People in my village knew they were suffering due to a lack of health care facilities, so they found a way to build a hospital. Every village in Togo has a Committee for Village Development (C.V.D.). This team of people figures out solutions to the village’s problems. The C.V.D. applied for funds from CimTogo, a cement-making company, to construct a hospital. CimTogo has a cement making factory in our county. Because the company used county land to build their factory, they pay for one construction project a year in the county. The C.V.D.’s hard work, and luckily, my host village was chosen for the construction project.
Building the hospital took a long time. First, the C.V.D. had to apply for the money from CimTogo and the application process took a while. In July 2023, when I first visited my host village, the land for the hospital was being cleared. The villagers were called to come help remove weeds and trees so that sand, gravel and cement could be delivered. Professional masons and volunteers from the village spent many weeks making cement bricks. Then the foundation was dug. At last, the construction began. The hospital is nearby my house, so every day I watched the bricks climb a little higher. When there was more work than the team of professional masons could do, the village chief and the president of the C.V.D. called for volunteers to help. People from the village helped in whatever way they could: women pumped water and carried it to the masons, the masons mixed cement by hand and laid the bricks, the president of the C.V.D. kept everyone organized and on track, and kids ran around doing fetching whatever the adults needed. Many hands make light work.
