Today I feel small and ineffectual. There is so much pain in the world, much of it in the countries where I work. Young girls were kidnapped, and have been sold for the equivalent of 2 hours of minimum wage work in the USA. A brand new country is tearing itself apart. Several governments are so corrupt that Satan would be impressed. And I come here to help build jobs? Maybe if I’m really good at what I do, a hundred more people might be employed next year. A few hundred more may have better jobs. It feels so small.

I watched the Ghana government channel. There was a self-congratulatory documentary on the installation of tank toilets at a cinder block school in Tema, gutter ditches in Accra, and so on. This from a government that taxes everything in sight and has set its eyes on businesses as the goose that keeps laying their golden eggs. The same government that steals from the poorest of the poor, refuses to arrest known murderers, and passes laws it won’t ever enforce as a sop to the populace. They pay lip service to the tragedies that sit by the roadside, or in shanty towns where corrugated roofs stretch to the horizon. Where children hawk phone cards instead of attending a school they can’t afford, ensuring that yet another generation will struggle harder to get up.

As a Ghanaian friend said, as I was fretting over something inconsequential: “The day will still end.”

So today’s a new day. Some has changed, but not enough. I’ve changed, as I do every day here. It is clear that solutions are a long time coming, and that mine is a small part. In the bible I read, “but now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” I knew that I really had to work on the faith and love part. I didn’t expect that hope would be so difficult.

For now, I’ll have to hope like that little boy tossing starfish back into the ocean. Helping one person may not seem like much, except to that person.

Afterword:

I’ve been in a period of what I can best describe as culture fatigue. It comes well after culture shock. It’s when you realize that of course it will take 45 minutes to get your meal, but you just don’t want to deal with that. You forgot to put on your bug juice to go out for an evening, and have to traipse back upstairs to do it. It also comes from looking around and wondering if you’re really making a difference. Read about that in another self-pitying blog entry. Not today, thank you.

Today I’m sitting in my client’s office waiting for him to arrive. I know he’ll be late(r), and that’s ok. He’s probably late because of the rain. It’s one of those nice, warm, steady African rains, where the tropical green is even more verdant, and dirt roads turn a beautiful red and brown as they become even more impassable. The door is open and the girl who signs us in is passing the time singing hymns – “How Great Thou Art” and “Ode to Joy” – a capella. She knows I’m listening and doesn’t care. And she’s good.

This is Ghana.