I remember way back, in a different lifetime, when I was just out of college, young and single, sitting at my computer in my 1 bedroom apartment in Spokane, Washington, googling mission organizations to volunteer with in Africa. I thought about it, prayed about it, researched it, made lists of organizations to contact. But in the end, life took me a different direction, to Florida, the man of my dreams, and 4 children. Or did it? Because here I am, 15 years later, volunteering at an orphanage in West Africa.
Some people say you can manifest your own destiny. But I don’t think that’s quite it. I think the Holy Spirit whispers the call (what some would call your “destiny”) deep inside your bones. Far, far in the depths of who you are, so far down you are only dimly subconsciously aware of it, if even aware at all, you know what you’re supposed to do with your life. Sometimes we wake up just enough to hear the whisper, and take steps towards following it. Most of the time we don’t. I had a dream to volunteer with children in Africa 15 years ago, but I didn’t manifest that dream. It was put there by the One who directs our steps. All I did was take baby steps, 15 years of baby steps, trying to follow God’s will, and in the end, the dream became the reality.
There are a million and one ways I can tell you how I know that it was God’s will all along, but perhaps the most obvious one is the very last step. The thought of volunteering somewhere in Africa while we were here had been swirling in the back of my head for months, I even wrote about it in a blog post before we got here! Lo and behold, just TWO WEEKS into our time here, we met a couple from Cuba, both doctors, at the Apostolic Nunciature where we have been attending Mass. We started chatting with them regularly on Sundays, and before we had even been here a month, Anet, the mother, started telling me about how she volunteers at an orphanage and invited me to come along with her. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t understand her broken English at first, and just nodded politely. Don somehow DID understand. He knows me intimately, and knew this had been a dream of mine. He was surprised that I was not acting more excited, but kids (either ours or Anet’s, I don’t even remember which), started distracting us and we parted ways. Later, at home, Don turned to me and said “Did you understand what she was saying? She volunteers at an orphanage and wants you to go with her.” WAIT, WHAT??? Immediately grabbing my phone, I texted her, hoping written words could dispel the communication barrier, apologizing for misunderstanding her earlier and excitedly affirming that yes, YES, I DID want to go to the orphanage with her!
So, a few weeks later, after the kids had all started school and I had several hours a day to myself, Anet picked me up and brought me to Great Mission International. I had barely made it out of the car when two teenage girls, both with some form of undiagnosed mental disability, came BURSTING out of the gate, wrapping their arms around me so hard that I almost fell over! Rarely have I received such a warm welcome, or witnessed such pure joy. We proceeded into the orphanage, where one of the workers (they call them “aunties”) handed me a beautiful little 1 year old girl. Anet introduced me to the aunties, and to John and his wife Irene, who run the orphanage. “You are welcome, you are welcome” was repeated over and over again.
Anet then proceeded to walk me through the orphanage, and for the first time, I saw a way of living that I have truly never ever experienced before. The children sleep 8-10 in a room, but some of the bedrooms only had a single bunk bed. There were piles of old, falling apart, thin mattresses, and it was apparent that most of the children slept on these on the floor. Every single wall was covered in smears of dirt, the plaster or paint or whatever had been used on the wall peeling in multiple places. It was hot and stuffy, but there was no AC in any of the rooms. No running water. Not even a sink in the bathroom I peeked into, just a toilet. The “kitchen” consisted of a small hallway area, with one very small stove. I think they do most of their cooking on a small charcoal grill outside, where flies cover the stacks of cooking bowls covering the ground. There are no shelves on which to put them. No tables on which to eat the food. The aunties wash the children’s laundry by hand in large bowls, then string them on clotheslines in the backyard to dry. I will never be able to comprehend how they cook for over FORTY children, do laundry for over FORTY children this way. To think that I have complained about doing laundry for my own 4 children with a washing machine and dryer!
Over the last few months I have been back several times, learning more about how the orphanage operates, continuing to assess their most pressing needs, and meeting them as I am able. Eventually, I was able to bring a few other embassy spouses along with me, and this little expat group of ours has been able to accomplish some incredible things! Through very generous donations of friends and family, we’ve been able to purchase enough new bunk beds and mattresses for ALL the children to have a bed, and pay the orphanage’s rent for the entire upcoming year. We also managed to get every single child at least one (and often multiple) gifts that were on their personal Christmas wish lists. It has been hard work, but man, the joy that just radiates from that place is indescribable! The joy that comes from knowing deep in your core that you are where God wants you to be, doing what he wants you to do…that joy is even greater.
Sometimes, people equate joy with the absence of hardship. But I’ve found that you can have both at the same time. I have many, many stories to illustrate this. I’ll write a book with aaallll of them someday, but for now, here’s my favorite one that illustrates perfectly the joys and the comedic pains that come with volunteering at an orphanage in Ghana. Note: I have changed the names of the children at the orphanage for their privacy.
Anet purchased painting supplies and invited a Cuban friend of hers and I to help paint the 2 boys’ bedrooms and bathroom. I invited another embassy spouse, Tara. So…2 Cubans, 2 Americans, whole bunch of Ghanaians. I knew that Anet had purchased painting supplies previously, so thinking we were all set, Tara and I show up in grungy clothes with nothing but ourselves (actually, Tara had the foresight to bring a drop cloth, which you’ll find out in a minute is very important to the story).
