You're Not Slaying Dragons

One week til my half-way point, and I can’t help but feeling like I’m in some sort of limbo. I have found that I’ve adapted well enough to get myself around and to successfully do my job, and now I don’t know how to make this a successful trip. My perspective has changed in so many different ways, it’s hard to know how to make decisions with it.

When I first arrived in Ghana, I very much had the American “if-it’s-broken-I-can-fix-it” attitude. I think most American’s have this attitude. In a sense, we’re raised with it. We’re taught to be ambitious and think outside the box in order to succeed. Our own government does it, deciding to march into Syria or Iraq to solve their civil disputes, putting everyone with little money on welfare, etc.

Coming to Africa with that kind of perspective was not going to help anything, I quickly realized. There is too much to DO with that kind of perspective. You see open sewers with black sludge going down the streets. You see people dumping and burning their trash on the side of the road, with no organized trash collection system. Half-completed buildings lay scattered across Ghana’s villages, uncompleted due to the government forcing people to come in and get permits before they build and no one comes in. I go to these schools where children are taught math, science, social studies, English, French, and other subjects, yet no one knows about how to appropriately wash their hands or brush their teeth. I go to the Junior High with kids ranging from 15-18 years old, and most of the kids don’t know how STI’s work or how you can get them. Because of this, many of the kids are already having unprotected sex and already have symptoms of STI’s.

It’s overwhelming. If I wanted to change the Ghanaian culture to what I perceived as the superior “Americanized” way, nothing would ever happen. The thing is, most Ghanaians know that they could have life better. Most desire to have an easier life. But they don’t know of anything different. They don’t know that they could have those sewage systems covered, for instance, or that they could have cheap, easy access to health care and their child wouldn’t die of malaria or tuberculosis. America is seen as the golden country of opportunity and wealth, but no one can afford to travel there, and America makes their visas difficult to get because the government knows people won’t go back once they get to the UnitedStates. As an American, I definitely am a picture of extreme wealth. Just my being here says that I had enough money to travel, whereas most Ghanaians could never make enough to afford a plane ticket in their lifetime. Everything I have says I’m wealthy. But what I’m trying to say is that if I want change, it is simply too big to handle on my own, and I am too much of an outsider. I’ve realized that if Ghana/Africa is going to have a higher way of living, the people have to want it and demand it on their own. Change has to come from within. America tossing them financial aid may help temporarily, but even that has a negative element because it encourages the attitude of hand-outs. I talked with my dad about this on the phone the other day, and he gave me a lot of comfort. He said that not every day is going to be like “slaying dragons.” You listen and observe so you can better understand how to apply yourself, then go from there. With the “helping profession”, you must look at your successes from the small changes people make. In my case, if I can get a boy to think twice about using a condom, then I’ve done my job. “Even Mother Teresa got discouraged”, my dad said.

I have found that I feel a lot of fulfillment when I teach, despite the discouragement and not knowing how to fully help in this county. I’m not sharing anything super complex or profound, but it feels really wholesome to me to stand back and watch how the children have participated and absorbed what I have taught. I like to think I did a good job when people ask a lot of questions, because I see that as their mind solidifying around the subject. There are such simple things that people don’t quite understand, and I’m sure has everything to do with culture. Last week I taught about Typhoid Fever to the village of Nyame Bekyere (Nyahmeh Bechray=God Provides). When teaching about how and when to wash their hands, a lady told me she saw on TV that you should wash your hands with running water, and she was asking if it matters whether or not you use a bowl to wash your hands or if you always use running water. For someone who came from a country where I ALWAYS had running water, of course I never personally asked this question. Just yesterday I was teaching HIV/AIDS/STI’s at the junior high, and I got so many questions about menstruation that my mom or teachers had answered for me years and years ago. Girls asked if pain in the abdomen was normal during their periods or if breast tenderness was normal. Girls who had just started their period didn’t know if it was normal to have a little blood one time, a lot another, or to go a few months without having a period. They didn’t understand ovulation or what hormones were. A junior high kid asked me if blood in his urine meant he was sick, and he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned his kidneys or bladder (I was using a translator, for the record). I even had a teacher ask me what it meant when you pee and you have two streams instead of one, and that the popular belief meant that if you had two streams, you were having twins. There are so many small things that people never get to ask questions about, and it simultaneously shows to me just how many potential health problems people have here. It’s sad to see how much knowledge people miss out on. Heck, if I ever wanted to know something, I had a library full of information or I could get the internet at any time at school or home, not to mention I had educated parents and siblings who taught me well. They only have their teachers, their parents, their peers, and centuries-worth of myths, suspicious, and taboos to learn from. So in a way, it’s reassuring to know I can teach with my basic knowledge. Heaven knows how unqualified I feel for this job.