Written on Tuesday, August 17th.

I was shivering, as I stood just a few meters from my compound and stared out at the sky. I had just woken up, as usual, around 5 am, and the sun was just about to rise. Everyday over the past week I’ve walked out of my compound upon waking up, and experienced the sunrise as completely as possible. In the direction of the river, East towards Togo, I’ve watched the dancing shades of orange and blue on the horizon: sometimes coming through clouds, sometimes not. I’ve stood there, in the crisp morning breeze of the full-blown rainy season, and focused on everything: the cooing of the roosters, the guck on my feet as my slippers sink into the rained-on red soil, the freshness of the air in my lungs as a take a deep breath, the smell of fires as people start to heat up water, the women pumping the borehole I can just make out in the distant field, and vast, expansive farmland – maize and corn growing at rapid pace now.

I’ve absorbed the atmosphere. Lapped it all up. Throughout this week I have pushed to really live in the moment. To soak in every ounce of my everyday life in Saboba. Every so often my heart leaps, jumps in my throat, and I get goosebumps: I’m leaving Saturday morning. And now, sitting in my compound in the dark using the laptop screen’s own light to see the keyboard, I let something else flood through me: memories. Disconnected, random, incomplete flashes of the last 3 1/2 months:

Sweat. Lock-step. Running on the dirt path, morning after morning. To the river, and back. Children joining me for 50 m just for kicks.

“psss. ay! salaminga!”

“obruni, help me move this table!”

“okalanja byebye!!!”

Sweat. Early in the morning, empty office, every day, just off a bike ride from the village and my morning bath is rendered useless.

Speeding across the savanna on a motorbike. Wind in my hair, beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Waves and greetings.

Running through a forested area, slightly lost, in the dark, looking for the main road before the rain hits.

Sitting with Thomas’s kids: Bright, Vincent, and Prince, on the road under a streetlamp, showing them pictures of Canada.

Smiles. Laughter. Gretchen. Janet. Lufka. Jethro. Dana. Elijah. Phillip. Mainsa. Hanna. My Ghanaian family that makes me laugh after even the toughest day of work.

Yousif. Bad Nigerian films, egg-and-bread, long discussions. Sacrifice. Family. Brotherhood. Reliance. Trust.

Frustrations. Anger. Confusion. Reflection. Gut-wrenching decisions that tear me between values I never thought I’d compromise. Remorse at bad decisions, where the learning is just not enough to justify them.

Markets. Trucks. Busses. Fertilizer bags and coal. Questions. Laughter. Then answers.

Learning. Learning. Learning. Pushing. Striving. Being wrong. Being wrong again. Pummeled by reality, defeated by circumstance, aided by people. Getting up, stronger than before.

Beating hot sun. Beating hard rains. Thunderstorms like movies. Sheltering under a tree, a yam storage made from elephant grass.

Silence. Serenity.

Smiles.

Hardship.

Compassion.

“We’re managing…”

Images and events, emotions and thoughts, smells and feelings and sounds from the last 3.5 months spin through my head. I let my mind wander in reflection…

—

Over 13 Years Ago.
Karachi, Pakistan.

Our white Suzuki sedan rolled through a narrow, crowded alley. The sun had just set, but the darkness had taken hold already and the strip of street food-sellers we were driving through were swamped with business from the dinner crowd. This part of Karachi, called Commercial Area, is home to shops and eats of every variety. The evening prayer call rang in the distance, and the perpetual heat mixed with the smell of fresh naan hung heavy in the humid air.

I was a kid. Sitting in the back of the white car, our driver was driving with my mother and me in the back seats. I don’t remember if anyone else was there. I remember peering over the edge of the car window. On the side of the street I was facing, opposite to that of the vendors, was a short brick wall that ran the length of the alley. I remember peering over the window to a then-familiar sight: hundreds of people, sprawled on the tar road leaning against the wall. Men and women in tattered clothes with their naked, emaciated, malnourished children running around or lying on the rapidly-cooling ground next to their beggar parents.

I remember my asking my mother why they are there.

