Final Memories

Hey everyone, hope all is great. This will be my last post about Ghana. For those of you are still reading this, thanks a lot for staying with me. If there is anything more you would like to know about Ghana / development, I would love to chat about it at anytime and I’ll do my best at giving you a decent answer!
As a finale, I thought I’d be a little bold and try to tell a couple of stories – true stories of people who I will always remember; people who represent Saboba (the area which I lived), Africa and development to me. People who give me hope for development despite all the challenges and people who simply inspire me in my everyday life.

Story 1:
This story starts with a young boy who comes from an uneducated and poor family. He fell in love with building and constructing things from a young age. His parents saw something in him from a young age; a passion, ambition, and talent that they knew they had to support. Although, they could not afford by themselves to send him to school, they save as much as they can and rely on other family members and the community. They are able to send their young son to Primary School and eventually for vocational school for construction and surveying. By that time, the boy has become a young adult and despite wanting to go for further schooling (university), he knows he has to work to support his parents and his new family. For 15 years, he works as hard as he can for the local government in his hometown. He becomes one of the most respected people in the entire District (Saboba) through his hard work, talent for his job (supervising the construction of infrastructure), and most of all for his honesty and genuine care for his people. After 15 years at the age of 40, he takes another shot at his dream of going to university. Through his incredible preparation (I was able to witness the days of working at his job and late nights of studying for the exam), he gains admission to one of the best universities in the country. Knowing he still has his family to support (he has three boys he is sending to school), he continues with his full-time job (where he still works harder than anybody else already) and takes admissions (as a Distance student) to the university. He now travels 6 hours (one way) almost every weekend to attend classes, studies late nights, early mornings, lunch breaks, on the bus for assignments / quizzes / exams while contuning his full-time job. It’s hard to say what I admire most about this man: the fact that he has never complained about anything, that he expects the absolute best from himself at school and work, that he cares so much about his wife and 3 boys (he won’t travel back home without getting a gift for each of them no matter how small it is), that he maintains the utmost honesty and integrity in a government where he could easily take with no questions from anybody, or that despite his incredibly busy schedule that he still does favours for anybody from his District (last week, he was creating a design for a church block on the computer for a local pastor).


Story 2:
I only found about the background to this girl recently from someone else but it just makes her story that much more amazing. This girl has always been one of my favourite students. She is very smart and has always worked incredibly hard. She cares so much that when she does not do well in school, she won’t talk to anybody for at least half and hour but soon after she is trying to find out everywhere she has gone wrong and where she can improve. I originally thought this girl was about 13-14 (that is the average age of Junior school which she is in). But a friend told me the following: this girl was from an extremely poor community and was set up for a marriage when she was 14 (this is a common practice still in rural areas). She did not want to do it and wanted more than anything to go school. She convinced her father but the community in which they lived would not accept it. So they two had to leave everything and start a whole new life in town. It took years for the father to save any small money to send his daughter to school. She is now in her early twenties surrounded by fellow students 6-7 years her junior. You would never think to see it. She absolutely loves school, dreams of being a doctor (she says she wants to help everyone) and speaking with her dad, he says he is so happy and proud of her (recently a “Spelling Competition” was held for over 15 students from different schools. He was the first person to show up and only parent to attend). It is still really tough for them; he works all day, every day to save up money to support his daughter while she goes to school during the days, cooks and cleans during the mornings/evenings, and studies late into the night. But knowing what they have been through, there is no doubt that they will make it.

Maybe these aren’t the typical stories you hear from Africa – the hungry children and corrupt leaders. Nor are they the triumphant biographies of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf or Nelson Mandela. They are a couple of ordinary people, like many others, who have persevered and continue to fight to follow their dreams, support their family and live a decent life. I know we have not found the right solution yet for development, but remembering these two reminds me that we have to keep fighting because there are thousands of others who are in even tougher positions and don’t have any chance at all.

