Road Finders

On American Thanksgiving we visited Emmanuel Boadi at Pathfinder International, who told us of another pandemic "worse than AIDS." Women in villages commonly work themselves to a living death in which they have no energy, can no longer conceive, and become ostracized by their own communities and clans - a double death. Their families fear that their illness is the product of voodoo or some immoral behaviour, so Pathfinder works to educate people about the disease and its causes, about women's rights and family planning (the average Ghanaian woman births 4 or 5 children in her lifetime, a rate that is much higher outside of the cities). One of Mr. Boadi's greatest accomplishments has been beating the Bush administration, which refuses aid to organizations that talk about anything beyond abstinence as a form of birth control, in court. America's discriminatory funding rules were over-ruled.

We gave further thanks to David for introducing us to Professor Nana Araba Apt, a long ago graduate of U Toronto's Master's in Social Work program who has since returned home to begin numerous programs for girls in Ghana struggling to get a fair shot in education, commerce, and society. Despite having been an innovator herself, Nana quipped that Northern Ghana has become an NGO haven, leaving other regions under-served. She has responded by starting College for Ama (CofA), a summer camp and mentorship program for junior high school girls in impoverished communities, most of whom would have a 20% chance of getting through school without outside assistance: school fees are simply too high for their often large families and boys tend to get preferential treatment. Professor Apt was passionate, articulate, highly informed, and spoke no rhetoric or dogma. She has inspired Miia to try to volunteer there starting in the near future.

We took our leave of busy social workers and made our first visit to Burma Camp, Accra's military residence, named in honour of the Gold Coast (Ghana under the Brits) soldiers who fought in Burma during WWII. There we met Martin and Sir Henry (so named for his refusal to stop calling me Sir and Mr.), two first-year university students, Martin in computer tech and Henry in Business. These young men escorted us to buy a Ghanaian starter kit for our cell phone, we being fragile foreigners. Henry is David's nephew, under the Canadian family structure. Here he calls David 'Daddy' and David calls him 'Son' because David is the eldest male of his generation and Henry's father died in a car accident years ago. Little did we know when we learned this story that Henry would be hospitalized that same evening because of the same rough roads.

More later...

Chris