Fr. Pieter and the Ashes of Ashwednesday
25-2-09



Pieter has not been well for over two weeks. He has been showing signs of getting old for longer than those two weeks of course. Since the last few years he progressively forgot more names of the children in our community, his energy diminished all the time and the horizon of his mental world begun to narrow down. He did not ask me about my journey after I returned to Ghana in December, for example. A painful thing, but eventually I understand this fits in a larger picture.
He was as friendly as always, at least for most people, and he still went to the internet-cafe for his email communications. But he is 83 years and what else should we expect.
Since Monday two weeks ago he had a bad night of vomiting and diarrhea, and that whole following week he could almost not get out of his house. So very tired and becoming so very thin. That week he found it impossible to point out what was happening to him or even if he had eaten or drunk some water. He simple existed at a lower, confusing and confused level of awareness.
However after the first week he suddenly gained strength again and with the help of his new caregiver he washed and dressed and walked around almost as if he had the whole world in his hands again. That was great but then again, these last three days were bad for him, not eating, occasional vomiting, possible diarrhea but mostly unhappily confused. Scared of course. Who would not be scared. This morning early in the morning I found him with 39 degrees fever and the color of a corpse, counting the money from a box from under his bed
Pieter, please, stop, I’m taking you to the hospital, you need a drip and you are hot, your body needs to be bathed with cold towels, at the hospital. Pieter, put that money back let’s go, first things first. Thanks to Baffo who has strong arms, Fr. Pieter was carried into Baffo’s car and we all drove to the hospital. There is a side room there for VIP-patients, but unfortunately there is no toilet and no running water. Anyway, we made a bed for him there and put up the drip. Pieter still looked ghastly and slept at once as soon as he touched the mattress, with open mouth, exhausted.
Temp 39 still. His body was sponged and cooled off. That’s how they do it at a cooling center too if there is no airco. Fr. Pieter took some porridge and some juice and water.
Fr. Benneh, the hospital chaplain, came to see him and gave him the ashes on his forehead. Today is Ash- Wednesday, remember?
Remember Pieter, that to ashes your body shall return. Nice for a sick old man who for a moment had hovered in the shadow zone between life and death that very morning!



Pieter is going to be evacuated back to Holland. It may happen
This very Saturday or maybe a day earlier of later depending on what state Pieter is in and the availability of the flight. A companion will travel with him, most likely Steve from the workshop.
Maybe by Sunday coming Pieter will already be back in Limburg at his SMA house were people can care for him so much better than here in the rural African community.

Pieter came to live with us as a retired missionary in 2004, when he was in his late seventies. The room which Pieter formerly used when he came to visit was turned into a simple but comfortable summer hut-residence, Fr. Pieter’s house. Or ‘House Number One’ as we named it on his 80th birthday. Pieter busied himself with flowers and gardens. Looking after the garbage was another self-appointed assignment with us. When this became impossible because of his diminishing physical capacities, of the fires he started and the staff he wanted, he involved himself more with a friend who is an ecological farmer here in Nkoranza. I believe he has supported this person a great deal. Pieter was always concerned with soil and land, that is for sure.
In the summer of the year 2007 he was honored by the pope with an award.

I know Pieter for over 30 years. During the time that I worked at Nkoranza’s hospital, in the 80ies and the 90ies I got to know him better, as a friend. The work was never finished as I was the only doctor, and the area was still very isolated. I sometimes did not see a colleague doctor or another white person for months on a stretch. Sometimes I would just set my work at the side and spend a weekend at Fr Pieter’s mission at Sampa, a 4 hours drive from Nkoranza. It was a celebration to spend an occasional weekend at his mission. What we did was talk talk and talk. A lot of sharing. Sometimes I just slept half of the weekend, exhausted. Together we started organizing courses and workshops for our different personnel, the staff of our hospital and the workers of his mission. Leadership courses, beekeeping courses, counseling courses, These years were intense and exhilarating and hugely inspiring. Our cooperation was fruitful. I have gained a lot from these years, those weekends of sharing, these courses. Inspiration and friendship were the keywords. I owe Fr Pieter gratitude from these good times. They made my professional and private life very full.
When, more than ten years later and after my stay in America, I returned to Ghana to help steer the very innovative PCC Hand in Hand Community into being, and I brought my husband Bob with me from Chicago, Pieter reentered into my life. He was the one that married us. We also invited him to come and live his retirement/old age at our community.
After long hesitations and long delays he accepted our invitation and so he has lived almost 5 happy years at our community. It was not always easy but it was a pleasure to know that living in our beautiful community was adding to his life. So he found himself a friendly base from where he read a lot and talked a bit and kept involved with his vocational school in Sampa. That was a little token in return after all the support he had extended to me during our weekends and all the fun implementing the leadership courses here and there.
It has been good but now it is over.
Limits are extended and milestones are shifted when an aged man loses much of his energy and starts falling sick. A rural place like ours and this way of simple life then cannot be anymore. Thank God that milestones are being shifted and that borders are crossed over and over again in changing situations…
Saturday night the plane with Fr Pieter on board will hopefully cross such a border and land in The Netherlands, where hopefully a new phase in life in a new environment can begin which is better suited to his present needs. One day Pieter may show up in Ghana again for a little vacation.
Thanks Pieter, for the support you gave me when you were still in Sampa.
It was nice to offer you your hermitage with us, when you retired. Thanks for being here with us and fare yea well.

