My Departure From Ghana Revisited, 10/17/2007

A Final Letter From Africa

"Old sins cast long shadows." That West African proverb may very well have its roots in that dizzying span of time during the 16th and 17th centuries when Portugal stimulated industrial slave trafficking in their colonies and trading centers as a response to European demands for sugar, gold, and other luxury goods. The following centuries inflicted a scar so demoralizing and devastating on Africa – and its unwilling diaspora – that the shadow engulfs the continent to this day. So who is responsible for illuminating those dark spaces? That crimes of the past haunt the present can hardly be disputed; but once that recognition is there, who must stand up and arm themselves against the sins of their ancestors? If history teaches us one thing, it is that injustices do not disappear into diminishing silences. On the contrary, injustices treble into future and contemporary social catastrophes which perpetuate themselves via self-sustaining prejudices. As the aforementioned proverb suggests, unless we are to subscribe to any number of dehumanizing, prejudiced assumptions about the natural dispositions of our own human family, than it is the direct responsibility of all of us to both raise up those who have fallen and prevent those who would wish to plunge us downward again from taking the wheel. Whether well-informed or inexperienced, this seems to be the idea behind non-violent institutions that seek to lend a helping hand to those who are born and raised in unfavorable circumstances. Overseas and in our own backyards, there are people who are living among themes and inherited pains that create insurmountable barriers to progress. I decided to give up two years of my life to do something to mitigate the harsh realities of a few people in Ghana, and here I am ready to turn around and go home. What did I do? Was it effective? What will my lasting contributions be? How could these accomplishments have been carried out more effectively?



Inexperienced. That word sums up my qualifications for the position I was given as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana. When I learned I was going to be posted as an agriculture extension/natural resource management facilitator in Ghana I assumed that someone must have made a mistake somewhere among the stacks of applications in Washington. In not so many words, that is probably exactly what did happen. But two years was enough time to at least accomplish something. And I did. I learned how to organize people and inspire them. I learned how to work with the experience of the people within Ghana itself. People like Paul Assiaro in Have, a small town in the Volta Region where he had established an indigenous empire of sustainable agroforestry and alternative livelihood projects. Good friends at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture taught me how to prepare the land for our model agroforestry plot which otherwise would have failed miserably. Peace Corps taught me how to speak several languages, eat local foods, and avoid culturally taboo behaviors. Yes, I was trained. At the time, I thought I was given rather poor training; in retrospect, it was probably just enough to get me through. I can speak Twi, Buem, and Ewe all with a fair amount of confidence. Where else could I have learned three languages in two years? But most of all, I learned how to recognize symptoms of the "long shadow" that stands ominously over the evolution of West African politics and society to this day. That was the hardest, and perhaps most painful, part.



But I also learned how to stand within and without that shadow, to understand some of its dimensions, and to recognize some its weaknesses. If the only way to alleviate the impacts of old sins is to forgive them, than the only way to earn that forgiveness is through love and respect. We must learn to love those who are suffering, and through that love we must learn to respect them enough to come to their aid, even if it means suffering with them. It is not a choice, but a responsibility. If love and respect were universal ideals, the world would never wander into explosive tirades that leave only ashes and tears in their wake. And that is exactly what poverty is – social landscapes charred and pilfered because of senseless, instantly gratifying tirades. Humanity mutilating itself in the name of faceless projects is a recurring crime that infects and dissolves history at every turn. "Man is the only being that is capable of irrational decisions in the name of reason." Peace simply cannot be achieved through violence – it never has and it never will. Leopold II toasted to the civilizing of Africa with a glass of blood and an empire of pillaged rubber. The vacuums and memories that are left behind become fertile ground for future atrocities; seeds of hatred are planted and nursed in the long shadows of those old sins. The mass graves in Sierra Leone, Rwanda and the Sudan didn't evolve indigenously.



That is why something else must be done, something self-critical and simultaneously selfless. Even with blood on your hands, you can redress the wounds of history. Those who inherit privilege must share it; those who inherit inequality must demand opportunities to overcome it. Old fortunes sculpted in blood cast inequalities of epochal proportions. It begins with sacrifice.



Though the utility and sustainability of the tangible projects Peace Corps sponsors can be questioned, the compassionate gesture behind them cannot. The same can be said of every simple kind act. Helping your neighbor with his load doesn't insure that he will never have to carry a load again, but it does insure the likelihood that both he and you will be helped further down the road. It is an easily demonstrable law of social proportions. If you have been having decades of good rains, then why not help those who have been having decades of drought? If you are living in a society which is booming under the auspices of widespread good health, then why not come to the aid of a society devoured by stealthy diseases? The one thing that does keep a mistreated village like Guaman alive is community, and merging that community with a representative of a population once viewed as hostile and exploitative illuminates misconceptions and humanizes "the other." Inferiority and superiority complexes crash down and fertilize young, worldly minds. Peaceful gestures inspire expansive horizons.