After being in the same place for a long time (or a few years, which is a long time for me) the newness and freshness wears off (obviously). The novelty of each experience fades away because they’re not all “novel” anymore. The experience (challenge?) becomes (for me) finding the appreciation in the familiar, rather than the thrill and excitement of the new (which is easy to feel - - and easy to find if I don’t stay in one place for more than a few years).

I’ve now been living in Ghana for more than 8 1/2 years. It's not that long, but it's long enough for the experience of life here to shift for me.

Part of my wanting to return to Ghana a couple years ago when I’d finished on the refugee camp was to appreciate the “life” in markets again, to take time to just reflect on being here, to do what I want to be doing with my life, to be blessed to live in a time and place where I have the freedom to choose to live my life in a way that’s not necessarily expected but that gives me a feeling of fulfilment and love of life, and to have family and friends who support my choices in life, even when they don’t always understand or agree with them. (Yikes, I’m possibly beginning to sound like a Hallmark card, time to move onto the point . . .).

I wanted to come back to complete that shift of experience from the excitement of the new and exotic to the appreciation and the excitement of the familiar. Somewhere on the camp I got stuck. I no longer appreciated the life in a market – I asked friends to pick up whatever fresh fruit and veggies were available for me. I didn’t take time for the experience of life.

And now I'm trying to allow the shift of experience to go on for me. It’s nice to be in situations with people who know my weaknesses and can still respect my strengths. It’s a different level to go with a kid with a twisted foot to the orthopedist I’ve known for 14 years than it was 14 years ago when I was going to the “stranger” orthopedist for the 1st time.

It’s a new challenge to collaborate with the audiologist I’ve known for 6 years as we follow up and follow through on individual children and their families as well as programs to work with groups of parents and children, their teachers and the community overall in the awareness and inclusion of people with hearing problems into the communities.

It’s a wonderful, new experience to find Jethro - someone I've known and been involved with for 6 years (some of you may remember his story from several years ago) still here. He wanted to go to University for IT. He was impressive (and still is), and a friend of mine was able to make it possible for him to face the challenge of working towards his goal. Now, a few years later, I’m back on the coast and Jethro has completed school - and we still have a connection.

Hope for Life (the project I’m again involved with) has been talking of doing a database since before I left it 12 years ago. I was ready to try doing a basic “database” with Excel – files, spreadsheets, blah blah blah. Jethro came along and offered to do a database for us – voluntarily, to demonstrate what he’s learned and to show appreciation. What he’s doing now - - - amazing.

From time to time he sleeps at Bethany House, and for the past month and a half + he’s been sleeping at the house almost nightly. His 1 year old was admitted to Korle Bu, the teaching hospital in Accra. He had some abscesses on his neck, then head, then shoulder . . , he had high fevers and the clinic close to the camp referred him to Korle Bu. Jethro comes late in the night and leaves for the hospital early in the morning. Sometimes he arrives after I’ve gone to bed. I wake up, go to the garden, and when I come back in I find him sweeping the floors before we share coffee and breakfast and he heads back to spell his wife at the hospital. He and his family have become a part of “the family” here at Bethany House.

Akolo J is another person I’ve known for a long time – 14 years. When he was in his late teens, a tree fell on him, causing paresis from his waist down. He uses crutches, but his legs are like rubber. 14 years ago he was training as a tailor, then in “designing” (embroidery machine use). After I left in 1998, he also did tie/dye and batik trainings. He lived in a communal kind of street setting, then eventually got his room. But his area to be found is, and ever since I’ve known him, has always been Circle (hard to get a good link to show the fullness of Circle - the craziness, the hecticness, the traffic, the sensory-overwhelmingness of it all). Over the years, when I’ve come back to Accra, that’s always where I find him. These days he has a room somewhere and a small “kiosk” in his place at Circle. And he does basic watch and watch band repairs. And now he also has a wife.



For awhile he sold a few food basics in his kiosk – until one day when his sister came, took the money, and that was the end of that business.

About 2 years ago, he started experiencing more waist and back pain. About a year and a half ago, the doctors recommended surgery – putting screws into the lumbar region of his spine. Otherwise, eventually he will be more and more immobile.

He has the National Health Insurance, but that will only cover some (hopefully most) of the basic costs accrued in the hospital. But the screws cost $1200. The insurance doesn’t cover that. He’s had to put off the surgery while he tries different means of gathering the needed money. (Susu is one of the main methods.)