Pastor Osei with his Rightway Church
Paul with his little Kwame Addai

15 February 2009

We just left the Sunday breakfast table, where, like every morning, I enjoyed the sight of Paul feeding his baby Kwame. So I would like to write a few lines about Paul and follow up on the faring of co-founder Osei, who in the meantime has started his own church which we attended two weeks ago for its first year’s anniversary.
Paul is the fashion designer who joined us last year for his National Service Program. I can still see the moment when he first arrived chiseled freshly and clearly in my memory. One early morning Paul was just there. Without any previous notice, no letters, no phone calls, nothing.
‘Who are you? What are you looking for here?’
‘I’m Paul. I’ve come to assist you for my National Service year’.
That could not last long. A graduated fashion designer from the big city who would come to live with our mentally handicapped children in our rural bush area, offering us a helping hand. And yet…and yet!
Paul is not only still here, he likes the idea of staying on a while and assisting with some coordinating tasks at the sheltered workshop. So you see...that no one can really foresee anything much at all…

Here is Paul, a picture taken this Sunday morning. Basically this same radiant image appears each morning at the breakfast table, Paul with Kwame in his lap, lovingly feeding him his porridge. Both with a broad smile, always. Isn’t it a marvelous picture?
Paul is now receiving instructions from Steve Philips, the present workshop coordinator, to learn to handle more leadership tasks in the future. So far so good and Paul looks forward to the challenge of staying on a few more years after his national service, in order to get more experience before he starts his own fashion business in Accra. Paul and Steve are presently working, together with Jelle and Greetje, on the new summer collection 2009, a collection of new and uniquely beautiful products from the workshop sold through the web shop. Check out our new products on the website real soon!

And Osei, our co-founder of the PCC Hand in Hand Community since 1992, who went to live in town some two years ago, how he is faring? Well, since one year and two weeks it is ‘Pastor Osei’, not just Osei or Br. Osei.
Because Osei finally took the giant step in his own personal life, to start his own church. On 1st February 2008 Pastor Osei erected the ‘Rightway International Gospel Center’, consisting of a handful of faithful gathering in the garage of his own house in town. Good for him! To evangelize and lead his own church-fellowship has always been a deep yearning in Osei’s soul but now it has turned into a reality!
Bob and I were there, at the opening ceremony of his brand-new Pentecostal church one year ago. And now, a year later, we were there again for its first anniversary. The church is growing, after one year Pastor Osei has already over 150 registered members and new ones are arriving at his garage from day to day. .



What speaks to me of success, even more than the happy face of Osei or the numbers of people worshipping in his garage, is the donation that his Rightway Church made to our children. For his first church anniversary Pastor Osei, with his red baseball cap and a long line of faithful behind him, arrived at our community and donated a huge amounts of yams and sugar and rice and soap and all the things you need in Ghana. Carried on heads and wheeled in with a row of wheelbarrows.
That’s a real church you have created, Pastor Osei! That is love in action. That is our church to be!

So you see that for the future nothing can be foreseen all that clearly!
Least of all Osei himself would have clearly seen these developments beforehand.
Or Paul, for that matter.

A so so week.
9-2-09

It is hot. Even though it has rained twice already it does not clear up after the rains.
Not that this is something new, or strange, after all Ghana and heat belong to one another like Holland and rain, but it is annoying to have to wipe sweat from your eyes all the time, even if you sit perfectly still.
And the little Boro baby is still not faring well. The parents are much worried.
Hinke and Jelle have subsequently experienced a fierce gastro enteritis and a malaria-attack. Now everyone in the ‘Postma guesthouse’ is healthy again but it caused an unpleasant interruption to their visit. Workshop coordinator Steve, distributor Jelle and volunteer Greetje have spend the week working hard on the topic of new styles and new prices for the web shop. The day that Steve left for a meeting at the coast, one of the workshop kids nearly raped a little girl at the school. The boy has been send away immediately back to his parent, in between our kids he cannot be trusted anymore. Powerlessness. What to do. The strangest thing is that this boy was the least expected to act up in such a way. No history whatsoever in this direction. What was even stranger was that we were not supposed to have heard this news. The incident happened on Friday morning at the school grounds neighboring our land, and the story of what happened leaked out to our community. Joyce and Ema came to tell me. Also told me that they were questioned by the staff of the school about telling what happened to us. And ‘who had told them, anyway’? So we overheard rather than being informed of the incident and our staff was bullied for it by the teachers of the school. Why? I don’t know. I do know that at the school one does not find much display of interest for the wellbeing of the individual child. They do care about the name of the school, however. What people say, therefore. Maybe that’s why we were not supposed to know what happened. Still have to find out from the headmaster who was away at that time.
The boy is gone and now Kofi Asare lives alone and he feels awkward with the situation. He lost his roommate and possibly he doesn’t know why and feels shy to ask. Or maybe he has heard the story but has been told by the schoolteachers not to talk about it. In any case we don’t mention anything to him, not now.
So not a real good week. And then this. Yesterday one of our new volunteers left. She had arrived a week ago and looked deeply malnourished, many eyes would be found staring at her ‘Why so thin?’ Concerned looks at her matchbox-thin arms and legs. This girl was not suited for West Africa, one attack of fever, one severe diarrhea and she would have been wiped away. Still it must have been hard on her to hear our message that she could not stay, not as a volunteer, anyway. ‘Sorry, first gain some weight, than come back’.
All in all, a so so week.
Gratefully another volunteer, Greetje, had arrived as well. So there are still three volunteers to help with the kids.