I remember her telling me they’re hoping for people to buy them food, or for the food vendors to give them remainders at the end of the night. Like a charity line. Absolute, decrepit, widespread urban poverty.

I remember asking her why we didn’t buy them food.

I don’t really remember what she said.

I remember thinking about it for a second, and then shrugging. It was an everyday sight, after all. I remember sitting back while we bought tons of delicious food for the house, unaffected by our surroundings.

—

6 Weeks ago. Ghana.
Somewhere between Tamale and Damongo.

“In the south, at least, it’s a stigma. It means you’re from the ‘village.’ That you’re ‘unclean.’” Erin and I sat on a rented trotro, along with about 20 other EWB volunteers heading from our two-day mid-placement retreat to a big country meeting between all volunteers in Ghana.

“Really? I’ve never heard that, even though I’ve asked people about it,” I replied.

We were talking about the large, protruded bellybuttons on a group of children a few meters from our van. It’s a common sight in rural Ghana, the mark of babies delivered by unskilled health personnel. Babies delivered in the home, without any perinatal or antenatal care. Often, in cases such as these, the umbilical cord is cut further from the body to avoid infection. I don’t know if it’s only this or a combination of another factor, but it results in a swollen bulge of liquid or air – which can be fairly large – where the bellybutton should be. This bulge reduces as a child grows into an adult, but doesn’t completely go away.

Marking you as a ‘uncivilized villager’.

—

Over 11 Years Ago.
Karachi, Pakistan.

I don’t remember specific instances. But I do remember countless times when me or younger my brother would be either wearing shoddy clothes, or dirty, or refusing to do something related to hygiene. I remember my parents used to tell us off:

“Gaaoon wale ke tarhan laag rahe ho!”

Translated: “You’re looking like someone from a village!”

It was a degrading term. Looked down on. I wonder now… Are there some children in wealthier families, in the developed south of Ghana, maybe in Accra, who are told this by their parents? Pakistan’s geographical wealth distribution is fairly similar to Ghana’s; Karachi, an industrial 17-million-people hub, is on the Southern coast of the country. The north is much less developed, mostly farmland and rural areas… like Ghana.

Was I just so shielded from these realities when I was a kid? How do these attitudes towards rural life translate to perpetuating poverty and hindering development? Now, looking from where I am now… my head spins at my past.

—

4 Weeks Ago.
Office of the District Chief Executive. Saboba.

The room was pretty crowded, but the air conditioner helped us fight what would otherwise be stifling heat. Some of us were seated around a long, oval wooden table while others sat on assorted couches and chairs that had been moved into the room. We were half-way through a meeting with a team from a consulting company. One of the functions of this consulting company, based out of Accra, is to provide a service to district assemblies who don’t have a Planning Officer and help them assemble/write their Medium-Term Development Plan (MTDP).

It’s a long story, but these consultants have been a dent in my placement and I’ve had less-than-favorable dealings with their headstrong leader, Eva. Consultation with the district has been minimal, if that, and Eva’s team has been patching together pre-written MTDP templates for Saboba’s four-year development plan that don’t at all correlate to what the district needs. In this particular meeting, where the consultants presented the work done so far and wanted “input” from the different departments of the district, Eva was sitting across from me with the district director of agriculture. She was asking him about an issue identified by his department as one to focus on, using a summarized print-out I’d given her. I noticed information was missing in her question around objectives, and pointed out that the second package I’d printed and given to her contained those details. While the director was replying, Eva shot me a look, a small flick of her hand… subtle gestures that, based on my previous experience with her, clearly said: “shut up. he won’t understand. don’t confuse him.”

This repeated when we discussed financial projections outside of the meeting, and she was clearly treating me as an “equal” vs. the other district officers. Obviously these Northerners won’t understand, they’re uneducated and unsophisticated! They need us Southerners to hold their hand, tell them what to do, baby steps for the rural people. Development plans with fill-in-the-blanks.

It disgusts me. And Eva is not alone in this attitude. So, because of misconceptions and generalizations present only in the heads of an entire country, government development projects in a rural district such as Saboba may not reflect what staff here know is needed. And if these power dynamics are present within the country, can you imagine what they are like between donors/NGOs and locals?

