Drummers and dancers don’t perform on the Volta River’s banks every day, but neither do people who complete the longest known swim in Ghanaian history. Agribusiness owner, athlete, and activist Yvette Tetteh, 30, is the only person to have ever swum across the Volta River from Buipe to Ada.

Yvette and the crew of The Woman Who Does Not Fear, an auxiliary research vessel of The Or Foundation, traveled down Ghana’s largest internal waterway during the course of the expedition, gathering extensive data on microfiber pollution from textile waste and spreading awareness of the effects of waste colonialism on the ecosystems that support millions of people in the area.

As Yvette completed the final kilometers, large crowds gathered along the river banks in Ada to celebrate numerous records and firsts. the longest swim ever recorded in Ghana. most miles paddled in a kayak in Ghanaian history. the first solar-powered research vessel in Ghana and ground-breaking studies on Accra’s and the Volta River System’s water quality.

The Gulf of Guinea current at the Ada estuary pushed Yvette upstream on the penultimate day of the swim, making it one of the hardest days thus far, according to Yvette. She persisted, though, all the way to the Tsarley Kope Beach Resort, where a party was in store.

She says, “The trip began in Buipe on March 7th with the difficult process of submerging the Ghana-built aluminum research vessel. The Swim Team, as the expedition crew has come to refer to itself, then traveled down the Black Volta onto the Volta Lake, stopping in towns and villages along the way, many of which had been inundated by rising waters and some of which are not even depicted on standard maps. The expedition stopped in Yeji for a few days to replenish supplies and basic pleasures, such as haircuts, before moving on to Kete Krachi and Tapa Abotoase for quick boat repairs before swimming toward Kpando and Akosombo.

Swimming was particularly difficult in the rough waters south of Kpando, where waves frequently broke above her head. One day, despite swimming for several hours, she only covered 1.5 kilometers—one tenth of her typical distance.

This may have been discouraging, but the expedition team decided to press on and show that everything is possible with the correct amount of determination and cooperation.

As Yvette emerged from the water wearing her specially manufactured recycled swimsuit and an anklet holding a water sample device to record the chemicals in touch with her skin, the chief, community leaders, local kids, and a drum group gathered around her. In front of the specially built solar-powered research vessel that The Or Foundation will now deploy along the coast of Accra to map ocean pollution, Yvette and the crew thanked the cheering crowd for their support and took questions from members of the public and international and local press.

To assure her safety in the water throughout the voyage, Yvette was followed by a kayaker.

Ofoe Amegavie, the expedition’s documentarian, and Edwin Dzobo, science lead and communications manager for The Or Foundation, paddled in tandem for many hundreds of kilometers, perhaps setting a record for the longest distance paddled in Ghana. Ofoe, an Ada native who has spent the majority of his career documenting the shifting water patterns that are upsetting life along the coast, felt as though he was returning home during the final leg of the voyage. Ofoe captured the colossal human-environmental connection swimming Ghana’s largest river with this keen eye for how people and the environment interact.

The mission builds on a year and a half of scientific investigation by The Or Foundation into the effects of discarded secondhand clothing has on the ecosystem as it flows through Ghana, one of the world’s major recipients of used clothes.

The Or Foundation, an Accra-based NGO working at the intersection of environmental justice, education, and fashion development, estimates that 15 million items of used clothing from Global North nations like the EU, the UK, and the USA enter local markets in Ghana each week. Additionally, 40% of every bale of used clothing opened in Accra, Ghana’s largest secondhand market, Kantamanto, is typically discarded as waste, leading to significant environmental and social problems.

The Accra beaches are covered in thousands of textile tentacles, or tangled masses of abandoned apparel, some of which are over ten meters long, according to the Or Foundation. The Agbetsi Living Water Swim, which ends this week, is currently monitoring the effects of textile waste around the nation. Agbetsi, which means life water in the indigenous Ewe language of Ghana, is a fitting name for an expedition that aims to preserve Ghana’s waterways.

Once in Akosombo, the Bravehearts Expeditions team helped Yvette swim between the Akosombo and Akuse dams while the Or Foundation team, led by Special Projects and Logistics Manager Enoch Nsoh, worked to move the boat overland around the dams with assistance from the local boat builder Benlex Engineering.

Yvette and the expedition team, which also included the boat’s captain JayJay Addo-Koranteng of Bravehearts Expeditions, renowned documentary photographer Ofoe Amegavie, Edwin Dzobo, and artist and environmentalist Isabel Abreu, collected water and air samples every day using the same procedures as The Or Foundation team collecting samples in Accra. To keep communities along the swim route informed of the expedition’s progress, the expedition staff also disseminated information to them.

The Or Foundation has published “The Untold Stories from The Volta,” a series of 12 commissioned stories from along the expedition route, which is available through the campaign website https://livingwaterswim.org. This is the first collection of stories about the Volta River System and the people who live along it. The Or Foundation will show the movie “stories” to the public on the rooftop of their Adabraka building in Accra on May 19 at 6 p.m.

The project website offers images of hundreds of the water samples collected during the expedition, and The Or Foundation intends to publish a detailed study of the results in the coming months. Citizen scientists and aspiring swimmers can continue to follow the expedition by visiting https://livingwaterswim.org, following @livingwaterswim and @theorispresent on Instagram, and listening to the daily dispatch audio diaries and the Untold Stories collection.