Some Reflections on Ghana

Last month I spent a week and a half in a very foreign country. I was there helping with a documentary. We got a lot of work done, I saw some amazing things, and I learned a lot about filming and interviewing and organizing and planning.

But I also learned some valuable life lessons from the people living in little mud huts, in tiny little villages.

Our very first day in Ghana, we visited a village about an hour outside of Accra. We went to the school and met the kids, who surrounded us and shook our hands with big smiles and repeated, "You are welcome, you are welcome." I felt like a sort of celebrity.

We took a walk through the village to film some of what life is like there, when suddenly it started to rain--hard. One of the men we were talking to invited us into his hut to stay dry. On his floor in the entryway was a small scrap of marble-patterned linoleum. We complimented him on it--to his great pleasure. He invited us to sit on his bed, and pulled some old chairs in for us, too. We talked for a while, just waiting out the storm.

I was impressed with the graciousness of the people in the villages we visited. They have almost nothing, but they take care of what they have. The dirt floors inside their huts are neatly swept...even the dirt "yards" in front of their huts are swept and clear of any trash or clutter. They make use of everything they have. Many of the kids' school uniforms were threadbare and had tears and bursted seams, or were entirely too big for the kid because they were hand-me-downs from older siblings.

One little boy we met in a village did not attend school. We sat next to the head school teacher Richard as he talked with the boy. He asked the boy why he didn't come to school, and the boy said that he did not have a uniform. In Ghana, if you don't wear your uniform to school, you can be punished. Richard asked the boy if he would come to school if he had a uniform. The boy said yes. They were talking in their native language, so when the boy ran off to play, we asked Richard what they had been talking about. Richard explained the story, and Matthew, a BYU student working as a social analyst in Ghana, asked how much a uniform cost. Richard said it cost 8 cedis (roughly $7). Matthew pulled 8 cedis out of his wallet and handed it to Richard, and told him to make sure the little boy got a uniform.

That was on a Wednesday. The following Monday, we went back to that same village and saw the little boy walking to school wearing a brand new uniform! It was his first day of school. It was experiences like those that really touched me. 8 cedis is not that much money, but for this little boy, it means he'll get a basic education.

After seeing the contrast between the villages and the city, I would MUCH rather live in a mud hut, far away from the dirty, ramshackle city that is Accra. It is a more westernized city, but it's crowded, buildings are in disrepair, and the living conditions are so poor. In the villages, things were peaceful and simple, and although life wasn't easy for the people--they worked hard in their fields to make a living--they were happy. They never asked the white Americans for money. In Accra, we were constantly being badgered for a handout. It made me sad, because the people in the city could see affluence, they could see rich people with their fancy houses and nice cars, so they knew the state of their own poverty. In the villages, everyone lived on the same plane. They didn't know what it was like to have a two-story house, or a car, or even electricity. They just valued what they did have, and took much better care of it than any American I've seen.

It certainly made me a lot more grateful for what I have.

...just some of my thoughts. I'm sure I'll write about this again. And include a few pictures.