Visions of Ghana

I remember looking down from the airplane on my first trip to Ghana. I saw small shacks crammed together in many sections of each city. I saw a lot of homes that were unfinished. The construction is usually concrete block and a tin roof if you’ve got the money. Otherwise, the construction is usually discarded plywood, cardboard, newspaper, and anything else that can be put together.

The first thing I noticed going into a third world country is the rush of people as we left the airport doors. The next sensation is the smell from cooking fires and open sewers. The poverty that is everywhere is overwhelming. Women and children are selling toilet paper, peanuts, maps, and almost anything else imaginable on the side of the road.

I’ve seen the daily wage for a skilled laborer increase from $1 a day in 2003 to $3 a day in 2005. Now, the wages are close to $7 to $9 a day. This sounds like a great improvement until you realize that the cost of food and gas is same as here in the USA. It’s at that point that it is a wonder how it is possible to feed a family. The per capita income is around $600 per year. The goal is to reach $1,000 per year by 2010. College tuition is about $5,000 per year for your best universities in the major cities with in Ghana. It costs about $50 per year to pay for one year of high school.

Ghana has several benefits to help people survive the poverty. Ghana has a tight family structure which helps people through many hardships. The tribes of Ghana are the social fabric that ties the families together. Most of all, people have to rely on God when there’s no other answer to how to survive.

I have a theory based on the countries described in the Old Testament. The countries put all of their hope in God when there was no other place to go to get help. As the country prospered, the people were faithful and worshiped God. They put all of their hope and trust in God. Amazing things would happen. The people gave all of the credit and glory to God. The impossible became possible. The unseen became visible. The people prospered.

At some point in the life of the nation, the people forgot about God and his blessings. The people became prideful. The faithful generations are replaced with a generation who does not know God. They believed that their prosperity was the result of their abilities and their strength. The people forgot that God provided for their every need. In fact, their abilities and their strength were from God.

Today, the capital city of Accra appears affluent compared to the rest of the country of Ghana. Accra has a few modern highways and a lot of cars. The construction is getting better and stronger. Ghana is still a cash based society. The currency is the Cedi. The cedi used to be valued 10,000 Cedis to $1.00. They divided the currency by 10,000 last year which really helped. It used to require a shopping bag to carry money to buy your groceries. Cash is required before starting any project. The idea of credit basically does not exist. America is learning what life is like to operate under a cash-based society.

Ghana gained its independence from Great Britain in 1957. The country struggled and a dictator brutally held power in Ghana until he decided to write a constitution which stated that a president could be elected to two four-year terms. The dictator won both terms and later he peacefully allowed for a peaceful transition from a dictatorship to a democracy with an elected president and congress.

Ghana has experienced a renewal since the dictator was voted out of power about eight years ago. The second peaceful change of power just happened in Ghana in December when a new president was elected. I saw the first shopping mall in Ghana in November 2008. I was amazed that I was in Ghana and could have a pizza and buy electronics in a regular store. Ghana is beginning to have a middle class.

The country has a lot of public works projects. There’s a major hydroelectric dam in Ghana which the British used to generate power that was sold out of Ghana. The dictator continued the same practice. It has only been the last five years that the country started to build power lines throughout the country. Now, some of the power lines are being extended to smaller towns and villages. In fact, it is almost commonplace for a grass hut to have electricity in some places.

The other main public work project being done is the building of open sewers. The open sewer is just a concrete ditch which collects all of the sewage from the homes and businesses. The open sewer carries the human waste to the nearest river or stream. The concept of waste water treatment plants or septic systems is still only a dream. In front of every home and business is the open sewer. We have to walk over the sewer to get into a store or home.

The unemployment rate in Ghana is very high. There’s very little industry and commerce in Ghana. Most jobs are farming. Mining and fishing are big in certain regions of the country. Ghana still has children who are sold into slavery to untangle the fishing nets on the Volta Lake. There are also child laborers in the gold mines in Ghana. I’ve been asked to help the children, but I haven’t figured out how to help eliminate slavery yet. Most of the slavery is in parts of Ghana where I haven’t worked yet. The parents sell their children so that they can feed the rest of their children. The slavers promise to put the kids into school and give the kids a better life. The slavers lie. They don’t keep the promise.