It was about 70 seconds into the painting that the problems began. The first problem was that the old paint/plaster/whatever it was on these walls started peeling as soon as it became wet with the new paint. And we had absolutely no scrapers or adequate tools to remove the old paint/plaster. Tara and I, in our American obsession with efficiency and perfection, thought it might be best to come back and resume operations a different day with the proper equipment. The Cubans, happy that no matter what we did, it would look better than before, shrugged and insisted that it would all work out great! So Tara picked up a broken tile off the floor and started chipping away at the peeling paint as best she could. One of the boys from the orphanage (we’ll call him Sam), who was probably about 12 years old, ran and got a large kitchen knife and started scraping as well.
Second problem…we had no ladder to reach the top half of the walls. Not to worry, the Cubans and Ghanaians have the uncanny ability to make anything work with…anything. So the Ghanaians piled one small rickety table on top of another small rickety table, then hoisted one of the oldest Ghanaian boys up there (we’ll call him Paul) to paint while balancing precariously like a character in a Dr. Seuss book.
Then, Sam, the boy with the kitchen knife, and one of his little buddies decided they would also love to paint. So they grabbed brushes and started slathering paint everywhere they thought paint needed to go while Tara and I were distracted working in another area. They indiscriminately painted the trim around doors, light switches, the wooden shutters on the windows…everything. Remember that drop cloth that Tara had had the foresight to bring? Well we only had ONE. And now that we had multiple eager painters, paint was getting dripped all over the floor. Those eager painters were then stepping in the dropped paint and walking throughout the rest of the orphanage. While Tara and I cringed and tried to keep a lid on our rising panic from witnessing the mess and chaos, the Cubans again shrugged, saying we could just mop the floor with paint thinner when we were done. (In the end, no paint thinner was actually used. Tara ended up mopping the floor with a mixture of tree bark and water. Yes, tree bark. Ya learn something new every day.)
A couple toddlers, not wanting to be left out of the party of course, decided to come sit on one of the bunk beds and watch this circus. I’ll never forget, one little two year old boy (I’ll call him Peter), dragged in a big pink exercise ball and a black plastic toy gun with him. Later, the same little boy came in with a bowl of what looked like watery rice, scooping it up with his hands to eat it while he watched us. I wanted so badly to pick him up and snuggle him, but by this point my hands were covered in paint, and there was no running water in which to wash them. (Though I have gotten to snuggle that particular little boy several times since that day!) So I turned back to the corner of the room that I was painting. Only as I swiped my brush down, baby cockroaches crawled out of the crack formed by the two walls joining. I could not stop the momentum of the brush, and ended up with blue baby cockroaches on the wall. Baby blue cockroaches. Oh dear.
SO. We have adults chipping old peeling paint off the wall with bits of tile, children doing the same but wielding kitchen knives, a young man painting precariously balanced atop 2 tables, tween boys slathering paint enthusiastically on every surface, paint dripping on the floor and being dragged throughout the orphanage, and blue baby cockroaches. There is no AC, so we are all dripping sweat in the midst of our chaos. However, the most comedic part about all of this by far was the clashing of cultures. I’m pretty sure both the Cubans and the Ghanaians thought this was going GREAT. All of this was totally to be expected, and we were making it so much better than before! The Americans (Tara and I), however, could have used some alcohol. And maybe some paper bags to breathe into. We dreamed longingly of plentiful drop cloths, scraping tools, running water, ladders, and painter’s tape. We were used to the clean lines, precision, orderliness, and construction codes of the States. One of Don’s colleagues once said to him months ago, when he learned that we were going to Africa “Africa is chaos. If you like chaos, you’ll like Africa.” I remember cringing a little at that statement, because I DON’T like chaos. But, after 6 months here, I am learning to accept it more and more, even if I’ll never be able to fully embrace it. So, Tara started belting out some lines of the song “Despacito”, which helped distract us from our OCD-ness, and made the Cubans burst out laughing. And, in not so American fashion, we got ‘er done.
We are so grateful for every improvement, big and small, we’ve been able to make in the lives of these children so far. John texts me frequently, at all hours of the day and night, just to tell me thank you. BUT there is so so much more that they need. If you are interested in helping out financially, there are several ways to do so, even from America!
They have partnered with a nonprofit in the States called Project Safety Nets, and there is an option to donate online via that organization if you are feeling called to help. To do so, you can go to projectsafetynets.org. Click “give now with givelify”, then choose “Great Mission International – Ghana” from the menu. I can personally vouch for the fact that the money does indeed go straight to the orphanage, and that it is utilized responsibly and efficiently!
A crucial way to help right now would be to commit to a monthly donation (any amount, every bit helps!) to help cover the ongoing costs of school tuition, rent, salaries for the aunties, food, medicine, doctor appointments, etc. Even school tuition costs alone top 200,000 cedis a year for this many kids (that’s equivalent to about $20,000 USD). So, if you or your church or your moms group or your grandmother would like to help out some kids in West Africa, this is a fantastic way to do it!
Or, text/call/carrier pigeon me to find out more, or comment on this post if we do not know each other (yet 😊).
THANK YOU, and keep the prayers coming!
“And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'” Matthew 25:40