I Specialize in Damage Control

I work for an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) that brings foreigners (about 80% Americans) to Ghana, India, Thailand, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Nepal and Ecuador to serve communities in the health, community development and education sectors while living with host families and learning about the country's culture. I am the Project Coordinator for our site in Cape Coast, Ghana. Besides locating and cultivating partnerships with Ghanaians and their nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and developing work plans for foreign volunteers and interns, I also end up doing a lot of the volunteer coordinating. Additionally, I update our media outlets and teach a biweekly cross-cultural training seminar to the volunteers. I live with my boss. I work on weekends, sometimes. I live in a compound connected to our volunteer house. I'm "on call" for the volunteers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What I do is not a job - it is a lifestyle.

During the summer my job requires a shift in focus. One, I become a glorified camp counselor - a shepherd, if you will. Don't get me wrong - we get some cool volunteers - I even consider a few my friends. But when I'm working with them, I am a shepherd. A "bosslady." My boss Kirsty identifies herself as the Mama of the volunteers and me as the fun older sister. I'm okay with that.

Two, I orchestrate the preparations for the projects for both the volunteers and their project partners. This is my second summer working for this INGO. Last June, there were five volunteers on-site. This June? Twenty-three volunteers and interns are working at 12 different projects. As for July, 10 of the June participants will be staying  through the month, overlapping with 18 new arrivals who will be spread out on nine projects, not to mention a group of 15 university students on five projects. Where do I come in? I'm responsible for checking in with everyone throughout their programs to make sure both the volunteers and their partners are satisfied (mending the inevitable communication problems). I am also managing the project money for all the partners and each of their volunteers.

And three, I specialize in Damage Control. Project and Volunteer Damage Control.

One of my favorite damage control stories is from this May. It involves a volunteer who served as an assistant teacher for an elementary school (called "primary school" in Ghana). The Ghana education system allows canes to be used by the teachers to discipline the students. The foreign volunteers who spend time in the schools are deeply disturbed by this, especially when students are caned for reasons such as getting an answer wrong, not leaving enough space between each letter when they write, or for jumping out of their seat with excitement when answering a question. Caning is so ingrained in Ghanaian culture that even when this particular school's headmaster instructed the teachers to cease the caning, the students' parents complained.

When volunteers sign up for the education projects, we warn them before their arrival that caning is the culture's preferred method of punishment. They still have difficulty witnessing it. One of the girl volunteers asked to be caned by a teacher to see how it felt. Others stepped out of the classroom when they felt uncomfortable or upset about it. Until this May, no one had tried to "fix it."

During our organization's orientation and through the cross-cultural training courses I teach, we encourage our volunteers to know their place within the country they are serving while also maintaining a positive outlook on their roles within their NGOs' projects. We explain at length that it is neither acceptable nor worthwhile to try to change an aspect of a culture by imposing one's own culture on theirs. Some then may think, Well, then why should we volunteer at all? Westernized solutions for X-country's problems will never work. Moreover, it can possibly offend the locals. Attempting to impose one's culture on another's is culturally insensitive, arrogent, naïve and distinctly "American." (Sorry to say it.) However, say for instance a volunteer wants to teach community members about the importance of recycling rubbish. There's no harm in that, as it is a solution suitable for a Ghanaian problem.

However, *Bob was determined to change the minds of the 11 teachers at his school during his three-week program. When he told me he was going to try to "fix things," I got nervous. Then he admitted he knew he couldn't banish caning from Ghana's education system, but he hoped to at least influence the teachers at his school as much as possible during his three-week program. During his first few days at the school he asked for a meeting with the 11 teachers and headmaster and provided examples of less painful methods of punishment. Wall sits was his main suggestion. From what I had gathered from my sporadic informal check-ins with him throughout his first week, Bob was going to continue to educate the teachers on alternative ways to discipline the students and hope for the best. 

One afternoon Bob came to our volunteer house after working at the school. A university group was staying at our volunteer house, and many of them were hanging out in the dining room. Bob had been in Ghana maybe a week before the group arrived. He strode into the house, put his backpack on the floor, pulled out a broken cane and triumphantly raised it over his head. He announced to the room, beaming, "Ten more to go!"

I was mortified.

I asked him to come over to where I was sitting. I asked what he had done and why he did it. I reminded him (informed him?) that he had taken and broken someone else's property and such an action could have severed the relationship between him and the school and perhaps the school and our organization. Then came the excuses: "Well, it wasn't that good of a cane anyway," and "...the teacher can just get a new one." I told him what he had done had gone against our organization's ideals, against everything our staff had told the volunteers about keeping our own culture to ourselves.

What Bob did made me think of all the examples in America's history of self-imposing, both recent and in the textbooks. For some reason, this situation triggered a major disappointment in my home country. I don't know when this hostility toward the U.S. started exactly, and I'm not sure if it's just the U.S. who is guilty of this, but something deep inside me scoffs at people's impulse to "help." What qualifies as "help?" What qualifies as an "improvement?" Every culture, every person has a different perception of what it means to "help" and to "improve." In order for change to occur within a society, the society must be ready for change. Going back to the recycling initiative in Ghana, Ghanaians are ready for an improvement on their waste management system. They want help, they want guidance on how to improve their environment. That's why projects focusing on recycling in Ghana have been working.

Eventually Bob seemed to understand what he did was wrong and the potential ramifications of his actions. He apologized and said he wouldn't break anymore canes.

There are definitely some drawbacks to having a job that becomes your lifestyle, but many many positives too. On a scale from 1 to "nooo way, I can't believe that" in terms of damage control tales, this job has delighted me with quite the range. And in hindsight, long after the initial drama, who doesn't love a good story?