—

Five Days Ago.
District Agricultural Development Unit. (DADU)

“Saboba is a dumping ground. It is a punishment ground.” This depressing statement rings in my head again and again like a tuning fork struck with just the right force. It’s not because of it’s power, it’s not because I heard it this once; it’s because it consolidates attitudes and behaviors I’ve observed across the board in the public sector. The speaker: a man named Cosmos, one of the few workers at the understaffed DADU office.

Cosmos and the typist in his office have been working at the DADU in Saboba for 9 years. It is a quiet office, where all the staff play more than one role and two extension agents manage a district meant for 32. It’s absurd. How is this “department” supposed to implement or plan or evaluate anything?

“Tamale. Talon. Savlugu. All three of those districts are overstaffed!” Cosmos and his colleagues said that the workers in those districts have a close relationship with the regional minister, and refuse to be reassigned further from the metropolis that is Tamale. They are government workers, why should they move their children and families to areas with low health care and education, and work in extremely under-resourced conditions?

So the society – and the government – as much as they want change, spit on rural districts like Saboba because of the conditions here; and because of that, conditions here don’t improve either.

—

6 Weeks Ago.

Old Market Square in Saboba. 4 am. I was leaving Saboba for a few days for the EWB mid-placement retreat and team meetings in Tamale. I helped Yousif and his girlfriend Helen load their stuff into the bottom cargo space of the bus to Tamale: a few essential possessions, household pots and pans, some clothes, a tank of gas for a stove, and a rolled up mattress still damp from being washed. A growing balloon of foreboding grew between the three of us, and there were butterflies in my stomach: Yousif was leaving Saboba. Helen would take the bus with me, and Yousif would make his way to Tamale on a motorbike.

It so happened that I was heading to Tamale at the same time, so we would see each other at least once before I came back to the district. Regardless, that moment in Old Market Square was a turning point.

Over the past seven years, since he finished high school, Yousif has been held back by one issue: Math. Math hasn’t been his strongest subject, but it wasn’t his math teacher’s either! So through school he struggled without support from any teachers or staff, and there was no way to get additional help in Saboba, not to mention that he was being solely supported by his increasingly-aging mother.

For six years Yousif opened an egg-and-bread selling business on the street in Saboba, where he sells/serves (amazing) egg-and-bread, Nescafe, Lipton, and Milo. He built a customer base that fetches him regular sales, and found a economical egg supplier he must travel 8 hours to meet every couple of months. Through this egg-and-bread business, he has saved and saved and saved. During this time, he had two kids. Wanting the best education from them, and learning from his past, he enrolled them in private schools for kindergarten and primary. This again set him back for what he wanted to do: rewrite his math exam. He did manage to rewrite it twice; and failed. For he has now been forced to work his egg-and-bread business, 4 am – 9 am and 5 pm – 11 pm every day, to support his mother, his kids, and save for rewriting that exam.

Every time he has to rewrite the exam, he also registers to rewrite 3 other subjects. Yousif claims that if he doesn’t do that, the exams board would fail him anyway because they’d identify math as his weakness. I don’t know how true that is, but regardless, it is a system of either corruption or distrust, it is still bad.

So this night, next to the soon-departing metro bus we stood, butterflies in my stomach. Yousif was leaving Saboba. Yousif had decided, after a burst of saving-up from his egg and bread stand, that he needed to try something else. Yousif and Helen would move to Tamale for five months, use the savings to register for tutorials and extra classes, eat sparsely, live in the slums, and beat those exams once and forever come October. Helen has also yet to write some exams to finish high school. Yousif’s younger brother – who Yousif supports – would continue to run the egg-and-bread stand back in Saboba, while being in school himself.

So Yousif left Saboba. I have every hope and faith that this time, he will not fail. On a personal note, at this point the rug was pulled from under my feet as my support-network in Saboba took a huge hit.

Yousif wants to have a business one day. And eventually, after university, with his skills in mastering languages, he wants to be an ambassador for Ghana. Helen wants to be a nurse. She hopes that after the exams she will enroll in nursing school and come back to Saboba, where health workers are desperately needed.

