Divine, Promise and Patience

Yours truly at Tema New Town, feeling a bit like a camel!

It is just gone 3:00am between Friday and Saturday and here I am writing the next instalment of my blog. Why am I writing at this time? I've just been crying and I can't sleep, so I've started this blog entry and then I'll hopefully finish it tomorrow. At least by writing down a couple of paragraphs I should feel better. Why was I crying? Read on and you'll know. One thing is for certain: there will still be a little humour in this blog entry but there will certainly be a lot of very serious stuff.

First things first, I left off last time with having reached the conclusion of my first week's activities with the children in Ashaiman. The following week I was organising activities in Tema New Town, a fishing village which can be described, at best, as being in need of assistance. The husbands are mainly fishermen, while the wives smoke fish. I'm not referring to that smoking, but rather the process of cooking fish with smoke. The families here live in extremely poor and unhygienic conditions, with chickens and goats running all over the place, and open sewers as common as potholes are in Malta, and if you’re prepared to even consider it possible, there are actually more open sewers here in Ghana. Ok, it is now gone 3:30am, I've calmed down a bit (and so has my tummy) and it is now time to sleep. I'll continue tomorrow.

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You may be wondering why this blog's title is Divine, Promise and Patience. You may also have thought that it should be “Divine promise and patience.” If you did think this, then you ought to know better. Well, the title refers to three of the names of the children in my "class" in Tema New Town. If you think about it they are a breath of fresh air when compared to all the names we concoct (or repeat ad nauseum) in Malta. No Matthew, Mattea or Matthias over here. No Nicholas, Nicky, Nicola, etc. either. Instead you get, amongst others, Divine, Promise, Patience, Wonder, Innocencia, Prince, etc.

What's special about these children is that they have such special needs. These are children who have not had the fortune to have a basic school education. Just to put you in the picture, you can probably all imagine the intellectual capacity of a 9 year old, a 12 year old and a 15 year old. NOT HERE. Without access to proper education you cannot assume anything. I was first teaching these Tema New Town children, aged between 9 and 15 years of age, some basic additions, and later the months of the year, including the month number. In Malta we take everything for granted but these children don't even have access to those basics. Can you imagine a 15 year old in Malta not knowing these basics? Well, that’s the sad reality over here.

You might therefore be wondering what these children do during the day. For starters, they don’t all get to have breakfast. That may very well be a luxury that the family simply cannot afford. Secondly, these children have to work. It is, put simply, a case of survival of the fittest. If you want to survive, you have to be fit, and that means getting the children to help out in selling things on the streets, or walking long distances to take the items to their parents for them to sell from a shop or alternatively on the street. At times these children go straight to work after the activities we organise for them, and there are others who have to keep on working until the early hours of every morning. I ask you, how much more cruel could the world be to you? Did these children choose to be born in these conditions? Why was I lucky enough to be born to a Maltese family and not to an African family? Life can be so unfair to these individuals.

Two of the children with their gifts

Moving on to something lighter for a moment, I mentioned selling items on the road. Yes, you can buy anything you want from your car window. By ‘anything’, I mean anything. Chocolate anyone? What size and what flavour would you like? Drinks? Very good on the road. How about books? It would be interesting to read a book while driving, albeit not the safest thing you can do on the road! Paint brushes? Of course you can buy those too. I’m not quite sure why you’d want to buy a paint brush from the road… perhaps to dust away all the dust and soil that gets into your vehicle (and of course your lungs), and the next time I need some hardware I might choose to go out for a drive. Toys, pineapples, coconut, fried plantain, meat pies, yoghurt, ice cream, posters, bread, clocks, watches, sunglasses. These are all things you can buy from the road. There is then the classic of all classics. Toilet paper! How about a roll of toilet paper? Or perhaps a whole packet full of rolls? I suppose they come in handy if you’re driving along and you get a sudden bout of diarrhoea. And yes, if you need to relieve yourself while driving a long distance, all you need to do is park your car by the side of the road, and relieve yourself. That is what ‘public convenience’ is all about… relieving yourself in public!

The last, and colourful day, at Tema New Town

Back to the serious stuff, the children in Tema New Town are amazing. Like I said they have very special needs. Having said that, working with them gives you a special sense of satisfaction at being able to make a difference, even if just a tiny one, in their lives. It was truly special to see and sense their joy at the activities we organised for them. It’s incredible to think that they can be so happy with such simple lives, when the spoilt brats of the Western world aren’t happy with having the whole world at their big fat feet. Again I ask you, how cruel is this world?
 Summer camp in Ashaiman and Tema New Town was followed by a visit to Sunyani, where there is the other Salesian community in Ghana. The trip up north was paused so that we visited the hospital being built in Kumasi by the ICPE Mission, a hospital that is due to open for the needy in 2010. Did you know that the ICPE Mission was founded in 1985 in Malta, and much of the funding for the hospital came from Maltese benefactors? For more information on the ICPE, please feel free to visit their website.

