The final leg

We are crowded into a very large plane. First class stretches luxuriously in cabins and on beds. They arrive to TO looking refreshed, groomed and together. I am falling apart, My hair is sticking out in all kinds of directions and flattening to my head in others.... Two days on a plane isn't helpful. My clothes are stale - I feel sorry for Connie who has to pick us up. We can't smell that good -- even though we all showered and put on clean clothes when we left. I have no idea how many hours ago it was. We have been through so many time changes, that the hour is meaningless to me. I just remember getting up in Ghana, riding a canal boat in Amsterdam, and now I am back in a plane. My computer clock says 7:12 -- but I'm not even sure where that is! We have 2 1/2 hours left on this flight.... and then, through customs one more time.

We hardly have seen the breadth and depth of Africa in two weeks -- we did see a lot of airports. But we have had glimpses of an Africa that is struggling to get out. There are no easy answers. An African man chased after us the last morning of filming. He shouted angrily at us in his tribal language. The Assemblyman and Community Fishing Chief with us told us that he was asking why the white man no longer came with money, but just came with cameras. They needed money -- not pictures.

Throughout the trip we have worked very hard to build relationships with the village elders and leaders, asking them first before we take out our cameras. I looked back and I said, "We want to tell your story to people in Canada, so they can help. But we won't just send money -- you need clean water, toilets, jobs -- giving you a few pennies today won't help that. You need leaders like Mary and Comfort and John and Cromwell and Walter who walk alongside of you, helping you to build your future."

But I came with a $5000 dollar camera, clean clothes. I am fat and healthy. I have a safe home, a bed, a kitchen, enough food to eat. I have attended university. I have a job. I could have easily given him a few dollars. It is always a tension. Because I can give money -- but money alone won't solve the problem. There needs to changes in the balance of power. The white and the black working together. Attitudes changed. New hope given.

The last village we visited was just outside Accra. We asked for the population -- but no one knows. The community is growing. There are at least a million people crowded together in a maze of shanties, drying clothes, smoking fish and young boys playing cards. The economic foundation of the community is fishing. The men go out to fish and the women smoke the fish and take them to market. The children work alongside their parents, young boys going with the fishing boats, their agile young bodies untangling the nets -- often getting tangled in it themselves. They have no toilets, so they defecate in the sand alongside the sea -- imagine -- 1,000,000 people and what that adds up to. They pee in the small ditches running throughout the community. The children wear unlikely t-shirts – purchased from used clothes markets. They are walking billboards for American sports teams, shoes and beer. Some wear almost nothing -- it's winter here, although the heat and humidity almost suffocate us. Some children and parents are wearing coats and hoodies.

Young girls are carrying babies -- Mary tells me that the child is their grandchild -- the girl is under thirty. Women are servants. They cook and clean; they sell in the market; they care for the children. A man looks for a woman with a strong back and a willingness to work -- he chooses three to five hardworking, child bearing women to do his work. Young girls, their bodies just beginning to become womanly are used for pleasure. That momentary pleasure multiplies the population quickly. Girls that are only 12 or 13 become mothers -- but they don't become wives. Few children go to school. Their parents need them at home to do the chores. The cycle of poverty is multiplied as the generations grow... yet resist change.

Sixty-four churches are scattered throughout the community. I asked how the churches impacted the community. The Assemblyman made a sound of disgust. He said they do nothing but keep the people ignorant and caught in their web of authority. The churches were big and looked nice. A stark contrast to the shanties the people lived in. They were walled. The people are not sophisticated. They accept religion easily. Christianity in many forms proliferates -- but the preachers get rich and fat. Their children go to America to go to school. There is no Mother Teresa loving these people -- or simply obeying the command of our Heavenly Father to care for the orphans and the widows; to share a cup of cold water with the thirsty, a crust of bread with the hungry. There are pastors who request offerings for the sins of the people -- money the people don't have, food they need to feed their children.

Change will not come quickly. Because it requires impact from many levels: first of all the people themselves must desire more than a dollar from a passing white woman. They must come to understand the need to learn to read and write. They need to work towards building and economic foundation -- so that their children and grandchildren will have jobs. They must petition the government for change. Corruption and self centred interests are ordinary. They themselves must learn to understand the difference between serving God and religion -- too many are trapped in religion. The pastor is powerful, persuasive and pressing. They are frightened of the curse of the gods. Even if they attend a Christian church, they still believe there are many gods. They don't fight for their rights because they are afraid. Women, especially resist change. They are afraid that change will strip away the insignificant autonomy and control they have. They have so very little power or choice, they don't want to lose their place, such as it is, in their social structure.

We spoke to a mother who gave her daughter to the fetish priest as a payment for the grandfather's sins. The gift of the daughter was to break the curse of the sin. The daughter was 7 or 8, she doesn't remember how old she is. She doesn't keep a journal because she can't read or write. She wakes up with the sun and goes to bed when the sun falls behind the horizon. She doesn't know the months of the year; she plants in the rains and harvests when the crop is right. So the little nine year old girl went to work for the fetish priest. She slaved in the fields all day and when his lust raged within him, she provided her malnourished body for him. He didn't feed her or provide clothes for her. Her mother had to leave the family and work in a nearby village so she could provide food for her enslaved daughter. Her mother looks away as she speaks. Those years were extremely hard.

The young woman was liberated when she was 18 -- after serving the priest for nine or ten years. She stumbled home carrying her youngest child with her, not knowing what the future held, how her parents would welcome her. They took her and her child in. Her other three children stayed with the priest. She doesn't see them. She is a farmer now, eking enough out of the dusty soil to feed her children and to sell in the central marketplace. She speaks little -- many of the questions we ask her are incomprehensible to her. We want to know how she felt -- she doesn't know that she could feel.

In my western penchant for speed, impact and measurable results, I want to build a school, put in a water well, install an irrigation system, plant healthy crops and fertilize them so they grow lush and sweet. Certainly the humid winds would feed the plants and help them to grow. But as I watch, I realize that my need to change the community does not reflect their desire to change.

Change will come.... I am convinced of it. Because there is a young man who grew up in a traditional village. His parents deserted him and he lived with his aging grandfather who was a peasant farmer. Because a Canadian woman believed in him, he has completed his primary, junior high and high school education and is now in his third year at the University of Ghana. He is studying agriculture because he can see that the ways of the past are no longer sufficient and he wants to take care of his grandfather.... I ask him what his grandfather says. His wide grin gets even bigger, his white teeth sending our white balance off the charts. "My grandfather? Yes, please," he says. "He is very happy."

I am convinced that change can happen because there is a young man named John who left his home when he was 11 years old. He wanted to go to school, but his family could not afford it. So he moved to the boarder community and pried coins and dollar tips from business men and wealthy Americans who crossed at the boarder. Unlike his friends, he stubbornly refused to spend his money on drugs, alcohol or women. He saved every penny so he could go to school. He took his social work degree and today he is working in several different villages, inspiring the people to change. He is the first step to the future.

We can't judge another society; nor can we transplant our own traditions into their soil. But we can listen. We can walk alongside of them, become their friends. Invite them into our lives.

In the fishing visit on the outside of Accra we noticed that many of the women were wearing dresses of the same pattern -- white and black, the white a stark relief to their pitch black skin. Mary told us that Saturday was the day for naming ceremonies. The people of the village gather to celebrate the birth of a new child and, together, they name her.

We pray that one child's name is hope.