I saw the face of HIV/AIDS on my trip to Zambia last year. Ghana doesn’t have nearly the problem with AIDS as Zambia. I worked to build an orphanage in the copper mining region of northern Zambia in a town called Ndola. The orphanage educates kids that are orphans due to war, AIDS, and poverty. Zambia is next door to the long-term war in the Congo. Parents have to choose which children they can feed and which child will have to starve to death. The child who is selected to starve to death is considered an economic orphan. The children whose parents died of AIDS are also educated and fed at the orphanage and school. Most of the children at the orphanage get their only meal at the school.

I went to Zambia in January 2007 to be on a medical and orphan mission trip. I realized in Zambia that the country had children and grandparents, but that the parent’s generation had died of HIV/AIDS. It hit me hard. That is my generation. I can’t imagine not being there to raise my family. It was hard for a very elderly man. He was sick and the only family for his grandchildren. The parents had died of AIDS and he was worried what would happen to his grandchildren when he died. The economic hardship of AIDS can be felt in a country like Zambia.

I went to Ndola Baptist Church while I was in Zambia. They were having a college outreach service for all of the local universities. Their core message was to watch out for the “sugar daddies” roaming the edges of the colleges to share their gift of death with them. The church was preaching abstinence so that the college students could finish school and avoid the impact that HIV/AIDS had on their parent’s generation. The church was starting home and dorm churches to reach the college students in their town. The renewal and growth at that church was very impressive.

Healthcare is very poor in Ghana. Ghana has nationalized healthcare where health insurance can be purchased for $20 per year. The hospitals and clinics in Ghana have very little to care for patients. The medical care has to be paid in cash at the time that care is given. Most hospitals have to go out to buy prescriptions after money is paid. The families of the patients usually bring food and medicine into the hospital for the patient.

I met an ophthalmologist when he came to Virginia. Dr. Seth Wanye is the only eye doctor for 8 million people. He asked for help for his eye clinic. He needed newer medical equipment. I was in Dr. Wanye’s eye clinic when an ear, nose, and throat doctor grabbed me by the collar to tell me that I needed to help the hospital as well. Dr. Jim Murphy retired from his practice in Kearny, New Jersey so that he could move to the bush of Ghana to help people in need.

Dr. Murphy told me that there were two Rotary clubs in Texas and New Jersey that needed help to send medical equipment to Africa. It took about a year and one half to write a grant, raise the money, conduct a needs assessment, work with Project C.U.R.E. to obtain the medical equipment and finally ship the two containers to Africa from Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona.

I received two phone calls on Friday, February 11, 2009 that the last of the two containers had arrived at the Tamale Teaching Hospital and Tamale Eye Clinic. The hospital is in the Northern Region of Ghana. The two containers arrived in Ghana around December 18, 2008. I had hoped that the container would arrive for Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Years, and finally for Valentine’s Day. It took a lot of phone calls to the shippers, the Ghana Ministry of Health, the shipping companies, and to the hospital before all of the red tape was finally cut. Some of the medical supplies were taken out of the containers because the bandages and gauze had “expiration dates.” The medical supplies will probably end up on the black market.

I received about eight shots to go to West Africa the first time for polio, malaria, yellow fever, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and many other diseases. The average person in Ghana doesn’t have protection against these diseases. I’ve learned about malaria. Everyone in Ghana gets malaria like we get the common cold. Malaria is life threatening the first time and it is a lot like pneumonia each time someone gets malaria again. I met a sixteen year old girl with tuberculosis (TB) at the Tamale Hospital. Tuberculosis has completely destroyed her lungs. She had the lungs of an eighty year old woman. She will probably die in a few years.