Although we got to see all the major Salesian projects in Sunyani, including the Zongo (a Muslim community where you can see children scavenging the rubbish dump), the highlight of all had to be the visit to Tainso on Monday afternoon, followed by a full day of activities with the children on Tuesday. It is really difficult to transmit to you the emotions of being in Tainso, but I’ll try my best. First of all, it is a remote village that is an hour’s drive away from Sunyani itself. The drive is not a nicely asphalted road; rather, it is a dirt road with many more bumps than the whole of the Maltese islands’ roads have. Impressive? I’d rather conclude that it is sad. That is however just the beginning. The village has two tribes, and a chief as well, just like other villages.

What is special about Tainso? Their dwellings are made of sticks and mud, with leaves for roofs. Again, there is the open sewer, however in Tainso there is no electricity or running water. To make matters worse, the village’s water pump is not working, and therefore the stream that passes by the village is their bathing spot, their toilet, and also their source of drinking water. If this sounds like a survival story, then just wait for the rest. Many of the children run around barefooted as they have no footwear of any sort. Their clothes are all tattered, and they are in them day in, day out. Their black skin is often white with dirt and dust, and flies seem to be particularly attracted to the children’s bodies. Children’s tummies are bloated because of malnutrition, and as if that was not bad enough, nearly nobody has access to proper education in a school.

Children at Tainso

Having said that, these children, as well as the village’s adults are highly appreciative of any contribution and assistance given to them, no matter how small it is. To put you further in the picture, we organised an activity for the children whereby each child was given a balloon to tie around their leg, and then they must burst each others’ balloons without letting their own balloon get burst. Can you believe that a number of children just took the balloon and went home with it, because it is something way too precious to waste in a single game? Here I’m talking about a balloon that costs maybe €0.04, and the amount of joy that such a simple and cheap thing gave them is amazing. Can you imagine a Maltese child being overjoyed because they were given something that costs €0.04? These kids were thrilled with a balloon each. Three sweets each at the end of the day just made it enough for them to travel to heaven and back, all for something that costs such a little to us Europeans. As if that wasn’t enough, we left them a leather football and a plastic ball. Again, the community was overjoyed at this gesture, because they don’t have access to such balls, and in any case, they could not afford a luxury such as spending hard earned money on a ball. All this for a ball that cost about €12.00. Once again, how many children are there in Malta that would be overjoyed with a gift that cost €0.04? And which Maltese village would be in ecstasy because they were given a ball that costs €12.00?

This is the simple life that these people live, and I hope that now you can at least start to appreciate why I was crying. Us Westerners live a life which, comparatively speaking, can best be described as synthetic, or fake. It was similar at Tema New Town, where the children were overjoyed to get a small soft toy on the last day… soft toys which, in Europe, were just going to be thrown away, and instead they brought about dozens of happy faces in Ghana. Is this fair? Is it fair that Western children are spoilt little brats, while these children, in their innocence and authenticity, can be happy with such a little? No? Well, now you might continue to understand why I couldn’t hold my emotions back. It’s not fair that we are such spoilt brats, living a life of waste, when these people go through so many hardships just to survive, and are happy with the little that they have.

Being in Tainso was, apart from being a wonderful day, also a very sad day for me as it marked the end of the activities with the children. The rest of the stay was left for us to get a bit of a break and relaxation after all the efforts of the past weeks. We in fact went to Cape Coast, where we got to visit Kakum National Park which has a wonderful walkway on suspension rope bridges, and we also visited the Elmina Slave Castle. Did you know that it is estimated that 12 million Africans were plucked out of Africa and sold as slaves to the Europeans and Americans? Once again, why did history have to take this course? Life is simply so unfair. Did these Africans and their forefathers do anything to deserve this? Isn’t their blood red just like mine?

Lastly, we got to visit Brenu beach for a relaxing evening, before heading off for the third long drive in the space of five days. Arriving back in Ashaiman means that our stay in Ghana has come to an end and I can honestly say that, in my case, I am really sad to leave it all behind. It has been a truly amazing experience which, although had to come to an end at some time or other, seemed to come way too quickly for my liking. I am truly grateful to those who donated funds for the project, and beg you to get in touch with me should you feel compelled to make a further donation in aid of the needy in Ghana. Finally I thank God for keeping us all in relatively good health, where the worst illness was my falling ill just 40 hours after reaching Ghana. Other than that, all went well and I thank the Salesians in Ghana for hosting us, as well as everyone else who contributed in any way to making this project a success, including of course the rest of the group who packed their bags in Europe to travel to Ghana for this experience. Thank you Ryan, Heeleen, Maria, Bianca and Lorraine. It wouldn’t have been the same without you.

All that is left now is to pack my luggage (no, my challenges are not yet over, and please feel free to wish me luck), and then head to the airport tomorrow for a long journey back home. I hope you found these updates interesting!

David