Thank God also for our kids that are faring well. Like little Steve, Dede and Shalomina.
Steve will leave in about four weeks for a second series of operations. He enjoys the ‘quietly being at home’ with us, something that he has not really experienced before, between all the hectic comings and goings. Dede enjoys acting like a little mother with her new ‘sisters’ Alice and Cynthia, or whoever needs a helping motherly hand, and is still very happy with her own new mother, caregiver Gifty, who looks so well after her.
And Shalomina? She gets fat! Cozy round cheeks and a contented smile, that is Shalomina. She has a one sided paralysis and does not talk but she seems to be at the right place with us.
Shalomina was the little girl who was found deserted, around Christmas, in front of our gates. Her mother, who of course was never traced again, must have been studying the situation and have chosen our orphanage for a reason. She was right. Shalomina is blossoming with us!

The Boro-Baby

31-1-09

Since we returned from Holland, in December, I have resumed my 2 day routine at the hospital. Without however having time to hear the news and the gossips at St. Theresa’s. Too busy with visitors and events at our Hand in Hand community to also have an open ear for what happened at the workplace.

Yesterday, however, I met my boss, Dr. Tano, in the operation room. Which is a great place for exchanging the latest news. ‘What’s been happening?’ I asked him.
‘Ha, not much, but busy, very busy all the time. It’s the health-insurance. Everybody attends the hospital as if they are going to the market. Pains and a skin rash and headaches and fevers and sore throats. Hmmm. All in the same patient, sometimes. And they want you to listen to this, and supply a drug for each complaint. That’s Ghana nowadays. So I’m spending day and night in the consultation-room. My friends complain because I am never at home anymore. Last time I had a friend visiting me for a whole week and after that week my friend said that if I did not make time for me he would leave. That’s what my friend said and still I had no time so left disappointed in our friendship!’

‘So you’re that busy, eh? How’s Dr. Boro, is he still on leave?’ I asked.
Dr. Boro and his wife, ‘Dr. Mrs. Boro’, are two physicians from the neighboring country Burkino Faso, who work here in Ghana as working conditions here are better then in other West-African countries. The couple had a newborn baby, their second born, and I thought that they were still on leave at their parent’s house in Ouagadougou.
‘His baby is bothering him a lot. He is very tired by now. He and the wife.’
‘What do you mean? Are they not on leave? What’s with their baby?’
‘Don’t you know…?’, his eyes wide open from amazement.
‘No, I don’t know. What’s with the baby?’
‘So you don’t know? It was only five days after the C-section. The baby started vomiting. It was around Christmas. Projectile vomiting, the type which occurs with pyloric stenosis. So we all went to the hospital in Techiman, the consultants, Dr. Wegdam, Dr. Hillal. That’s what it was, pyloric stenosis and Dr. Hillal did the surgery.
For some time all was well and the baby started gaining weight and then the wound gaped open. So we all went back to the operation room and re-sutured the wound but a few days later it gaped again. So now the baby got tension-sutures to hold the abdominal wall together. It has feeding tube.
So many operations, and everyone at that house there is tired, very tired. Dr. Boro is very tired. No they never went on leave to Ouagadougou.
And let me tell you about the driver who got ill . Distended abdomen. He will go to Kumasi for further tests…’

Dr. Tano updated me with all the medical and personal news at the hospital-premises. I was upset to hear about the baby of the Boros and decided to call in at the Boro family that same day. But that was not necessary as a few hours after that conversation Dr. Tano’s head appeared around the operation-room door again.
‘Dr. Boro’s baby, the wound gaped again. We are all here in the other room.’
‘Really? Okay, I’m coming.’
I was thinking fast on my feet. Action-plans. Transfer straight away to Techiman. And then, real quick, to a pediatric surgeon. Korle Bu, or the Military Hospital in Accra.

I enter the other room to see this tiny six -week old baby laying on a large operation-table, surrounded by half a circle of colleagues. A quiet baby with a feeding tube through one nostril and an abdominal incision kept together by sutures, but from where bowel is visible in the depth of the wound, coming up between the stitches with every inhalation.
At the foot of the table stands Dr. Tano who is clearly in charge. At his side Dr. Aubrey who is fervently trying to set up an infusion into the plagued arms or legs of the baby. Without success because all available veins are already infiltrated from previous occasions in operation rooms.
At Dr. Tano’s other side stands Dr. Boro, as quiet as the baby, and beside him Dr. Mrs. Boro, his wife, who looks even quieter and more emotionally withdrawn from the scene. She seems to wear the face of someone else, her grandma maybe, a face resigned to loss. A small women, Mrs Dr Boro, shy. I have always felt attracted to her but we’ve not been able to talk as her English is poor and so is my French.
Beside her stands the anesthetist and beside him the in-charge of the operation room and beside him a theatre nurse. I line up around the table and so there we all stand.
I’m on call that day which means I treat all the emergencies which means I say ‘Let’s bring the baby to Techiman!’ to the Boros.
Dr. Tano’s eyes above the surgical mask turn to me. He seems to smile.
‘He is getting anesthesia already. I have Dr. Hillal on the phone right now.’
I now see the mobile phone at Dr. Tano’s ear.
‘He says we should close the skin, do everything possible to keep the skin closed. And not puncture the bowel!’, he jokes, clearly to reduce the tension in the room.
‘Dr. Bosman. You do it!’, he commands. ‘You are the oldest, you have to do it.’
Well, so I do it. My right hand with the needle-holder and sutures is almost as big as the entire baby. No one talks, no one trembles. ‘Thank you, Dr. Bosman’ say the respectful small voices of Dr. and Dr. Mrs. Boro afterwards, one after another.
We had been bound together as if it had been a mystical event, where oracles where heard and people’s fate decided upon!
The anesthetist broke the silence as he was filling in the surgical report.
‘What’s the name of the baby?’ He asked. Dr. Mrs. Boro kept silent, looking at the anesthetist in confusion.
The baby was not yet named, of course. The anesthetist must have made this oversight in his eagerness to re-establish normal routine in the room. He knows of course that African babies are not named and out-doored till after they have survived their first few weeks. A custom that has to do with the African spiritual beliefs but also with protecting parents from feeling too devastated in case the baby does not make it into life.
No name yet, therefore the child does not yet fully exist. It is as if he lingers on inside the womb a while, with only the mother to nurture the baby at her breast (and only the mother to weep in case he dies).
Dr. Boro, being the father, started to say something but was silenced by the booming voice of Dr. Tano.
‘Write him down as ‘the Boro-Baby’, he commanded.
There was a sense of relief in the room and the Boros filed out with the baby in his mother’s arms. It was a dignified exit and we all went about our business as usual.

