Dancing through Ghana.

Looking back on previous newsletters I am forced to acknowledge that they project a sense of humour and light heartedness. Ghana holds many side splitting events in its hands, which can cause the average person to drop everything, stand with mouth hanging open and simply roar with laughter. However, the harsh reality is that it also holds a lot of pain, hardship and poverty that breaks the average person down, causing you to drop to your knees and weep in sheer desperation and shame.

This has unfortunately been one of those emotionally draining weeks. I must apologise in advance for the lack of humour contained herein and prepare you also for the heart ache.

It all began last week on one of our many car journeys home after work. I spotted a strikingly beautiful young girl, child in fact, selling packets of water at the side of the road. These packets of water weighed heavy in the steel bucket balanced precociously on a piece of rag on her head. The strain it put on her slight and thin neck was obvious as the veins strained through her beautiful dark skin on her neck and shoulders. What first caught my eye was how captivatingly gorgeous she was. She could genuinely have been, had she been fortunate enough to have been discovered, one of the future faces of glossy magazines overseas or at home. The second thing to catch my eye was the very obvious bump she could no longer hide, a sign of fairly advanced pregnancy. I asked my driver, Kwesi, to pull over and buy a packet of water from her. At the same time I asked him to ask her a few questions in her native tongue, Twi, which he duly translated back for me when we proceeded to drive on. She lives in Nima, an awfully bad part of Accra. She was raped and she has no idea how far pregnant she is, but thinks she may be due any day now. She is twelve years old.

I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I battled to breath, and my throat ached as I battled to control the tears that wanted to flow, but I was too ashamed to show my driver my emotional side. Later that night at home, not wishing to eat any supper, I finally broke down as I kissed Morgan good night and tucked her safely into bed.

Driving to work the next morning glancing out my car window, I viewed Accra, Ghana, in a new light, with a newly acquired anger, guilt and shame. Grown men wander the streets with torn and dirty T-shirts, barely enough material left to cling to their thin and drawn bodies. They wear no pants. They do not own any and cannot afford any. This is a common site. Lots and lots of naked children with runny noses and huge, gorgeous brown eyes. The one saving grace, I guess, is that with their lack of clothing, Ghana never gets cold.

On first arriving in Ghana, you tend to mock the lazy, as I mentioned so many Ghanaians are spotted sleeping their days away. Oh yes, many are simply lazy. However, many are also plain exhausted, sick and under fed.

Even though children start school and learn to read and write so much earlier than our children, they also drop out of school and are put to work by desperately poor parents, so the lack of education and progress in going forward is evident. The abundance of crooked little hunched over old people sitting on the pavements, waiting to die, in fact looking like they would welcome it, is alarming. At this stage anger tends to set in. You ask yourself why do they keep having children? You want to jump out of your car and shake some sense into them. You want to scoop up armfuls of little children, take them home, bath them and fatten them up. But then what? Utter depression sets in when you realize you cannot save Ghana and its children. When that realization sets in, you go through a mirage of emotions…great sadness, unbearable guilt, burning anger and annoyance at their clear stupidity……..tears…..and finally to be honest…you just want to close your eyes and not look out of the window anymore. I am so thankful that my children go to school everyday and do not have to look out the windows. I wish to protect them, as selfish as that may sound, because yes, there is a humbling lesson to be learnt, but just not yet, as this lesson is a very harsh one for many to handle.

Victer was meant to travel to Benin this week. He asked me to accompany him so that I could get a new perspective on other areas outside of Accra. I was looking forward to the pending trip, until he also mentioned that the poverty outside of Accra in the villages is even worse than Accra itself. Upon reflection, I have declined his offer until stronger days.

I feel I do not need to continue. I feel you have probably got a fair idea…..I do not need to mention the maimed, the babies covered in flies being breast fed on sagging breasts while mother sits next to a rubbish skip overflowing with stench, disease and rubbish. The sick, the mosquitoes, the smell of decaying rubbish and urine, the helplessly deranged walking the streets, the lack of work……. I could go on and on…..

Maybe, as some tell me, I am too sensitive and emotional. But in this last week I have battled to find anything funny or humorous in Ghana, and therefore I do not want to lie to you back home either. This is reality. This is what it is like. Heart breaking.

Then on the way to work this morning, a child danced on the side of the road with a huge grin on his face. Not much older than three years old, and I smiled back.