Personally, they help me remember the fact that we can NEVER EVER stop trying in whatever we want to do. Whether it is trying to make a difference in the world, going back to school, working in a job that you dream of, whatever it is; it can be done. It is easy to get discouraged by bumps in the road or what people say – I know I am guilty of that often. It’s oversimplified but if people like these two can do it, we can do it. We have to keep believing in ourselves and in each other.







Well…that is the end of my time in Ghana. I wanted to thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for all of your support. I would not have been able to get through anything without you. I am so grateful for everything and pray that I can be as good as family and friends to you as you have been to me. Best wishes and much love.

The Future

So I am going to try to be a bit different today and try to use something remotely close to engineering! Above is a graph.

The bars show the increasing enrollment figures in Saboba District (Northern Ghana) and the line graph shows the declining student’s performance in Ghana’s national standardized testing (in 2009, 34.9% of students passed; 15.7% of girls). If you were to hear from political figures or big donor agencies, our District would be a great success. 8 new school blocks built in the last 3 years; hundreds more students in school learning.

What you would not hear is the following – teachers are barely present in classes; the majority of teachers are volunteers from the community with no training; the pupil to teacher ratio is well above the national average; few students are passing standardized examinations and even less are pursuing tertiary education.

The quality of education has become one of the biggest issues in our District (and in the country) yet the plan continues to be the building of more school infrastructure. It is even argued that this is making the problems worse because the quantity and caliber of teachers keeps decreasing.

Speaking with a CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) officials, they say that the bottom line for them is that “x more children going to school.” And that is how all donors measure success; that is how they report to all of us. Before I came here, I saw the commercials and pictures of so many kids going to school in front of new schools and thought this is development. But the fact is that there is so much more to education. Building schools is not even half the battle. For students to do well, everybody knows (especially parents), it is not just a matter of kids being in school. They need guidance, they need support, they need inspiration, they need to be pushed.

We must realize that development is not only about infrastructure and material things. We must ask more.

We must ask not only how many more students are going to school, but how well are they doing? Are more going to forms of higher education? We must ask not only how many more boreholes or wells are being built, but are they being built in the best places? Is the water coverage (population served by water) increasing? We must ask not only how many mosquito nets are being handed out, but how many are actually using them? We must ask not only how many people are getting loans and paying them back, but have their incomes increased during years after when they stopped getting loans?

We much change the way we think about development. It is going to take more time, more investment and it is not always going to show the great results that we have all come to expect. But hey, who said changing the world would be easy?

Lessons from Ghana

It’s been 9 months. And they always say that it is good to take time to reflect, so I thought it’d be interesting to try to think about some of the lessons I have learned being in Ghana.

Being called “white man” isn’t so bad – I have to admit that it was pretty frustrating at the beginning with the shouts, following and staring (sometimes mouths open) but it kind of grows on you. And the best thing about being a “white man” is that it is SO easy to make people smile that even I can make it happen - you just have to look at them for more than 2 seconds or flash them a wave and you will get the greatest smile or laugh in return. Plus, I realized being here you can get into habits. Whenever a foreigner comes to town now, I find myself staring or trying to find out all about them! 

Moms are right - green stuff is damn good for you – I know this is not a great lesson, especially because moms are usually never wrong. But I never thought I’d miss the sight of lettuce, cucumbers (that one is for you Moe), spinach, peppers so much. On a more serious note, the lack of vegetables and fruits (and thus vitamins and minerals) is a big problem. It causes prevalent malnourishment and weakening of the immune system.

Everybody needs to wear name-tags in Canada – OK, maybe not that extreme (I kind of wanted to relive that Seinfeld episode). But one of the most noticeable differences between here and the Western world is the greetings. Everybody greets everybody. It doesn’t matter where you are from, where you are going, or who you are. And let me tell you, most of the time, beautiful thing. A simple greeting can lift you when you are down, make you feel part of something when you feel alone, and often lead you into awesome stories or exchanges that you would have never expected. That is definitely one thing I am taking home with me and I think we have to start a revolution where GO-Trains, subways, elevators and any other public places are no longer no-talk places.

