Ghana

Day 1: I left with 4 other girls for our homestay right away when arriving to Ghana.  The travel took about 3 hours to get from Tema to Volta-Ho where we were staying.  I saw wild baboons on the way there!  We met Mama Viak, the woman who runs the orphanage, along our travels there to make sure we arrived safely.  She was very shy at first.  We wanted her to know we were there to help her do anything she needed help with, but she said she didn’t need any at the moment so we played with the kids for a few hours.  The kids were amazing.  They were so bright, cheerful, and welcoming.  There were also about 5 German volunteers that were there that we met.  The Germans told us the kids wanted to surprise us and take us to the park (which was a soccer field) across the street to see their pet monkey.  After returning from the park, Sister (They all each other sister, so I’m not sure what her name was.  I was Sister Lizzy because they couldn’t pronounce Lindsay.) took us to the market to see what it was like and get to talk to her a bit.  After dinner, Mama’s grandson Wisdom (his real name is Richard, but the mom gives a name, such as Wisdom, to the child weeks after they are born that matches their personality) came from his university an hour away to meet us.  The 5 of us ended up talking to Wisdom all night.  He explained the orphanage to us.  He told us Mama Viak started it about 50 years ago because she lost her parents at a young age and did not want other children to grow up without a home.  It is actually mainly a school with about 75 students ranging from 3-13 in age, but about 40 live there as well.  The main reason is because they were put there by the government, but some parents just lived too far away and didn’t have money to come pick them up every day.  After speaking with him the 5 of us stayed up all night formulating ideas of how we could help.  Wisdom told us there was a dormitory for the children that is in the process of being build, but they do not have enough money to finish it (Right now the sleep on the cement floor with about an inch padded mattress in the classrooms). The other major concern was that it was not fenced in so anyone could come in at any time.  That night we settled on the fact that there was not enough time or resources for us to fix either of these problems ourselves at the moment, but we will set up fundraisers at school and church to raise money for it.  We decided it would be best to go the market and stock them up on food the best we could.

On our walk to the park to see the monkey

Day 2:  We started the day by helping the teachers in classrooms.  There are 5 classrooms, so we all split up.  I was in the youngest classroom where they were learning addition.  They used rocks from the ground to teach them addition since they don’t have textbooks.  After lunch the kids returned to classes and we went to the market with Sister.  We bought them about a month’s worth of food.  After the market Wisdom wanted to show us around town for a little bit, so we explored the area with him and his friend.  When we returned the German volunteers were there and we talked to them while playing with the kids.  We talked about the orphanage and our plans to help out.  Before the volunteers left, they pulled one of us aside and said we should meet that night because there were some things they needed to tell us about the orphanage if we were really serious about helping out.  So we planned on that for after the kids went to bed.  After dinner, we told the children that it was Julie’s (my roommate) birthday and they surprised her with a dance party.  It was so much fun and pretty embarrassing that the 5 year olds were dancing better than all of us.  After the children went to bed we left to go meet the German volunteers.  They told us that they were trying to just get a bunch of money out of us and that the children never see any of the money being donated because Mama uses it for herself.  They said that Mama is very nice when people like us come in but when we’re not there she is very mean and hits them a lot.  One of the volunteer’s said Mama told a girl that she couldn’t come to school without shoes so the volunteer went out and bought the girl shoes and Mama took them from the girl and wears them herself now.  They said when toys get donated the children get to play with them for about an hour and then Mama takes them away and never lets them play with them again.  We were so devastated by this and did not want to believe what they told us. 

Day 3:  We woke up trying to hide our sadness and just keep putting smiles on the children’s faces since we had to leave soon.  After school started for the children, we had breakfast and got all of our things together.  The seamstress that works there was very sweet and I told her I loved to sew and watched her make some clothes the first day.  Before we left she surprised us all with a purse for each of us.  Then it was time to say our goodbyes and be back on our way to Tema.  We left there so confused.   It felt like I was feeling every emotion possible at once.  We tried to take our minds off of it for a little bit and explored Tema for the afternoon since we hadn’t gotten a chance to see it yet.

