After a 4 hour drive to a rural area in Ghana, we visited one village and did some eye screenings and exams. This was my first overnight outreach with St. Thomas Eye Hospital, and I was surprised at how remote the areas we visited were.
We spent the night at a local bed & breakfast and started the day pretty early. I didn’t sleep super well so the day started off feeling long. We left the bed and breakfast around 8am and started heading back towards Accra. We were about 40 minutes into the drive, when one of the clinic staff members got a phone call and motioned for the driver to pull over. As we were waiting, we soon realize that the driver is being asked to turn around. The clinic member then explained to us that we were going back to the area we were in yesterday, to meet with village chiefs about doing outreaches in their villages. At first, we were told that another NGO group was going to see these villages and provide services for free, so we were not needed. Then, something changed (not exactly sure what) and we were requested to go back.
After retracing our steps, we ventured deeper and deeper into the mountainside entering rural villages. There were children walking around partially clothed and people carrying large bundles of sticks. There were animals everywhere. Goats and chickens speckled the countryside and villages almost more than people did. When we got to the first village, we were escorted to a porch of a home-made cement house with a thatched roof. A local community member pulled up plastic chairs for us to sit on and we waited for the chief.
A man emerged from the threshold shirtless, with a faded-piece of fabric draped across one shoulder and blue and grey basketball shorts. A man sat next to him and translated. Based on the body language, there seemed to be acceptance and understanding on both sides. No more than 10 minutes later, we all stood up, shook the hands of the chief and those with him and returned to the van. We then traveled even deeper into the countryside to another village that was much more rural than the first. There were mud huts with thatched roofs and many people looked malnourished. We were ushered into a gathering area under another thatched roof, and were given a wooden bench to sit on. This time the chief was already there, and was wearing long athletic, jogging pants and a polo shirt. This time, a woman was present and she sat directly behind the chief. I was absolutely fascinated by this. It was clear that she held a role of importance, and I wondered what her specific role in the community was. I hope to see more women in these critical counsels.
A similar interaction took place and no more than 15 minutes later, we greeting the leaders, and left.
As we were on our way back to Achimota— about 15 minutes down the dirt road— our car made a horrible screeching sound and came to a halt. We assumed that the driver just needed to change gears, or perhaps the boys would need to get out and push for a minute to get the engine going again. But something wasn’t right. After we pulled over, someone walked to a village to get some oil and gas, but nothing helped. Then, someone returned with an electrical engineer/mechanic, and he couldn’t fix it. We were stranded on the side of the road with very little water, we hadn’t eaten in 5 hours, and were unsure of when we would get to any form of civilization. Luckily, I had some extra crackers stored for emergencies, so we handed those out and then we waited, and waited. We played rugby for a bit and I experienced using the restroom in the bushes while wearing a jumper.. and we all just talked.
A few other blessings were:
1) it wasn’t blazing hot, (the clouds were out),
2) we had cell-phone coverage and
3) we weren’t too far from villages who could help us.
We ultimately had the boys push the van for about 1/4 of a mile to a nearby clinic and switched vans with someone. Once we got into a more populated area, we stopped to get food. I’ve been starting to learn here, that at some “Chop Bars” (food places) they will have pictures of many things they sell, but will only sell certain items on certain days of the week. So we arrive at this chop bar and I see Indomie (which is basically spicy ramen noodles). After having not eaten for almost 7 hours at this point, I was excited for some semblance of American- like food. I asked the woman there if she had any Indomie or rice and she said no. I quickly realized that it was “fufu and banku” soup day: which is basically a dough like food they eat with soup.
The problem with this is Ghanians love ground nut soup here, which is peanut soup. The second problem was, I counted the pots of soup and the serving spoons they had, and noticed there were not enough spoons per pot. Then, I kept watching and watched her share spoons between pots. Now, I knew for sure that I couldn’t eat at this shop, but we were in such a rural part of Ghana that I didn’t know where else I could find food. Luckily, one of the other volunteers walked with me and we found a small snack shop were I got some crackers. After everyone ate, we enjoyed a 4 hour drive back to Achimota, and when we arrived, went straight to the mall and ate Pizza Hut.
I am starting to learn to not stress the little things. Most of the time, things end up working out just fine.