By the way I was on duty until this morning and the Boro baby must be faring well as I was not called again. May he have life.

The year of celebration has begun
26 January 2009

Just back from ‘the’ big board-meeting of this year. Ema and Baffo are now informed of the future plans for Hand in Hand Community, and are genuinely happy with it. Really happy, I think, though it is always hard to guess real feelings behind polite words.

That meeting means for the time being the closure of an exciting time of visitors, cheese and wine and other presents, unexpected breaking news and lots of sitting around the table in order to consolidate great plans for change. The plans have now been made concrete, the last visitors have gone and Bob and I actually keep making little dancing steps from pure satisfaction.
So you see that not only the great ones of this earth, like President Obama and President Atta Mills, concern themselves with ‘positive change’ and ‘yes we can’ issues! Here at PCC Hand in Hand we did not sit still either in this episode of transition of power.
On December 26th, the day of the Christmas-play, an angel of good tidings came down to our earth, called Dr. Ab van Galen, with the very unexpected and excellent news that he, with the help of his wife Jeanette, will take over the directorship, my role, of PCC Hand in Hand in Ghana as per 1-1-2010. Yes, true! Clap your hands and stamp your feet!





During many years Ab has worked as a tropical doctor at the Dormaa Ahenkro Hospital in Ghana and consequently Ab and Jeanette know Ghana like no other.
After a professional career in Holland and raising three children that are now not children anymore but have found their own way, Ab has the opportunity and the interest to dedicate himself to our community here in Nkoranza. And Jeanette fully supports him in this decision. From the beginning of next year Ab will be the new director general and, together with Baffo and Ema, will form the new management board of PCC Hand in Hand Community.
All this was consolidated while the spirit moved and the Christmas-angel watched!
And yet, two weeks later I went to Accra with happy but also somewhat anxious expectations, to meet Ab and Jeanette once more on their way out to Holland. It all seemed to good to be true. But it is true! I once again received a wholehearted ‘Yes’ to our future plans!
That happened on the same evening that I picked up my sister Lucy and sister in law Mary, from that same plane with which Ab and Jeanette flew away.
So not ‘Good times, Bad times’, but ‘Good times, Good times!’.



With Lucie and Mary we traveled along the coast of Ghana but mostly were together to talk and have fun together. It had been so long since we had time together like this, the three of us. We also had fun with Bob, the caregivers and the children. A special time!

It is a pity that ‘Good Times, Good Times’ pass so fast! On the 20th of January Mary and Lucie flew back to Holland and France. With a very excited Ahmed they were waved good bye at the Kumasi Airport. Ahmed shouted his bye-bye’s so very loud and was so taken aback with the little plane that landed, let Mary and Lucie inside, and took them away into the air again, that by the time they were gone the whole airport, about 200 other people, were looking with us to get a glimpse of the miracle that they thought Ahmed was observing. Judged from his loud, excited and continuous exclamations!
They left, my sisters, to make place for Jan and Franca.
Jan Stoof and Franca de Vries are old friends but since June 08 they also do substantial work for our project. Franca takes over the administration of sponsors and benefactors and Jan is going to play a major role in the financial management with the idea of taking over some of Bob’s role as a financial director in the future.
Jan and Franca were already in Ghana for a visit to their projects in Tamale and their visit to our community formed the very interesting closing event of their Ghana trip. The visit was really meant to celebrate our friendship, but also to share information and brainstorm about the administrative future of our community.



Thus we were involved in four or five days of intense and continuous work-meetings by day, and equally exciting friendship-times by night. The new or renewed foundation in Holland has now received a clear shape and Jan shall play a leading role in the (re-)formation of the Dutch NGO. This morning they left and with a song and a laugh and a tear they were escorted out on their way to Accra.
In the meantime the wine is finished and the cheese is going to follow that same fate very soon. Good, we don’t need it to continue our ‘Good times, Good times’ by now.
And the board meeting has just taken place with which I started this writing.
In fact all this news is so important and so large that there is no way to do it justice in a small column like this. But yet, it is time to deliver the beautiful new baby into the world and outdoor the idea. We did it with the board meeting and now with this story.
The year of celebration has begun.
And from January 2010 onwards Bob and I will start living somewhere else, somewhere near the rock and the hill. So as also to show in that way that the central command has changed. We will retire near the rock, which is usually considered a place of leisure rather than a location for work. Already Bob has remembered an old song which will match our future situation. A song that he loves but now gets a new personal content for us. We will be known as ‘The folks who live on the Hill’, no longer the young Jack and Jill…



The hill: the empty chairs are still standing there empty after the intense meetings with Jan en Franca, the sister-visit before that and the awesome angel Ab van Galen with his good tiding long before that!