Development is damn tough but there’s hope – this is probably the most depressing and most inspirational lesson at the same time. Before I came here, I thought it was all about the increase in the number of schools which were built, or the decrease in the number of malaria deaths. Yes, those are all important statistics but it is not as simple as that. There are so many who have gone to school and are not suffering from malaria, who are still living day-to-day because of lack of opportunities.

And how do you create opportunities? In places which have become rifled with politics and corruption? Places which are subject to constant threats of disease? Places which are near cut-off from markets for almost half of the year? Places which lose all their talent to big cities and big salaries?

There’s no silver bullet for sure. But I believe that there is a secret weapon and this is the people. The kids, with no parents, role models (and often no teachers), who are reading all the time to try to become a doctor because there are none in their communities. The young man, who graduated from university and had job offers from the south, but decided to come back and teach kids in his hometown with no pay now for one year going on. The single mother, who toils all day in petty jobs, to support her kids going to school and occasionally buy them new shoes to spoil them a bit. Or the civil servant, honest to a fault, and who works so hard in an environment filled with those who take all the resources and credit. These amazing men, women and children are the hope.

For all the hard challenges in development, there are many amazing people that are so worth fighting for.

We can never stop following our heart – There are so many people in this world who are forced to do things that they don’t want to do just to get by another day. They don’t have any chances to follow their dreams. It’s definitely not easy back in Canada and Amercia, especially right now, but we can always keep trying to do what we really want in our lives.

Some honorable mentions for lessons learnt: Toilets are the greatest invention in the world; the African music and movie industry are a completely untapped resource (e.g – Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion and Jacky Chan are absolutely idolized here), and ice cream and water packaged in plastic has got to come over to the Western side

PS – one last one - Everything you do, no matter how small, can make a difference – I had to include this because I think it is a huge misconception. And its one of the things I realized through my own failures. When I first came here, I had the huge plans of projects and ideas that would “change the world”, work that would eliminate poverty……..but I realized first off, that is not going to happen and secondly, it’s the little things that we all can do that really change the world. Every moment is a chance to something good and even though it is not grand, it is making the world a better place.

Thank you all so much. I’ll save the biggest take-away for last - that I would not be here without incredible family and friends. Your amazingness reminds me of that everyday. All the best.

The Bad Side of Development

I have often talked about the best of people. The people who keep you waking up in the morning to want to go support. The people you are often in absolute amazement of – how can they be so strong? How can they think of others at a time like this? How can they not ever complain? Well, there are those people and those people are incredible. There is the odd time however you are faced with the other side.

I should not have tried to go back home to Saboba from Tamale. But alas, what this Ghana trip has not taught me yet is wisdom. I wanted to go back home despite knowing that buses were hard to come by. The rains had been coming hard and the roads had been often flooded. As a result, many buses did not want to travel back to Saboba (the town I live) past 2 PM. When I reached the bus station, it was about 1:00 PM. Luckily, there were others like me trying to make it back. We sat around for a couple of hours without any luck. No one wanted to go. Finally, we were able to convince one small motorcade, probably a capacity of 6-8, to take us. There were 15 of us but he was happy to get the extra fare. So off we went.

5 minutes into the journey we realized this motorcade’s top speed was 20 km/h and with the extra bunch of us, it was 15 km/h. Our journey would take us late into the night which did not bode well for the river crossing. We went on. Every 30 minutes our so we would jump out of the motorcade to push it up a hill. Still we went on. And then the inevitable happened. The motorcade broke down. We were in the middle of nowhere, almost hitting darkness, and we had nowhere to go. We were about 10 now. Around 5 had seen other motorbikes heading to Saboba and joined them knowing it was a better chance that they would make it.

