda 1 min
Bobby Bones 1 min
Oliver Conway 1 min
Pablo Shapira 1 min
Rafa
Cindy Crawford
Unidentified
Richard Hamilton
Unnamed Speaker 1
Danny Cox
Leslie
Charlotte
Lacey's Mum Jess
Naomi Ruckham
The White Witch (fictional character)
Violet
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