New Year, change and all as usual
Jan 7, 2009

Is it not a contradiction? Yet all is back to ‘as usual’, now that the New Year has started and the ‘change’ has happened.
Below you can still see a golden picture taken at the New-Years-party, with the kids in their brand-new festive golden dresses. Splendid!





But the parties are over and the Christmas decorations have been put back into the boxes for next year. Except a few strings of Christmas lights that were fortunate enough not to be taken down but to stay, to brighten our nights. Till they die a natural death or, who knows, till the next Christmas.

The dry January air is already causing broken lips and painful dry skins. And a dry cough here and there. The hospital is filled up to double capacity and the first cases of meningitis and bronchopneumonia have been admitted on the wards, caused by the cold and dusty desert winds that blow from the Sahara over Ghana and bring pleasantly cool nights but also these sicknesses and inconveniences.

In any case in the morning it is so nice to turn on the other side, pull up the blanket high and sleep for another hour or so. Disappeared the very early risers that would puttle around with buckets and cooking pots and make use of the coolness of the early predawn morning. The coolness has changed into cold! And our people walk in heavy winter coats and wind jacks with capuchins pulled deeply over their heads, with sweaters and cloth wrapped around from head to toe, with leggets and ice-skating caps. Only when around noon the sun gets stronger is it still considered possible to take a cold water shower. Early morning one sees steaming pans with boiling water on coal pots here and there scattered around the houses, bathwater for the children!

All the passionate debates and discussions about which political party will win the elections have subsided as soon as eventually the winner was announced. Unanimously Ghana agrees that ‘change is needed’ after eight years of government by the same NPP party. And Mr. Atta Mills from the NDC, the opposition party, will soon and without further ado be sworn in as the next president for Ghana. Case closed and all satisfied.

For months on end the papers and the local fm radios, the street corners and the bars, were flooded with a variety of different and loudly proclaimed political opinions. But the elections are over and other issues catch the attention of the many debaters among the people of Ghana. Ordinary life goes on.
The elections which took place on the 8th of December ended fift-fifty in a tie, a second round of elections took place on the 28th of December, three weeks later, and was also inconclusive, and then finally a third local re-election in a small election district not far from us, on the 2nd of January, made the scales balance ever so slightly in favor for the opposition NDC party. NDC was declared winner at 11 am on the 3rd of January, with a very narrow victory of only 23000 votes. (Ghana pop. +-18 million inhabitants).



Peace has returned or in fact has never left during the three rounds of elections. The outcome is accepted, the NDC has won, and today the papers were filled with ingoing and outgoing speeches, old president Kuffour inviting president elect Atta Mills for meetings and a show of his future (white) house. Pleasant things and lots a smiles.

While the whole world is still gazing, with open mouth, at the phenomenon of Ghana,



where democracy comes so naturally and so peacefully, this of course in sharp contrast with the rest of the African continent, Ghana has returned to business as usual.
However not without being very proud of the way they carry discipline into democracy and deliver their elections with style.

The two large parties are both pragmatic, almost equally large and not very different in their political programs. ‘Change’ has always been the main slogan of the opposing party and ‘Moving Forwards’ the slogan of the party in power. During the elections eight years ago, in the year 2000, the NPP party used the same slogan that the NDC party used this year! ‘We want positive change’ (of course, who would like negative change!) the NPP- enthusiasts would then sing and yell and scream through loudspeakers and paste on their tee-shirts. The NPP then won the election, and again four years later in 2004.
And today, in 2008, the NDC used the slogan that was used successfully against them before. ‘We Want Change’. (‘positive’ was gratefully left out as superfluous use of wards)
‘What are they talking about, what to they mean with ‘change’, Baffo? What kind of change?’ “Can you define what kind of change they envision, Osei? A change with the insurance, the educational system, what??’ “Does anything change apart from the name of the party and the name of the ministers, Patrick, that you know?’
Only this time have I really understood why change is so important for our people. Change means replacement, the replacement of the leaders of the country, not so much their political programs. The positive result of change this way: the chain of corruption can be cut each time a new team of leaders is appointed. Renew every four or eight year the people at the top, and that gives you a chance to early expose abuse of power and hopefully work it out of the system, eventually. Not very different from how a big industry functions. In a few weeks the new president Atta Mills will be the CEO for Ghana, his stockholders have elected him so to speak. The business of the state can continue with a new manager. And the people can relax and return to their life as usual. This makes all the sense in the world. Thank you Baffo, Osei and Patrick, to make me understand this change-stuff.
NewYear. Change. Resume quietly as usual.
Well thought out and pleasantly traditionally Ghanaian. What country could copy us in our wise ways?