After hiking 15 minutes up the road, a tractor rolled by with a bunch of people. They had obviously been coming from the farm and were heading home to Saboba. We stopped them and told them our desparate situation. We pleaded for them to give us a ride. The driver conceded and told us he was going to Saboba but wanted us each to give him 2 dollars to ride in the back cart. The ride from the beginning designation 50 km back was 1.50. The difference does not seem much to you and me but for many in Saboba, it is equivalent to a hard day’s work. Knowing we had no other option and seeing that we were in almost complete darkness in the middle of nowhere, we agreed with the driver.

Now, you know those stories or movies where riding in a tractor looks like fun. Yeah, they are not as good as they look haha. At least this one wasn’t. We sat in the back of the tractor, sitting on bags of fertilizer. The tractor ran through the road bumps with little haste and it was basically like that game where you press the bottom and the stuff in the box goes flying around. We were the stuff and it was not such a fun game. Add to it that water was flying everywhere (while running through the potholes of water) and it was a journey that we wanted to end quickly. Soon, one of the members of our crew, a visitor to Saboba, started to get quite sick from the shaking. We pleaded with the driver and his colleagues to take caution while driving. No response, just laughs. We went on trying to comfort the member of our group. About ½ hour in the journey, the driver stops and demands that we pay the money + another 0.50. At this point, it is complete darkness and we are still far from our destination. He threatens that we either pay or he drops us here. After pleading and pleading to no avail, we are forced to pay the fare plus the extra charge. He asks that we take out our bags so he can go empty his fertilizer first. So here we are, waiting in the darkness for him to finish his work before we head home to Saboba. After 20 minutes, we are back on course. The road gets rougher and our friend begins to get really sick. We ask for him to slow down especially on the bumps but again only laughter. It is as if he sped up. Just as we saw the light at the end of the tunnel and we approached the main road to Saboba, he inexplicably branches off to another road. We ask why but no answer. After 20 minutes of the detour, he stops and asks for a man from the farm. They begin speaking and from what we can piece together, he is doing business for his farming products. We were furious. Our colleague was getting more sick as time went, the journey in the tractor had taken 2 more hours then it should have, it was 11:30 and this man had stopped to do business. After doing his business, we got back to the main road to Saboba. We asked the driver to stop at a guest house a bit outside of town so we could drop the visitor. He said he would let off the other members in town and then we would go to the guest house. When getting to town, not surprisingly, he demanded that we all get off there. I could not look at him.

The sick visitor had no place to go and the town was almost empty (it was past midnight). We had to call up a kind friend to take the visitor on a motorbike down to the guest house. After dropping my bags off, I went to the night spot to get a bite to eat and there I see the tractor driver munching down on food.

Now, I know it could have been a lot lot worse. And things like that could have definitely happened back home in Canada. But here, the difference is that it happens more regularly. The corrupt people are able to do things like that and often take advantage of people who have no other options. And there is little accountability or consequences for anything. This was a small thing but it becomes a lot more significant when it deals with people’s jobs, money or freedom. The poor become poorer and the rich become richer at an even faster pace. Young people need to be able to look around and have the hope that if they are honest and work hard, that their dreams can come true.

Lately, I have been struggling with the fact that I can’t put myself in people’s shoes and I can’t judge. That it is tough to say how people would act if they are desperate and in real need of money. Maybe they are good people but poverty is just too much. How would I act? I don’t know.

I know this however, that integrity in tough circumstances is an incredible thing and is one of the main things that is needed to lead Africa out of poverty. It needs to be good people willing to sacrifice even though they are poor. And I personally know people here who could take money wrongly and live their life with no qualms and nobody saying anything, but choose to do the right thing even though it is much harder for them because they believe in it. It is their amazing courage that is making the small steps to development and whose spirit we pray spreads throughout.