Reflection: It broke our hearts when the German volunteer’s told us about Mama.  There is part of me that just doesn’t want to believe it since I saw such good in her.  There was no reason for the Germans to make that up though, so we do believe them.  At the moment, I think we all just feel ok about what we did during our time there.  Because of the time crunch for our trip, it was hard to make a long term impact, but at least we made short term ones.  We directly bought them food, so there is nothing to do with it but eat it.  I would still love to make it back there some day to help put up the fence myself.  After talking we decided that what the kids needed most was love and we gave them that.  They just wanted to be touched and held.  It amazed me how many of them fell asleep in my arms when I was rubbing their back.  Relating back to my last day in Brazil and how much of an impact we are making, we are probably not making much of a long term change, but I think we succeeded in letting the children know that they were loved and were special.  Those kids really were special.  They were so smart.  I was surprised how fast they grew up here.  The 10 year olds were scolding the 5 year olds when they were being bad and they comforted them when they were hurt.  What I am saddened by is that these kids are so smart but they do not have the resources to reach their potential.  I helped one teacher hand write 20 copies of their math assignment because she only had one homework book for the whole class.  I’m not sure what I think the answer is to this question yet, but I keep thinking is it ok for them to not reach their potential in life?  (I know my philosophy teacher would be so mad if she read that!) Hear me out, here they value simplicity.  Maybe it’s ok that they don’t have all of these resources like we do.  They seem to still be happy and making it work.  The teacher didn’t seem to mind handwriting all of the homework assignments and if we (volunteers in general) did not come in and tell them how we do things, they would not know that it is done any different in other places.  We (westerners) come in and try to modernize everything we see and they seem to be resisting it.  They do not want to lose their culture and their traditions.  Just because it is not the way we do things does not mean that it is the wrong way to do things.  I kept thinking how much more simple life seemed before college, before I got a good education.  Some things, such as health, they do need to be educated in, but maybe it’s ok that they do not know some things and keep that simplicity in their life.  Another thing I thought of was that Mama Viak started this orphanage over 50 years ago.  She does not have access to media and they are a secluded village.  I’m not sure what this place was like 50 years ago but I would guess it hasn’t changed much.  Maybe what we see as bad (such as the hitting) was not bad 50 years ago.  I honestly don’t know much about the world 50 years ago, especially in Ghana, so maybe I’m still trying to make excuses for her.  What I do know is that this is a collectivist culture and sometimes people from individualist cultures have a hard time understanding the differences.  When I talk to people about my experiences they think it’s so horrible, but I keep thinking maybe these differences are just cultural differences that are hard for us to understand because at a young age we are taught, directly or indirectly, that we do things correctly.  I am not saying that it’s ok that they are in this situation of living fully, but I think people who come to help need to realize we can’t change their culture into our own.  We need to embrace their culture and learn from their perspective what needs to be changed.

Day 4: We left for Accra, which is about 1.5 hours away from Tema in the morning.  Accra has a huge market that we wanted to check out.  We were wondering around and went into a drum shop.  They taught us how to play a reggae song.  It was so cool!  We ended up really getting along with a man named Abraham and he showed us around the market and pointed us to where we could get the specific things we were looking for.  After that a group of about 5 Ghanaians and about 10 of us talked for hours about life, our different cultures, and God.  It was amazing.  It was definitely the highlight of Ghana for me.  It was so interesting to hear the different perspectives about these topics.  At about 5 we went back home by train (which was way cleaner/nicer than the el which make me laugh). 