So, for the past several months, Akolo J, the watch repair guy at Circle, has been living in his kiosk. It’s too difficult to go home. His wife comes to him from time to time. He goes around the corner every few days to take a shower (since he’s not moving much he doesn’t feel the need to bathe more often).

He first scheduled his surgery for a year ago, but had to cancel when he didn’t have the money. Now, he’s saved $700, and has rescheduled the surgery. He believes he will have the balance, by the time the surgery will take place in early April. He hopes for more than the balance so he can rebuild his business after the time off for the surgery, and so he can meet his other needs during his time off for the surgery.

I’ve only been able to get to Circle every 3 weeks or so. And as happens, I’ve had a couple “open” donations come so he has enough for the screws, and therefore the hospital will admit him and do the surgery. Discharge and paying additional costs that the insurance doesn’t cover and rebuilding his life afterwards is another story, though.

And he moves ahead, makes his decisions and takes things one step at a time, trusting that it will be fine. That same story I’ve talked about – Faith.

*****

There will always be new experiences day to day if I’m open to them. I don’t even need to look. But now, I can have the new experience of familiarity, knowing people, established relationships, shared respect and trust that comes with the experience of each other over time (and this “new experience” of the familiar takes place with the familiar experience of unexpected situations day to day).

I have the resources (knowledge from personal experiences of similar situations) combined with friends and colleagues who’ve known me and who I’ve known for many years to better respond to the new experiences. I'm looking forward to the future.

Hope for Life

For at least 3 weeks (but more like 1 1/2 - 2 months) I’ve had another blog entry ready to go – other than a few more rounds of editing to tighten it up, shorten it, figure it out, decide if it’s an entry I should do or not. It’s more like an ode to all the great people I had time with while I was on leave a few months ago – an appreciation for the time they gave me from their busy schedules. But I’m not going to use it at this time – maybe I never will. I might just keep it and work on it for some other reason. Maybe I’ll use excerpts from it in a future update – like an update about Morris, who I got to talk with for the first time, face to face, not writing anything down – just regular old talking. We’ll see.

I can’t use it now because there’s other stuff on my mind, so many other things going on with where I am now. It’s 1:45 a.m. when I’m typing this. I don’t really have trouble sleeping, but . . . for some reason I got up at this time with things on my mind and decided it’s best to just write about them. (To be honest - this is describing a 2nd blog entry I prepared about 1 month + ago, and I'm now posting an edited version of that - with excerpts to maybe be used in the future.) (Maybe that's confusing - basically, what's being posted is the 3rd entry I've prepared, which is an extremely edited version of the 2nd entry I did at 1:45. I know it's not at all important that this is understood - so just move on.)

I’ve been back in Ghana for 5 months – I think it’s almost exactly 5 months. If I remember, due to a canceled flight I ended up arriving here on 3 October, and now it’s 1 March.

I’m at a project called Hope for Life. Some people who’ve known me for awhile might remember I was also at a project called Hope for Life from 1996 – 1998. It’s the same project – just a 12 year-older version of it. One part of the project is called Bethany House – it’s where I live. It’s also a part of the project that was a big pull for me to come back here. It’s not only where I live, but it’s also where members of Hope for Life, all people with disabilities, are welcome to come stay if they want a break from their daily lives, if they want to have time with other people with disabilities, if they need/want somewhere to prepare for exams, if they want a place that will have electricity and running water (assuming the city is supplying those things while they’re staying at the house), or for whatever reason at all.

Over 10 years ago, the house was in a different location. HFL rented, and for a variety of reasons chose to leave the place and build its own house. Running the house can be difficult, though. It can be hard to get sponsors to be interested in donating money or resources to this part of the project since it’s just a place where people come eat, gather, rest and be happy. I’m not sure how/if it will ever become self-sufficient. Just before I left here in 1998, the lay missionary I was with worked on a proposal for a bakery to help make the project more self-sufficient. That bakery is now located on this same property (right outside my bedroom window, in fact). It’s been barely breaking even – and frequently operates at a loss. However, it recently received two sweet contracts – one is supplying the bread that goes on the airplanes flying out of Ghana, which means that some, if not all, people flying out of Ghana, when they’re eating that little sandwich thing they get on the flight just before landing, or they get the little dinner roles with their meals – it’s Hope for Life bread that they’re eating.