Letitia together with Steve with his plastered legs went all the way south to Nsawam early in the New Year. The revalidation centre was still closed on the Sunday they arrived so Letitia stayed with the little boy in a hotel, that night. First time hotel! How many ‘firsts’ have we already not provided to Letitia, with all the surgeries here and there and all the strange unknown situations that she alone had to solve. Over the phone she had to giggle about that hotel. ‘Where you afraid? ‘No!’ ‘Was it a nice experience?’ ‘Yes, Mum!’ Today another phonecall from her. ‘Mum we are now at the center and they have removed the plaster of paris. Mum, the doctor says Steve gets no exercises now, for he still needs another surgery first. So we are coming back.’ ‘Oh you are coming back???’ I get Raphael himself on the phone and he explains that Steve cannot actually do walking- exercises yet. He will get orthopedic shoes and then he may return home to us. In May he needs another surgery in D. Nkwantah hospital and after that he get his long intensive training, not now. “Okay, is also good. Then we can get him into a school-program instead and have him somewhat longer then the Christmas holidays alone. Let us know when we can pick him up again, please, Raphael.’

All kind a new beginnings and positive changes and then these little miscommunications ‘as per usual’, for this too is Ghana. This issue could have been discussed before, it would have saved us a lot of money and a lot of hassle. We could have planned in a more professional way.
But hey! Letitia would not have slept in a hotel and Steve would not have had his longest car-ride ever so far! And...orthopedic shoes for Steve. Eventually we all laugh. We are all winners here. That too is Ghana tradition, no one can be a loser, we are all winners!

Wrapping up the ‘Christmas’
31-12-08

It is only midday but the wood for tonight’s bonfire is already piled up. A precarious high and narrow pile this year because of the new central summer-hut, which has given us more dining space but has taken away from the traditional bonfire area. So be it, so we will dance in a smaller circle even though the line of children will be longer than last year. It will be more intimate with the fascination of the flames closer by. And then tomorrow the traditional New Years party after which the decorations can go down and the non stop Christmas-music stop and all will have return to normalcy again. Another blessing!
It has been such excellent days already. Such wonderful chain of inspired and festive Christmas Days, now fully carried out in our own tradition and by our own staff. The success of tonight is taken for granted already. Christmas 2008 can go on record as our most awesome ever.

Joshua returned from the School of the Deaf at Jamasi and immediately endeared himself to our whole big family again, and Stephen returned from all his orthopedic surgeries at St. John of God Hospital at D. Nkwantah to celebrate his most outrageously happy Christmas ever. He returned with his two legs immobilized in plaster, covered with bright pink stockings. And he danced and danced and danced, the caregivers and volunteers lining up to take him in their arms and dance with him, one after another, evening after evening, party after party.




Monday coming, the 5th of January, he will be away again, this time for a long period of intense training at the orthopedic revalidation center of Br. Tarcisius at Nsawam, near Accra. His caregiver Letitia,

who was with him through all his ordeals at the surgical hospital, will accompany him to Nsawam as well. If not for the continuous care of Letitia this little boy would have been so confused and so lost, for it is not even long ago since he was transferred from another orphanage into our community and the changes from home to home, from treatment center to treatment center, have been much for him. Much for any person, small or big! But what choice do we have? In a country like Ghana, when do such opportunities for corrective surgery and revalidation offer themselves again? We have been fortunate. Once Stephen has learned how to walk, hopefully, at this center in Nsawam, his future will be simple, safe and constant. Hmm, till he is ready to marry and start his own adult life, anyway! For Stephen is one of those fortunate few who can live independently when he is grown up. He has no other handicap but a physical disability which is now in process of being corrected.
What else. Our new little Kwame, who joined us since three weeks, was very lucky indeed. Because Kwaku Chairman constantly misbehaved as little baby Jesus, crashed head-down from the stable where he was supposed to be born and generally made a nuisance of himself, Kwame received the honor of playing the main character in the Christmas Play. Almost missed this unique opportunity as Kwame developed malaria on the morning of the play, but with some syrups and injections and biscuits he was able to make it as a charming Jesus.



Kwame Jesus smiled benevolently from of high on the shoulders of the angels and shepherds who danced around with him and he was in character enough not to panic when the wise men threw him higher and higher in the sky! Every time a little scary if hands would be there to catch him again, not only for Kwame, but for all the spectators.
Well the Christmas-play was so grand this year that the caregivers and kids could not stop celebrating their success even an hour after the performance was over. This was probably the most amazing hour of all these amazing special days, the caregiver’s celebration of themselves and of each other after the play was done. Volunteer Maarten left us after giving the children beautiful quilted blankets, just in time for the cold hamattan desertwinds.



The internet café had difficulties with the provider and in fact there was no chance to send emails for almost a week. Yesterday a shaky return to the outside world was established, however slow and precarious it was. The connection is still holding today so that all who have family and friends elsewhere ( and who doesn’t?) are now at the internet café to send Christmas greetings before the line may go off again. I too wrap up these few lines to rush to the internet-cafe before the bonfire starts.
Happy New Year to you! Ours, I believe, is already granted.

A Foundling at our Doorsteps.
Dec 16, 2008

Exactly one week ago we were on the plane to Ghana where, high in the air, Bob and I were celebrating my 64th birthday. Today it feels like I’ve been a year older since… years already! So much has happened again. But all in all it is good to be back. All children look well, included Steve who is still admitted at the hospital. Tomorrow a revalidation team will decide if Steve will be transferred to Nsawam for his exercises, or, possibly, can stay where he is, or even return home to Nkoranza for Christmas!
Two volunteers, Tessa and Jan, are leaving us. They were a great help. Two others, Sarah and Janneke, have joined. Two of the caregivers, Agnes and Grace, will soon leave us because they are both obliged to help out in family situations in their villages and we have already interviewed three others to replace them, Alice, Perpetua and Konadu. They will begin work this week. Three instead of two because there are new children to be looked after.
On the 10th of December we came home from Accra with Dede and Kwame Addai, both on transfer from Osu Children Home. They are sweet and charming as children can be! Dede is 8 years old and has Down Syndrome. Kwame Addai is barely two and seems just generally slow (but sure!) in his development. Kwame went to live with caregiver Augustin and Dede got no one less then Gifty as a mother. Welcome to both of you!