I was speaking at a church in Stewart, Virginia a few years ago about building schools and churches in Ghana. A man came up to me after the service and asked me if I knew how to dig a well in Africa. I told him that I didn’t know. He told me that he thought there were a few Rotary Clubs in southwestern Virginia who might be willing to raise enough money to dig ONE well. On my next trip to Ghana I opened my eyes to see the polluted rivers, streams, and water in Ghana. I came home determined to raise the money to dig that well. Our goal was to raise $15,000 to drill a borehole. A borehole is what we think of as a drilled well. A hand dug well is usually a shallow well. Both a hand dug well and borehole usually have a hand pump to pump the water into a bucket which is carried several miles to the family home.

I learned about water borne diseases. Many of the illnesses in Ghana are caused by drinking bad water. We focused on two of them. People go blind because they do not have clean water to wash their hands and face. That disease is called trachoma. The other disease is caused by a parasite called the guinea worm. The guinea worm infects a water flea. People drink the infected water containing the water flea. The water flea dies, but the parasite grows to be three feet long in the body over the course of a year. The guinea worm parasite comes out of the body one inch at a time over several weeks to two months. The place where the guinea worm is coming out of the body feels like a hot iron burned the skin.

The Jimmy Carter Center started in 1987 to eliminate the guinea worm parasite. Now, the parasite only exists in Ghana, Nigeria, and the Sudan. We hope that the parasite will be eradicated from Ghana by 2010. We had over 3,000 cases in 2007 and less than 500 cases in 2008. There are only 100 cases so far in 2009.
We’ve written four clean water Rotary grants so far. The first grant was for $75,000. The second grant was for $150,000. The third and fourth grants equal $250,000. That is almost $500,000 since 2007. The money was raised in California, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts. We have support in the countries of Switzerland, Canada and Great Britain. We partnered with the Methodist Church, Rotary, the Jimmy Carter Center, and Ghana Guinea Worm Eradication Program. I’m getting known as the water guy.

My first passion in Ghana was for the schools run by Come Preach Christ Church in the slums of Kumasi. The first time in Ghana in 2003, I saw school buildings that would be condemned in America. I was amazed that the kids really studied hard. They asked for prayers. They didn’t ask for me to pray for an “A.” They asked me to pray for them to be able to study hard. I didn’t see a way to help. In fact, I didn’t think about the schools again until two years later.

I began to get word from God that I was to take my first mission team to Ghana. I had all kinds of excuses why I couldn’t go. I was supporting a local mission project. I have four kids. I didn’t have a team. It took time and money to get a team together. God kept telling me that I needed to go. The team came together quickly. We were in Ghana within about two months from that first push from God.

I found out that the chief of the village of Amanfrom near Kumasi had told the students and the teachers that they needed to find another school. The high school students went to the principal to ask if there was a rich man in Kumasi who could save their school. The principal told the students that there was not a rich man who could save the school. The principal suggested that the high school students should fast and pray to save their school. The students fasted and prayed for their school.

The chief secretly sued to steal the school, the clinic, and the church. The court case was held the day that our mission team landed in the country. The female judge asked the chief why a chief would try to close the only school and clinic in his village. The chief claimed that the school did not have any hope. The school didn’t have working bathrooms, running water, or electricity. The chief stated that it would be better if the school was closed. The judge ruled in favor of the school and against the chief.

The next day, our mission team was at the school. Building supplies were delivered. The men and women of Amanfrom were hired to build the school. Our team did not know about the chief’s lawsuit or the high school students who were fasting or praying. I just know that God began to move on my heart at the exact same time that the high school students started to fast and pray!

We grew the elementary, middle, and high school from 200 students to over 500 students. We built a second story onto the high school. We built a dormitory and a kitchen and cooking area. The school received water outside of the school, working bathroom, and new classrooms the first year. We added electricity the next year. The following year, the school opened up its computer lab.

I’ve seen the students grow up and become leaders. I admire the cook at the school. Her name is called Sister Dora. She cooks for all of those kids every day. The school was damaged last year in a wind storm similar to a hurricane. A lot of the computers and books were damaged in the storm.

I hope to be able to go to the school this year near Kumasi. I’ve had to spend a lot of time in northern Ghana where the water needs are so great. I explained that the church and school in Kumasi needed to share me with the rest of Ghana. The Come Preach Christ Church roof is still off. They are praying to find the money to replace the roof.