What Am I Doing Here? And Why Am I Going There? (to Ghana!)

I thought the shots might be the deal-breaker when I first thought I’d volunteer in West Africa this summer.
Yellow fever, Hepatitis A & B, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio booster: add drugs for typhoid, malaria and “Traveler’s Diarrhea.” The list was daunting.
The thought of living in a place where flush-less, “squat toilets” are the rule, hot showers happen by heating water over an open-pit fire and drizzling it overhead didn’t deter me nearly as much as the thought of all those needles.

I was surprised when the Health Dept. nurse gave me almost all of them at once.
“Are you sure?” I queried tremulously as she prepared the harpoons.
“We give multiple vaccinations to 7 month old babies all the time,” she retorted, tidily putting me in my place.

Amazingly the next day, I had only a slightly sore arm, mild headache, and about five minutes of facial flushing. Looks like that was the easy part.

If someone had told me a few months ago that I’d be going to Ghana as a part of the Global Volunteer Network’s effort (http://www.volunteer.org.nz/ghana/) to help with poverty reduction programs, I’d have said they were as crazy as some say I am for doing it.
It all came about the way such things often seem to for me, after research and that subliminal accumulation of experiences that says “GO for it!”

It was an idea that took root as I thought I’d like to reach out beyond my own personal comfort zone, while doing something truly worthwhile.
I have been blessed and giving back has always been a part of my life. I’d been away from that for a while. I was 10 when my Mother took me to the Red Cross to roll bandages. I’ve been volunteering ever since.

And now at 63, my evolution from domestic, to international volunteer is taking me to a place I never thought much about before. Some might go there for an exotic vacation to see the forest monkeys, beautiful beaches, or the grim historical sites from which more than 3 million Ghanaians were brought as slaves to the USA. But as I have since learned, there are many people in the USA and here in SW Florida, who have been there, made friends, and will go back.

I reassessed my life these last few years, having the chance to reverse a decision I made 30 years ago and turn an old passion into a new career. I answered my long-standing question: What might have happened had I made a different decision then? The experience has been heady, rewarding, even humbling.
Becoming a jazz singer again, has been fun. (http://www.kathryntaubert.com/)
It also reinforced something else I learned over the years.

Life’s not just about what we get out of it. It’s more about what we give back. It’s not just about what we know, but what we do, and for whom.
It’s in the giving we get; the extending a hand that we receive; the letting go, we acquire. It’s in caring about others, that we find our true purpose.
I missed the spirit of cooperation among people who are working for a common, humanitarian goal. I missed the sense of doing something truly worthwhile, because it needs doing. Metaphorically speaking, I missed “rolling bandages.”
I’ve spent the last five years taking time for myself to heal from a series of difficult personal losses. Taking care of oneself, too, is healthy. It’s the balancing act that’s often difficult. I’ve been lucky to spend that time doing some fun things.

I’ve done about every kind of volunteer job there is in my life: donated time, money, experience, sweat, and tears to more organizations than I can name. I even wore the not-for-profit executive hat for a while.
And they all had one thing in common.
There’s always help in the USA, and millions of volunteers helping the needy find it. We live in the greatest country in the world. I won’t stop volunteering here.

But I decided to extend my reach to a place where I could make a substantive contribution for the greatest good in the shortest amount of time, while immersing myself in a new (to me) culture.
I settled on the Volta River Region, near the town of Ho, in southeastern Ghana, the first region to achieve British decolonialization in Africa under the guidance of Kwame Nkrumah. A native African educated in the United States, this “ Father of African Nationalism[i]” was the first to help fulfill the dream of a free and independent African nation.

Democratic Ghana is a country of hard-working people who are trying to reduce poverty through improved educational opportunities for their youth, economic development, greater access to modern services, technology, and health care. Christians and Muslims live and work together peacefully.
Environmentally conscious, education-loving citizens of Ghana are eager to increase their opportunities for a better life in an increasingly Globalized economy.

Children grow up learning that they are loved and nurtured by an entire village. They have opportunities of which their parents only dreamed, but they lack resources, especially the skills, supplies and funds to help.
The more I learn about Ghana’s potential for even greater presence on the world stage, the more exciting it is: a developing country where much is happening that we don’t hear about because it doesn’t involve terrorists, bloodshed, wars or economic melt-downs. Ghanaians are asking for help learning how to do for themselves, not merely having others do it for them.
I’ll be living with my host-family in a rural village, Abutia-Kloe, three hours from the capital of Accra, and working with B.R.I.D.G.E, the Global Volunteer Network partner (www.bridgingdevelopment.org/) for five weeks in summer, 2009. My specific assignment will be the topic of a later entry.

The first hurdle was making the decision where to go.
The second one was all those needles and pills. (I was a bit disconcerted by the “LIVE TYPHOID VIRUS” on one package.)

The rest of the substantial “To-Do” list will be the topic of a future entry. Another will discuss the interesting questions and comments from those who learn about my plan. Ranging from excited support to outright horror, they have given me additional food for thought into the nature of my venture, and human nature itself.
I will also submit regular entries about a totally new (to me) culture, rural African Village life, the people, projects, disappointments, and hopefully, successes. And what it’s like to live in a place where life is very different from any place I have ever lived as a US citizen.

What will it be like for a 63 year-old widow, resurrected jazz singer, former corporate executive, and chronic volunteer from a privileged country, to live with indigenous people for a month in a rural West African village, without electricity, hot running water, cell phone, Wal-Mart, or take-out?

I can do anything for a month.

There are educated, dedicated, talented Africans already helping their native country move into the future. My role will be based on my professional experiences in my former career, assessing needs, setting goals, management training, fundraising and grant writing. As English is Ghana’s official language, young Ghanaians want to hear it from native speakers.

Volunteers from the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Germany and The Netherlands, among others participate in these programs. I will be assigned to a project with perhaps one other international volunteer, working with our African liaisons in the B.R.I.D.G.E office and surrounding Villages.
What can I accomplish in 30 days? I can make specific recommendations to improve existing poverty-reduction & education programs, help set goals for new ones, or write a grant template for funding. And most certainly, speak my native tongue while learning theirs (Ewe), and make friends of some of these people who will, no doubt, change my life. Yet again.

I plan to submit Blog entries once a week while in Ghana. I’m told, however, that the electricity in the town of Ho is intermittent. And since I’ll be living in a village without electricity, and working out of the office in Ho, I will need to coordinate entries into my blog on the days the power is available.
There is much preparation to do. The more I learn about the people, culture and projects, the more the more “right” it feels. And yes, there is a certain nervous anticipation.

After all, I am reaching outside my comfort zone. But that’s what growth is all about, isn’t it? Can there be any greater legacy than enhancing one’s own personal growth while helping others?

One person can’t change the world.
Nor can nations change it through violence and domination.
We can, however, make the space around us just a little bit better.
If we take that space to places where the need is great, we can spread the wealth of spirit far beyond our own shores.

I like to imagine what the world would be like if everyone did that within their own space, wherever it is.
One doesn’t have to go to Africa to make a difference. I just decided it was time for me to take what I have learned to a place where I have a chance to contribute something substantive, and learn something really new for, and perhaps even about, myself.
In some way, maybe it will show that one person can make even a small difference no matter how daunting it seems.

The journey to our future begins with a single step.
And this is mine.

Stay tuned.

1) Kwame Nkrumah, The Father of African Nationalism, David Birmingham, Ohio University Press, rev. 1990