And today…….Shalomina joined us as well! ‘Shalomina’ was the name given about two hours ago to this nameless and speechless 6 year old girl who was found at the gate of Shalom Special School, next to our gate.
Really?? Yes, really! A foundling at our doorsteps! It was bound to happen one day and now it has happened indeed.
This morning the headmaster of Shalom Special School came to welcome us back from overseas and told us the story. Some hours later he would return, fortified by some town officials, to ask us to take over the care for this child.
Yesterday evening he told us he was called to come and look at this strange little girl who was sitting at their school-gate, crying silent tears. Someone could tell in retrospect that she had seen a woman ‘hanging out suspiciously’ near the school, a woman who had vanished by the time that the child was discovered. The little girl had been given food, a blanket and arms to hold her till she fell asleep and this morning headmaster would report to the police and to the department of social welfare.
And sure, two hour later this morning the headmaster and all the ‘top of town’ returned to pay us an official visit. To request if we could take custody of the child, ‘pending investigation’. Of course we said ‘yes’. Another Christmas-gift!
The girl is six or seven year old. She is paralyzed on one side and does not talk.
But…she can smile! And she can eat! Those are two important factors which immediately relaxed our caregivers and make us confident that Shalomina will settle in relatively easily with us.



I know the story sounds like a Dickens-story from 19 century England, and indeed many aspects are comparable between Shalomina now and Oliver Twist back then. Almost all, except for, thankfully, the climate of course! Oh but Oliver Twist had a happy ending and how will this be for Shalomina? She eats and she smiles so the hopes are up for her!

When all is said and done and we are preparing to take our evening meal…Who comes sailing into the compound? Yes! Augustina and her two babies, accompanied by grandma! Unbelievable!



A cheerful grandmother, a very serious Augustina and a happy and chubby twins (which are called Bob and Bosman and actually happen to look like Bob and I.) Enthusiastic embraces, shouts of joy and loud cheering. Everybody, all the caregivers, want to hold the babies, they fight for it! Augustina gets more at ease but the babies now show signs of anxiety! We are all ecstatic! Sitting down, asking for the reason of coming, listening to all the news, being so very happy for and withal of them! Bob hands over the money that Ilse, one visitor, send for Augustina and they positively start beaming even more! Once again we tell them that Augustina can return to the workshop at any time, in case she so wants. With or without grandma, with or without babies, there will always be a place for her. Photo-session, more pictures still, and before we know it they have mixed with the caregivers and children and are gone. Exhausted we return into our house, it is good to be back in Ghana again, whatever else I sometimes think.

(From Steven Philip’s blog-log, 22-11-08, with permission)

Stephen is about 3 or 4 years old. He came to us in May from an orphanage in Kumasi. He’s not like the majority of other kids who live here – he’s physically disabled, like some of the other kids, and he’s been totally abandoned, like all of the other kids – but unlike most of the other kids (except maybe some of the kids with cerebral palsy) he doesn’t seem to have any kind of intellectual disability. There was a volunteer at the orphanage who came and asked Ineke to consider taking Stephen here. The staff at the orphanage never allowed much physical contact, didn’t want the kids to be picked up or held, etc., according to the volunteer – and she felt strongly attached to Stephen and promised that she would continue to send support to cover his expenses here at PCC (a promise which was kept for only a couple of months, unfortunately; I think sometimes people return to their countries and the time they spent here in Africa becomes a dream to them, hopefully a good memory, but something from which they eventually feel distanced).
We were able to take Stephen to the people from the OTC (the Orthopedic Training Center - I tried to find a good link to include for this place, but couldn't find one in English). I often used to take people with disabilities there – when I was living and working with Hope for Life in Accra and then again when I was on the refugee camp. So it felt like seeing old colleagues again; old colleagues who were recommending surgery for Stephen – in fact, a series of surgeries which, along with the recovery and therapy process, might last up to a year.

my photo of a picture taken of Stephen and his "Mom" following his surgery



Stephen’s legs are bent up (just to clarify, this is not the technical, medical diagnosis), and he crawls around – and he’s a bundle of energy, chasing after the other kids, fighting (both play-fighting and serious fighting), laughing, crying, asserting independence yet demanding attention. Basically, he’s just a typical 3 – 4 year old (with bent up legs).

Stephen sitting up in bed upon our arrival

Greeting Janet, and maybe more importantly, trying to get some cookies from her purse


We went to visit him a little over a week after the first surgery….. Joyce, who’s like the mother of everyone here, Janet, the woman in the kitchen who keeps us fat, Philo, a little girl that Joyce takes care of, and Emmanuel (Ema), one of Stephen’s buddies.





Within no time, Stephen demonstrated he’s the same bundle of energy, shouting out Ema’s name, laughing loudly, crawling on the floor, chasing after Ema, taking

playful swings at him.
And doing all of this with casts that go from above his knees down to his just above his toes.
Stephen teaching Ema how and where to properly kiss his "baby"



Leticia, his “mother”, has been staying with him in the hospital – taking good care of him, making sure he stays fat. He’s also made good friends with Isaac, the boy in the bed next to his, who has the same casts on his legs that Stephen has. Just this week, 12 days after his first surgery, Stephen has received the second operation. Now we’ll see how the things progress – if any more surgeries will actually be necessary, how much time for the therapy, and how long before he can return to his home here at PCC.
(from Steve’s blog, 22-11-08)

Ntiamoah finds work, Paul returns and the miracle workers are coming to town.

