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| � | Oh my, how to begin. It is so hard to come up with words to describe my experience in Ghana. It was something that changed me so completely that even words don�t have the same definition any more. The thoughts I thought at the beginning of that year seem so foolish to me now that I have lived a year in Ghana and returned once again to my homeland. If this writing seems jumbled or confusing, forgive me, for the thoughts themselves tumble around inside of me with no clear order or objective. If this had been a school paper I would have made an effort to make it pretty. But since it is a personal search for peace, you get it as is. Well enough introduction, here goes the best I can do� | � |
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� | Ghana taught me a lot. Like most USAmericans I grew up with little knowledge of Africa in general and nothing about the country of Ghana. I stumbled into Africa the way I stumbled into a lot of the things I have learned in my life. It was the hardest to study and most obscure so I was going to conquer knowledge of the continent! Being conquered by the country of Ghana, one little country in a HUGE continent was not in my plans. Yet Ghana questioned and shook my values, my culture, my sensibility, indeed I would say my very soul was shaking. | � |
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� | I have never been a quitter. I may not like something, and you can be guaranteed I will complain longer than the day is long, but I won�t give up. I�m like a leach that won�t let go. If the ship is going down I�ll still be clinging defying the flood. That determination is the only thing that allowed me to stick out the entire school year. Several times I began to head to the travel agent to make arrangements for an early return, but then I would be a quitter. I once even vowed to swim home (ok, more than once)! | � |
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� | I have never faced anything so hard in my entire life (yes, I admit my life has been very easy, but it was still hard). I wasn�t quite sure what to expect. I had grown up with the dire images of the hunger inflated bellies of starving children and news of terrible wars. I had learned in my classes of great nations, valiant freedom fighters and long struggles to gain recognition. So what do you glean from that? How can you know what to expect when an entire continent has been neglected by our educational system? And how does Ghana fit into all those fragments? | � |
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� | I saw the poverty all right. Saw the folks stand and wait in long lines to pay a dime to pee in a hole. Saw ten houses stuffed in a space the size of a room. Saw flies choose between the gutter and the food, often choosing both. Traveled to a village getting their first electric poles, only to return to the capital and find power rationing since the rain wasn�t filling up the lake enough for the dam. Got chased around by little kids making school money by getting gifts from foreigners. Made more than their parents did, those kids. | � |
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� | That was the first poverty I saw. The second poverty I saw made my heart even sicker than the begging kids. I saw the gaping poverty of my own country and my own people. Here we are a people given so much, people who have never spent a night without food. People who have two toilets and haven�t seen a latrine since scout camp. People who have never gone more than a few hours without electric and haven�t ever had the water stop flowing from their spigots. And yet� A people who�s wants are always greater than what they have. A people who work for endless hours earning things that they never have the time for anyway. A people who abandon their kids to daycare and then wonder why they don�t understand them. A people in such a rush they can�t stop to smell the roses, or chat with a friend or smile at a neighbor. It makes me sick. Keeps me up at night tossing and turning. Crying out to Ghana asking why? Why have you taken off my blinders? It was so much easier before I saw! | � |
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� | Now what do I do? How do you answer those pleading eyes and out-stretched hands? How do you slow yourself down when every inch of your being calls for speed? How do you spread news of Ghana�s great wealth without blinding yourself to her poverty? How do you confront the USA�s poverty without loosing yourself in her wealth? How do you aid without further entrenching a terribly failing system? I have a dream of helping. Has to be the right help you know. Not the kind of help that brings dependence and environmental destruction. Not the kind of help that tried planting wheat in a dessert, or that put up electric poles without supplying the power. No a helpful help. A help that brings relief from poverty without destroying the wealth. But how do you do that? How do you better life without shaping it into the frenzy we call life? These are the questions that turn my dream into a nightmare that constantly plagues me. That chase me with begging eyes and out-stretched hands. | � |