“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Road gone Wild

Development - we usually think schools, hospitals, microcredit, agriculture, etc. Here is one that often slips the mind and one I did not think of before coming to Ghana – roads. In the Western world, we see problems with roads as potholes, lack of guard-rails, or those yellow painted lines. In the developing world, problems include huge, impassable gaps; rivers overflowing and washing out bridges, and vehicles getting stuck for days.
So currently, it is rainy season in Northern Ghana. There are daily downpours of rain and floods are very common. The two roads connecting our town to the main city has become cut-off except for the truly adventurous types. Road A is completely washed out by water and a vehicle cannot pass through it. The only opportunity there is to take a motorcycle on a pretty dangerous canoe. Once you cross the river and empty all the water in the canoe, you take the motorcycle and continue. In fact, the man who built the rickety canoe has made a pretty good business out of it, now charging customers. Road B has the river running over the road but it can be crossed by lorries (oversized vans fitting over 20 people). The process is the lorry is emptied, the people roll up their pants, take off their shoes and wade across the river. Then they watch and hope that the lorry does not get stuck! One morning our lorry got stuck so there we were pushing from every direction for a couple of hours trying to get it unstuck. Now I have to admit, I was pretty useless in the whole operation. I was trying to push but mostly I was just not get washed away by the river. And in those moments, the most difficult ones, I again was able to see the best of human beings. Women with babies at their back pushing with no complaints. Men going under water and trying to lift the tires with serious risk of getting crushed or toppled. Children carry others’ luggage probably weighing more than themselves on their head to ensure that it does not get wet. After an hour, and tons of attempts, the car was able to get unstuck and moved.
Since then, a truck was stuck for over 4 days making it completely impassable for anybody. It again took a communal effort, but this time by hundreds from the town to remove it (pictures are attached). The impact of the roads problem cannot be understated. A journey to the city which usually takes 2-3 hours now, if possible, takes 6-7 hours. Few drivers even agree to take the risk of going to and the town with their car and many are often left stranded in the city, wanting to come back but with no means. An incredible amount of business is lost; as one prominent member of the community put it – “all economic activity comes to a standstill”. People who depend on selling or obtaining products from the city (and that is big majority) are helpless. There are no financial service institutions in our town so many are forced into a habit of saving the little they have until they are able a trip to the city. Good health services are all in the city so who knows the impact on actual well-being of people. And here is the most amazing part of the whole story – this has been a problem for numerous years now. Every year, there is a promise by the government to fix the road and there is no action until it is too late. No accountability and no action.
This is a problem that cities, towns and countries face all over the world but it just feels more magnified here. Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton talked about it a lot in their recent trips to Africa – good governance. But I think we often hear good governance and hear only lack of leadership. Good governance everywhere, I believe, is as much a responsibility of the communities as it is of the government. There needs to be more community organization, grass-roots movements, and interactions with the government. It is going to be hard and take sacrifice. It may take people becoming unpopular, going against the norm, maybe even risking their lives. But alas, if we want to achieve something worthwhile in this lifetime, there is always going to be a risk and sacrifice.

Blog 4

Imagine this situation: You are working for the government of an area in extreme need of services and infrastructure like schools, clean water, health care staff, etc. You have all of these separate donors who want to give you money and implement projects they think will help the people of your area. Some of these donors have never been to your area. Some of the donors are doing projects that overlap. You can’t say no to these donors because you don’t want to lose their support and money - it is often their money which is keeping your District above float. So you go along with all of their projects and do the best you can and although some problems are solved, often the real causes of problems are left lingering.

Unfortunately, this is a situation too often faced in developing countries. I am not saying that donors (including world governments) are causing serious problems and should be blamed. There are those people who believe this but I am not one of them. I believe many donors like World Vision and UNICEF are working hard, and doing work that saves lives and makes a difference for so many. But I believe that things could still be done more efficiently, and if sustainable development and progress is to be made in developing countries, changes need to be made by all of us. Currently, it often seems that we all are placing band-aid over band-aid instead of working on the deeper issues. And let’s be honest, looking deeper is going to be harder – it’s going to require us all to work harder, collaborate and it may not produce the immediate results we all want to hear.

