February 13 – 16th, 2012
After a long 9 days at sea we finally ported in Tema, Ghana. I got off the ship and immediately headed for my home stay in Senase village with a group of 33 other Semester at Sea students. Of all the ports on our boisterous itinerary this was the port that I had no idea what to expect of. Of course I knew that the poverty was immense in West Africa, and I had written many college papers on child labor in this part of the world, but none of Professor Nalbach’s global studies lectures could have prepared me for the culture shock that I faced. Don’t get me wrong- I completely enjoyed every sweaty, dirty moment of Ghana, but it does not go without saying that Ghana is very far behind the westernized, modern world advances.
A Few Things I Learned in Ghana:
1. Goats and chickens are everywhere. There are stray goats, not stray dogs, but supposedly after eating God only knows what off the ground, the goats return home at night.
2. Air conditioning is such an amazing, yet completely unappreciated luxury. Now I am from South Carolina so I do know about the humidity and hot weather, but there was just something all too unfamiliar about the dry African heat. It was especially difficult attempting to sleep in my sleeping bag liner in this intense heat, but oddly enough I somewhat miss the heat as I sit in my freezing cabin on the ship.
3. The food was actually quite good. You must acquire a taste for yams, rice, plantains, bread and beans, but overall I’d say it could have been a lot worse. I chose to stay safe and just say I was vegetarian all week after tasting the mystery meat/fish stew and then learning that the rat we hit on the way to the village was later cooked an eaten by our home stay mom (talk about road kill…ew!)
4. Fan Ice. It is so delicious. Ice cream in pouches… a much needed invention in the U.S. Water was also sold in plastic pouches. I’m still trying to decide if all this plastic is any better for the environment than bottles. I will say though that Ghana re-uses glass bottles for the soft drinks. I think this is great in the way of reducing and reusing, but I also realize something of this measure would not work properly in the U.S. due to the disturbing amount of sodas we consume.
5. Ghanaians are very innovative. They work so hard for the very little they do have so they create useful ways of carrying things. First is the way in which babies are carried. Women carry children on their backs wrapped in fabric which is tied in their front. It sounds weird, but I found it amazing I mean think of all the things you could get done without having to carry your baby around all the time and it is painless, unlike carrying a baby on your hip, just saying. I even bought fabric to try this with my own baby, very far in the future don’t worry Mom! Secondly, they literally carry any and everything on their heads. From sewing machines, buckets of food, to huge water pails, I don’t know how they build that much neck and back strength but it is very respectable.
6. Running water is such a luxury and I will never again be unappreciative of the high degree of sanitation we have in the U.S. I never imagined life without it and this was probably one of the hardest things to get used to in all of my time in Ghana. Toilets, no matter where you go, are simply concrete walls where you squat and pee on the concrete or tile floor and attempt to not splatter it everywhere. And to number two you head for the outhouse where you balance on two 2x4s praying that you don’t fall into the hole and that you have somewhat decent aim. Sorry for the vivid descriptions, but I wanted you all to get the picture. Oh, and need I not forget to mention that you shower in the exact same spot as you pee! After getting my bucket of water I was able to somewhat manage this outdoor shower ordeal, while children watched me from afar as well as a dog and chicken almost walked in. Just a completely weird experience, I laughed the entire time, so I guess it could have been a lot worse.
As the things above highlighted, my adventure throughout Ghana was my biggest culture shock yet. Dominica and Brazil had nothing on this! When the week began I was very homesick and wanted nothing more than to have my American luxuries and just text on my I-phone. This changed SO much throughout the week though, of course I still missed home but more so I just realized how blessed I am to even call America my home. When you live with a family who literally has nothing, yet always has a smile on their face in makes you wonder what do they really have to be so happy about. But, I quickly came to realize that to the Ghanaians it is not about having things. Sure they would love a new TV without an antenna or a car that was all one color, but most important to them is that their children receive an education. It was so difficult for me to hear from child after child and parent after parent that most children do not get the opportunity to get an education after 5th grade. Maybe I am sheltered or just plain stupid, but I never imagined that an education was not a guaranteed thing. How can a government decide that a primary (elementary) education is all that its population needs? How do you ever expect a nation to grow and have a promising future when the children are forced out to work? Many Ghanaian children work as fishing laborers earning around $2 US a day and many others become part of the cocoa production sector, where they are sold by their parents with a small possibility ever seeing their families again.
I’m still just so dumb-founded and sad for the Ghanaians, but when I look back at my visit they were never asking me to feel sorry for them, they were telling me just how lucky I truly am and even more so they were asking for my help and understanding. I struggled a lot with this, just trying to think about how one person could help with such a horrifying issue and suddenly the answer came so easily- spread the word. If I, a young college educated woman, did not know how large and devastating this problem was then chances are there are many more who do not fully understand as well. If you listen to nothing else I say, listen to this. Visit thesenaseproject.com. This was the village I went to, and the Senase Project is an NGO that was created just 2 years ago when previous Semester at Sea students visited the same village. The project has helped this community so much; honestly so much more than I ever expected before going. One school there now has walls, something that did not exist just years before. Now, as the NGO has raised more money they want to build more classrooms, but during my visit the community had to decide whether the money would go toward classrooms or to a hospital, since they do not have one. I was completely shocked; I could not believe that they seriously had to choose between classrooms and a hospital. I realized how spoiled we are in America, in my hometown alone I have a huge hospital (that we always complain about, not realizing how blessed we are to even have one) and probably 20 schools (all of which have walls and state of the art electronics and over the top sports facilities). Even more so I realized just how much we take our government and infrastructure for granted. Everyone always wants bigger and better, it is human nature after all, but will anything ever be good enough for us? I have to believe that if all Americans could be lucky enough to see what I was able to witness at my stay in Senase village that we could be happy with the wonderful things we have and that we would even find it in our hearts and wallets to help those who needed our help. We all complain about “being broke” or America’s recession, but I can promise that none of us truly know what being poor is like or what going without food is like or what begging feels like. And for the most part, our government would never let that happen to us, yet another thing Ghana has shown me to be thankful for.
I’m sorry this was somewhat of a rant, but I hope that those of you reading this will truly grasp how beautiful and blessed that your life is, just as I realized in my time in Ghana. One of my personal goals for this voyage was to come away with a sense of gratefulness and to appreciate all the little things that I am so lucky to have. I can honestly and thankfully say that Ghana and even more importantly, God taught me a lot about myself and my life. And while all that I left behind me was still unsettled, I knew that change could occur and that humanity was not evil, we really do want to help others. I also gained a sense of peace and happiness knowing that while I had a rough few days, that I had not focused on the negative but rather learned more than I ever imagined possible and even had a lot of fun. The Ghanaian people taught me that my life will be amazing not because of the things I have, but because of the people in my life who make me happy.