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� | I think I learned more about my own country and myself than I did about Ghana and her people. I learned I�m not as strong and brave as I think I am, rather just a stubborn fighter who never quits even when I am shaking in my boots. I was real disappointed in myself when I first came home. Didn�t learn much of anything I had set out to learn. The little Twi I knew deteriorated. I was too caught up in school to venture very far from the gates of the cushy university so learned very little about Ghana. Didn�t even learn much from those classes I was so caught up on. In short I felt I was a complete and absolute failure. I felt I was such a poor learner I hadn�t even deserved the great gift of Ghana that I had been given. | � |
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� | Now as I try to put jumbled, frightened and confused thoughts on paper I begin to see what I have learned. I might not be where my lofty ambitions would have liked, but I have been changed. I now think that being changed is just as important a lesson to learn. I no longer take my comfort for granted. I no longer need quite so much. I can slow myself down and enjoy a walk in the rain, or watch the flowers of spring cover the trees. | � |
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� | My hardest lesson is that some question just can�t be answered. While I have learned to find comfort in what I have I am suddenly more keenly aware of the comfort others lack. I walk by the park and feel an unexplainable grief as I pass a man sleeping under the newspaper. What do you do? How can you help without hurting? I walk on, shaken, guilty, having done nothing since I couldn�t figure out the answer. I don�t like being defeated by questions. Every question has to have an answer. The questions Ghana raised only bring more questions. Questions that deny answers, refuse to be calmed and quieted. So how do you deal with them? Yet another tormenting question. | � |
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� | Often I find myself trying to avoid the questions. When people ask me about Ghana, I simply reply, �oh, it was a neat experience�. Can�t begin to tell them about it. Would all come out strange, keeping them shifting in front of me wondering when I�ll get finished with my story. I do the superficial stuff. Drag my Ghanaian clothes out of the closet and parade them to church. Funny, I didn�t where them in Ghana, too afraid to. I got the art hanging all over my wall, so does my family. Nothing deeper. I can�t talk about it, just hurts too much, so I avoid it, hide in my bright clothes and smile at the �experience�. Even now, in this epistle where I promised myself I would face the questions I dance around them. | � |
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� | One way I have sought to answer the questions is to do more community service. Kind of inflate my ego so that when I walk by the man in the park I can say, well I helped serve dinner at the shelter. Doesn�t work. The more you give the more you realize you have and the more you need to give. The questions just get bigger and louder. You feel great while doing the service, but you still have to walk past that man in the park. Still have to face your own great wealth and others great need. So I still struggle with how to confront the first poverty I learned to see while in Ghana. The question remains frustratingly unanswered, so I move on to the next. | � |
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� | I weep for my country. I see so many run so fast and yet never quite reach the finish line. Working to make the family �comfortable� and so never having time to be with them. Our values are coming apart at the seams. Can�t figure out how our youth got so mad they have to bring guns to school. Can�t figure out how with two working adults, the bills still aren�t paid. Can�t figure out what to do with our religions. The country of wealth and prosperity, �superpower� and big brother to the world and yet we don�t even know where to turn to confront our own poverty. I vote. I try to sneak in comments to those I know about how nice it is to slow down, �to smell the roses�. One small voice lost in the hectic rat race of the American Way. Unanswered, unsolved, I move on. | � |
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� | I�m not sure where I fit in all this. I prayed to God, and begged him to send me a sign. You know something big. I�m not Elijah after all, I can�t here that little whisper. I�ll take that burning bush Moses had, now that�s a sign! Surely with one of those I can answer the questions! So God sent me a sign. Had a painter come put it up right outside of the library where I work. Beautiful stencil work in the colors of the hospital: �Therefore, do be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of its self. Matthew 6:34�. Thanks God, not what I was looking for but at least it was big. So I wait and try not to worry. Hope and trust that one day God will allow me to find answers to the questions in my head. But then again, maybe God won�t. Maybe some questions just can�t be answered. Maybe there are some questions that are supposed to keep us on our toes, always watchful for when we can be used. That is the lesson Ghana gave me. | � |