Day 5: I debated putting all the details about today in this because I don’t want people to worry about me, but I think it was an important experience that I had and a vital piece to my reflection.  Julie really wanted to go to the beach the last day for her birthday, so me, Julie, Kat, Steve and Sean went to the beach about 1.5 hours away from Tema.  We just relaxed on the beach and just talked about everything that had happened on our trip so far.  We ordered lunch there and talked to the waitress for about a half hour.  Kat even convinced me to ride a horse along the beach.  It was my first time on a horse, it was very cool!  At about 3 we headed out to make sure we were back on the ship on time.  We paid for our bill and started to head out. The waitress ran over to us and said we did not pay the full amount.  For about a half hour we stood there patiently telling them what we ordered, how much it was, and how much we gave her.  Throughout that half hour it went from us owing 10 dollars up to 50 dollars.  By this time there was the 5 of us and about 20 of them, some working at the restaurant and some were taxi drivers.  At first they were all on the waitress’s side, but once we explained to the taxi’s drivers about half were on our side.  All of the sudden in turned into a huge verbal fight.  Kat started crying because they were all attacking her so I was trying to calm her down because it was only making it worse.  The taxi drivers were all yelling at each other and the other 3 I was with were all in their own fights.  It took us awhile to realize that one of the guys that worked at the restaurant was punching Julie.  Once Steve realized this he made the 3 of us girls sit in the car.  He was so mad that one of the guys was punching a girl and was screaming at them.  The taxi driver told the other two to get in the car so we could leave before it got worse.  It was silent in the car for about 30 seconds and then we all busted out laughing, out of fright more than anything else.  I was laughing and crying at the same time.  The taxi driver said that was the craziest thing he has ever witnessed working and ensured us we would get back safe and on time, which we did.  We are all safe and just happy it wasn’t worse.  Julie has pretty bad bruises, but she’s a tough girl so she’s fine.  

Reflection:  I have so many thoughts, I’m not even sure if I fully understand them yet.  I was upset that happened on the last day because I didn’t want to leave Ghana with a negative experience.  The more I thought about it though, the more I thought there is good and bad everywhere.  It is not fair to make a broad statement about the people here.  I did have some negative experiences, but I also had some really positive ones.  I kept thinking about stereotypes while I was here.  I wanted to know what they thought of us.  One person told us that we are white so we have millions of dollars so we need to buy something from him.  I was even asked many times from random people to buy things for them.  We were also approached and told “We Ghanaians are so nice to you people, and all you think of us is that we are monkeys.”  That really upset us and said that we are embarrassed he thought that of us.  We can’t change our history, but we are here to change our future.  It can never change though if people will not let go of all of these stereotypes.  It’s easy for me to say all that people in Ghana wanted was my money and they didn’t really respect me.  That is not true.  That would be like saying all the people in America are lazy and rich.  Not true.  People need to stop generalizing others, otherwise nothing will be able to change.  One of my friends said she was in the market being harassed to buy something.  She found herself getting irritated and raising her voice at the salesman.  She said it was frustrating because they both had preconceived notions about each other and the whole situation was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Another thing I keep thinking about is we are encouraged to be travelers, not tourists.  I feel like this country I succeeded with that, but I also took some big risks that could have not had a good outcome.  It’s frustrating because I don’t want to do just tourist things, but I feel like being a traveler has some big risks that I might not want to take sometimes.  I try to be as smart and conscious about what I am doing, but you just never know what’s in the heads of the people around you. 

On a little better, or at least different, note, these are some of the things me and Abraham talked about that I found really interesting.  Over dinner we started talking about God, because I noticed there was a lot of advertising and influence of God all around.  He started talking about people being gay and said that in Ghana it is a controversial issue, but he believes that there is nothing wrong with it and that there is a biological influence.  He said the only thing that he is confused about is that why God would make you that way when you need children to take care of you when you’re older.  In Ghana you need your children to take care of you.  There are no places like nursing homes to go when you are older and cannot take care of yourself anymore.  Then he asked what my thoughts were about it, and I said I agreed that there is nothing wrong with it and I have many friends who are gay.  I said the difference I feel like in the U.S. is that many gay couples adopt if they decide to start a family.  He said that many people in Ghana do not like that people in the U.S. are adopting children from Ghana because family is the most important thing in their culture.  He said he doesn’t care if the dad is dead and the mom’s a drunk, the child should know where they are from.  If you take the child away from Ghana, you are taking them away from their pride.  He said he wishes the child could grow up in Ghana and get the beginning of an education and then be adopted by a family in the U.S. when they are 18 so by that time they will remember who they are and where they came from.  I just thought this perspective was so interesting.  I would have never thought of these issues this way.  It was cool to have a conversation from the other side and get their views about topics such as this.

Us in our Ghana gear

 

“When you are sitting in your own house, you don’t learn anything. You must get out of your house to learn.”  ~Ghanaian proverb