A year ago the house was officially closed due to lack of funds. The “House Mother” was let go. HFL members weren’t officially allowed to stay here because there was no one to look after the place, provide the meals, etc. – no money, basically. When I came back in October one of our goals became opening the house again. (I like to think of it as a project goal – but it may have just been a Steve goal.) I hoped it would be accomplished in a month or so – but then saw realistically I should shoot for January. I came back with a donation and immediately we started getting the plumbing working. I wanted to put in a garden – focused on things people use all the time in sauces and stews, but I saw that I’d never be able to actually get around to digging up the place myself.

In someone’s “wisdom” a few years ago it was decided that the driveway should be all gravel since it would be much cheaper than pavement. Uh . . . OK . . . now let’s try wheeling a wheelchair or walking with crutches or crawling on hands and knees across that gravel. One benefit at this time, though, is that a section of the gravel was much easier to shovel aside for a garden than pavement would have been. (We still need to figure out how to make the rest of it more accessible, though.) When a friend from the refugee camp who’s still here and is accepted into a university but still waiting for sponsorship (for those who visited me on the camp, I'm talking about Benedict - you probably met him at the house where I was living) asked me to help find a sponsor and in the meantime to remember him if I had any work to do – I thought, “hey – I’m not going to get around to doing this garden anytime soon – maybe he can do it.” And he did – and is still working on it. It’s amazing – already we’ve had to put to rest several beds of tomato plants that never flowered but were, all the same, beautiful to look at and smell , a bed of watermelon that produced baby watermelon that soon rotted, and a cucumber bed that had similar difficulties as the watermelon. We’ve replanted some of these beds, and have prepared a couple of others for transplanting. Other crops have done better, and, happily and yummily, we’ve already enjoyed a few meals with Okra from the garden, others with cabbage, and the carrots have also contributed to a few meals. A personal favorite is also there – radishes. I love radishes – they grow quickly and easily and I think they’re delicious - and an added bonus is they always remind me of my grandmother who first introduced me to them before I was old enough to appreciate them properly, but she enjoyed them and I love that memory. They’ve been a part of breakfast for the past couple of weeks. It’s like the only thing I’ve planted that’s solely because I wanted it (Ok, other than some herbs – mint, parsley and basil are doing the best and we’ve been enjoying them.) And the lemon grass I always end up planting is doing really well. Anyway – the goal was and still is to reduce food costs. And to open the house in January (which we did). And to give me pleasure with the radishes and the herbs and just digging in the dirt. Another lay missionary who was at Bethany House for a few months before I came shook her head in disbelief a month after I arrived saying that she never thought the garden could happen.

We pushed forward with the garden and with working towards opening the house. We interviewed people for the new House Manager. People who were unofficially staying here and would probably be considered squatters were given their notice to move along. A House Manager was chosen (the former House Mother). The overflowing septic system (yes, nasty) was cleaned out. Major scrubbing and cleaning took place. Curtains were re-hung. Kitchen and other items that were no longer around were replaced. And - - - the house opened in January.

This has been my goal – with no idea of how it will be funded. Another lay missionary who was here last year (and is still here) recently told me that (for some reason I can’t remember because it made no sense to me) she didn’t do any fundraising for the project last year. I know she had a lot on her shoulders - and maybe that's basically the reason - it's a big project and can be daunting, leaving someone scratching their head and wondering where to begin. And now, the funds are finished. Sadly, I’m not the best fundraiser in the world – mostly operating on trust and faith - but that’s the work before us now. Christmas Eve – I received an email from some friends who are like family, that they were sending a HUGE donation for my work in Ghana. My eyes watered. I didn’t quite cry, but I seriously wanted to. I knew we’d be able to keep the house open for awhile. Last week, the HFL Secretary spent a couple of days with me writing fundraising letters for local businesses – and this week we’ll start delivering them. We’ll see how it goes – because this is how it usually goes – you have to go ahead with things and not let the fear hold you back. Things don’t change – we go ahead on trust and faith, like I said. It sounds naïve – and I’m sure to any banker/money person, there’d be a lot of cringing going on with decisions being made to go ahead with things not knowing where/if the resources will be there. But if we don’t go ahead, then nothing gets done – ever. (I'm sure those bankers are probably nodding their heads in approval that I got out of accounting in my junior year of university.)

Happily, for a few months now, I’ve been surrounded by great people. They’ve been the ones making so much of this possible. They've been the ones adding to a good spirit at the house - and a feeling of home that's coming back to the place.