Here are a few observations:

1) There needs to be more coordination among donors
Many donors have a great deal of resources, but no one donor can solve all problems. All donors could work more as a team contributing and collaborating their resources, expertise and experience to the issues that face them all. Furthermore, from a beneficiary’s (like a District government) perspective, you are now accountable to far less people and can spend more time focusing on what actually needs to be done for the District. You can work together with the donor team to plan, achieve and improve; instead of just trying to complete numerous projects with so many donors.

2) There needs to be a change on how donors, and the public see development
Currently, we the general public, often look at development as generalized results like schools or hospitals built. Less focus is put on actual long-lasting impacts because these impacts are not as attractive and take more resources. Many times, a severe donor dependency from developing areas is also created as a result.
I was told a story by a colleague here that once he was involved in building a beautiful school. It was state-of-the-art for that area and was fully furnished. Unfortunately, there were no teachers and even though they were able to get an initial group of teachers; they were not as qualified as they should be and learning was affected. Furthermore, little money was set for ongoing maintenance of the school. As a result, the school soon became non-functioning. This is one example and aspect; more effort also needs to be centered on training (e.g – vocational), facilitating, supporting people in developing countries so they can take their countries to the next step and sustain it. Citizens of developing countries have the best knowledge of their country and what needs to be done. Many times, they just need support to make it happen. Unfortunately, these types of results are often unquantifiable. I am very guilty of it and often find myself trying to stop trying to make things happen and create results, and instead support others in their pursuits.

3) There needs to be more information and follow-up from the donors
Donors often, (sometimes through no fault of their own) send sporadic amounts of money or spring workshops on beneficiaries. As a result, beneficiaries like local governments here are taken away from their own work or plans and thrown into something completely different. Often, they can’t say no because they do not want to lose vital support. Developmental planning becomes ineffective because schedules from any donor are unpredictable.
Furthermore, when donors do these workshops or projects, very little is spent on follow-up after. And as a result, local governments and communities often go idle and are not held accountable for what happens afterwards (which is often the most important time). I have seen where even a little follow-up from donors afterwards has spurred continuous positive action from the local government.

I have talked a lot about deficiencies from donors. And I will emphasize that this is not the complete picture and also that I believe donors are creating some positive results. The above are observations of ideas on how we can do better.

I also want to state I believe beneficiaries and developing countries are ultimately responsible for successful development (that is a huge discussion in itself). For some context, Barack Obama made an amazing speech Saturday to the Ghana House of Parliament with many points on that subject.

I definitely admit that I don’t have the answer. And I am probably not even close to having it. But I know one thing now for sure, it is not as simple as more aid and more money.

I would love to hear any of your thoughts or ideas on this topic or anything! Thank you so much.

All the best and keep giving em your all!!

Love and best wishes,

Shamir

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much” – Helen Keller

Follow-Up to Mission Obama

Thank you so much everyone for your feedback. Its keeping us going!! Here is a follow-up:

We are hoping to collect over 1000 letters here in Ghana and hopefully get a few hundred letters to the White House. We will be hosting a march in Tamale (main city in the North) on July 1st. We have teamed up with the Sister City of Tamale, Louisville Kentucky, to see how they can support the campaign. In the coming week we will reach out to the New York Times and the local media to see if they can pick up the story.

So what can you do:
-watch our video on youtube and send the link to friends and family http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r72tsUC9_zQ (you could also view as many times as possible a day! we trying to get it high on the view list! lol)
- urge any American friends or even Canadians to get in touch with the White House
White House - http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/
List of Representatives and Contact Info - https://writerep.house.gov/htbin/wrep_findreptative
List of Senators and Contact Info - http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
-Advertise for the campaign / video via your Facebook or Twitter account until July 1st

If you have any ideas on how we can get our message heard by the White House please let us know!

Thank you all SO MUCH and lots of love from Ghana!