Agape in Translation

Each month our organization's volunteers participate in a mini-project, or Impact Project, as we have been instructed to start calling them. Most often these Impact Projects involve community-building activities. When I was a volunteer at our site in Peru last fall for six weeks, the one mini-project I participated in was helping build a new museum of ancient Incan artifacts in a rural village. We spent a Saturday morning painting the museum walls, sweeping the floors and dusting the glass cases. Two weeks later the museum opened and we attended the inauguration, which was followed by a cultural dance performance and a feast.

Currently our NGO uses three Impact Projects on rotation: We host a community-wide beach clean-up in Cape Coast and help with the construction of a vocational training school for at-risk teens and a primary (elementary) school and library; both schools are in rural villages.

Our local staff members Lawrence and Kofi supervise and help volunteers complete the Impact Projects; Kirsty and I are not in attendance for such activities because we are delicate expat workers and need our weekends to be stress-free. Don’t get me wrong – back home in Nebraska I laid bricks and packed cement whenever possible, but hey I can’t take all the fun jobs around here. Hafta share the love. But the main reason it's okay for Kirsty and I to "bugger off" (I love living and working with a Scottish girl (lassie)!) while Lawrence and Kofi lead the Impact Projects is because it's part of their duties as Volunteer Coordinators to organize and lead the volunteer affairs during the weekends. One day, one day (common Ghanaian phrase/substitute for “eventually”) I will join a couple Impact Projects and get my hands dirty alongside the volunteers, but I’ve been saving myself for when things kick up in January when we have nearly 50 volunteers arriving and we’ll need all hands on deck.

Due to the curveballs Life sometimes throws, two people had rotated through the role of Country Director before Kirsty in the year and a half that our NGO has been in Ghana, and unfortunately a few relationships developed in the beginning have fallen through the cracks during those transitions. Neither Kirsty nor I have met the leaders of two of the three Impact Projects; we know the main contact of the beach clean-up mini-project because he is a project partner – the founder of a local health and sanitation NGO. Therefore, Kirsty thought it would be a good idea for me to meet with them to reintroduce them to our organization.

My first meeting was with Douglas, the headmaster of a nursery and primary school for about 185 students ages 1-11. I was aiming to reestablish our business relationship by explaining we’ve had a few changes in leadership since we first became involved with the development of his school, which is the unfortunate reason he and I had yet to meet until this magical moment. I also needed to get a better grasp on how his school runs, the extent of our volunteers’ monetary and physical contributions to the development of the school, the headmaster’s future goals for the mini-project and how we can help facilitate those goals. Above all I wanted to get an idea of the headmaster’s feelings toward our organization and volunteers.

I learned that Douglas uses a van to pick up and drop off students who live up to 7km from school grounds. He said the van serves as the main means of transportation for nearly two thirds of his school's students.

“Wow, that’s great you’re able to help so many students go to school,” I commented.

Douglas nodded proudly.

“How did you get the funding for the van?”

Douglas looked at me gravely and asked, “You know what happens when you get stabbed in the eye?”

I wanted to laugh because I knew this was going somewhere completely unrelated to my question - one of the many characteristics I adore about Ghanaians.

I stifled a smile and responded in my most solemn and encouraging voice, "No."

He continued, "When you get stabbed in the eye and your friend cups your eye socket for you like this - " he covered his right eye with his hand, " - to stop the bleeding. If your friend should run away, you must cup your eye socket yourself." 

Ah, nope - can't say that's ever happened to me before. I made the conscious effort to close my gaping mouth. “I..don’t understand,” I said slowly, hoping to sound apologetic and serious rather than thoroughly amused.

Douglas tried again, “Or you know when you break your jaw – ” his hand slid from his eye to his jaw, “ – and your friend has to hold your jaw in place to keep it from falling...”

Racked my brain forward and back but to no avail - oddly enough, I had no recollection of such an incident happening to me. Or anyone, for that matter. I figured he wasn't speaking from experience but couldn't believe he thought these analogies would help me understand how he had paid for the van. 

I was both ashamed and proud of my blank stare - better that than bursting out in laughter. I gave up trying to understand the relationship between payment for a vehicle and gouged eyes and broken jaws, and Douglas gave up trying to convince me they were one in the same - or he ran out of body parts to list and all the horrific things that could go wrong with them.

A small part of me was disappointed when Douglas succumbed to a practical answer (he took out a loan to pay for the van). Isn't it always a nice surprise when the means justifies the end?