—

Brema is a man. At birth, due to bad birthing procedures and lack of delivery personnel, he was brain-damaged as a baby and now roams the streets of Saboba. He is friendly, but can barely communicate or understand everyday happenings. People beat him when he “irritates” them, they hiss him away. Ostracized and without support, Brema moves from street-corner to street-corner, whiling away his time.

Elijah is a farmer. He has done very well for himself, and is supporting his sisters and children through school. He continues to support both his family and me, but he is 53 and physical labor is taking it’s toll on him. “I’m tired too much today!” he says to me after days on the farm, when we sit and chat at night.

Phillip is a friend. An 18-year-old student in my compound. When he was 10, he rebelled against the nomadic ways of his family’s tribe (ask me about the Fulani when I get back) and left his home. His parents moved away, but Phillip wanted to stay in school. He wanted something different for his life. He has stayed in my village since, supported by Elijah, as he completes junior school in Saboba next year.

Hanna is a stranger. Her family, part of a village deep in Saboba district, wanted to trade her to another family in exchange for a wife for her brother. She refused. She pushed back, and ran. This was four months ago. Now she stays with Elijah, and has to tip-toe around town because her “rightful owners” are still looking for her and will capture her if she is encountered. With her chance to marry depleted because of social status, without education or a permanent family, and without money, Hanna stays in my compound trying to scrape her life together. Never sad, always playful.

Yousif is a brother. He is my friend and an inspiration. “I will defeat poverty in my family forever” he says with scathing commitment and determination. “My sons will never see poverty.”

All these people are snapshots; biased snapshots of the few people with the courage to push against ever-mounting constraints. Ever-mounting challenges. The ones who clench their fist and squint, look failure in the eye and spit on it’s face. There are others like them; some struggling, some have given-up, some are not even aware.

My friends.

Something is holding them back. Something that is a tight mesh and fabric of social, personal, cultural, societal, geographical, and resource constraints; not mutually exclusive, and not clear-cut. No rights, no wrongs.

Something is holding many back. I choose to call this something “poverty.” An opportunistic infection. A state of being. It lies low in the anatomy of society, flowing through the bloodstream of its existence. The symptoms are invisible at first sight, but the feeling of fatigue and weaknesses still presents. It’s difficult to identify a cause. But then, anytime someone’s immune system is down, as soon as someone is vulnerable, symptoms strike hard and strike fast. That person falls back against the society; will the society be able to absorb the damage? And for how long?

In Canada, we have not defeated poverty. We have, to a degree, suppressed it. Suppressed it by building check-points into our system. In our mesh of society. We have cushioning. Social programs, government programs, infrastructure, education, financial programs, advocacy initiatives and campaigns for equality, justice, and tolerance. I could name hundreds of ways that we have ironed away kinks in the system that create opportunity for people to live their lives as they see fit. There are still problems. Some kinks remain, and every so often Canadians slip through this protective fabric and get caught in the mesh of poverty again.

These are my thoughts as of now, on poverty, as I end this roller-coaster thrill-ride of my placement. I’m excited for the work we’re doing. I’m also excited for Canada. I’m excited for the possibilities, which for me are endless. But for someone like Yousif, they are not there. I’m thankful for the opportunities I have, and I tear up in appreciation at their injustice. There is a lot of processing to be done, a lot of work ahead, and my thoughts are ever-changing.

—

I look up from my laptop. The thatched mud huts of my compound form dark silhouettes against the inky blue sky, lit by the half moon. It’s cool, and my legs are itching from mosquito bites. I might as well embrace and enjoy that also. Most of the family is asleep, but Elijah is sitting up talking to a friend from a nearby compound.

It’s quiet. A surreal feeling of foreboding rises in me. There is an insane amount of work to do, I’m stressed and exhausted. From learning and working. But I can’t make sense, at all, of my feelings of leaving Saboba right now, let alone Ghana. I can’t even think about it.

And I don’t have to. For another 79 hours.

—

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Advertisement