26-10-08

Ntiamoah has found a job.



From the time he first came, ten years ago, Ntiamoah made it a habit to stand right in the middle of the pool and wash its walls with mighty big splashes. He would be waiting all day till his 4 o’clock pool-time, ‘work-time hour’ arrived and be first in the water to start the splashing with his mighty thin arms. As if his life depended on it. In time he quieted down and could enjoy just standing in the pool, looking at his swimming suit and playing with the ends of its rope but really Ntiamoah loves hard physical exercise. In time he was employed at the workshop, making long strands of beads for curtains. To his satisfaction? Who knows, but in any case more fulfilling than just standing and staring. When early this year the autistic hall opened, Ntiamoah enjoyed carrying buckets of water to a large basin placed there for the other children. YaaYaa, Marielle, Balloon, Afia, they all love to play with the water but Ntiamoah wants to be useful and do the heavy work. So he runs with a bucket to the tap, fills it with water and runs to empty it again into the basin at the autistic hall. So far so good, but still, what to do with Ntiamoah’s other extra energy? ‘Can’t he help somewhere?’ ‘Get a regular job carrying water, or running, or whatever uses up his surplus energy?’ caregivers and volunteers would comment.
So again he got more work, each morning having to fill, in addition, the water-barrels in the dormitories. That helped to use more of his energy but still… at 10 am he would be hungry for work and under-employed. Till…. the G8 returned



The G 8, Bernard, Wilma, Nicole, Henk and Jacob, are building a new house for some of our children this year. Wonderful. And just as wonderful? That Ntiamoah is employed to carry water to the construction site!



Now he has work to his satisfaction! Now he has to make regular rest breaks to recover from his hard work and see breathlessly how his help is appreciated!
And watch how it is appreciated! Jacob and Bernard even make a little dance for him!
Keep up the work, Ntiamoah! And G8! Whatever way you may be able to help again next year, see to it that Ntiamoah has his casual work lined out for him again! He is waiting for you, thank you!

And then Paul came back! Out of nowhere, a week earlier, this young ‘national service’ man made his appearance at our gate. He arrived one Monday night with a letter indicating that the National Service Office had posted him to our project. Nice. But why no notice, no telephone call, no deliberation of any kind, nothing? Just one evening out of the blue this guy making his appearance? Ah. Ghana! The next morning the rumor went around under the female caregivers that this fashionable broadly smiling boy from Accra had come to stay! Really? So he was interviewed. Paul, what did you study? And why did you choose to work here? I studied fashion designing. At Polytechnic College, Accra. I did not choose your project, they posted me here. Really? And where are your co-students posted? Mostly they left to Holland. And Australia. Really? And how do you like it here? Nice! Here is fine! ‘Yes, but how do you think you can help us here, in rural Ghana, as a fashion designer? What would you possible do here with your fashion designing skills? Shall we construct a catwalk for you?’ ‘No, I like it, I like the workshop, the beads-work, the weaving, I can do a lot here.’
‘Really, well we are grateful, we like this, so when will you start?’
‘I am returning to Accra get my luggage and start within a week’.



Allright Paul, we will look forward to your stay with us’. Exit Paul. No-one really thought he would return here. Too rural, too far away from where his action would be. But just when we forgot about him and the chapter ‘national service posting’ was closed he made his re-appearance! With a suitcase. Wow, you are back!!! ‘Yes and Monday I will start work’. Interesting and exciting! Hello Paul!

And, as we are starting to gather our luggage for a short trip to Israel, next week, more than ten huge 4 wheel-drive cars followed by a number of trucks brimming over with luggage drove into Nkoranza. The day that they arrived was like the president himself was coming to town, Baffo commented. Powerful cars, powerful men. The miracle workers had come to town! I had noticed them earlier on and forgot about it again, huge big signboards along the roads. ‘Come to Evangelist Mills’, say the signboards, showing crowds of ecstatic people, healed cripples, wheelchairs tossed in the air and the blind who see again. Enormous signboards planted everywhere along the roads even in the smallest villages.
I forgot about it till this very morning I heard the name ‘Reverend Mills’ from one of our caregivers. Her story made me sad. The caregiver’s mother has apparently been ill since years. ‘My mother sacrificed all her young years to feed and clothe us and now she is ill. The doctors cannot find anything wrong with her but we, her children, we found out that a long time ago my mother was cursed by a witch. Cursed by a sister- in-law, a woman who was schooled in witchcraft. This woman is now dead but who will undo the curse on my mother!? My father already lost all his money on doctors and hospitals and does not go to the traditional priests because his catholic religion forbids it. So now our last hope is the healing crusade, the prayer camp. Mother will come to the crusade. Next Wednesday we will bring her from the village to the crusade grounds and she will be healed!
I have no words, no advise, just a sore feeling in the stomach. For yet another expensive illusion. And disillusion. My poor people.
But this disillusion too will be taken in the stride of African life.
An acceptance. A sense of humor. A mighty survival kit. That’s what remains the strength of Ghana.

To help or to be helped. At the funeral.
12 October 08

Yesterday a big delegation, two buses, went to attend the funeral of Joyce’s father. Everyone wanted to offer a helping hand to support Joyce and make her funeral a success. Joyce is one of our oldest caregivers and looks after Innocencia, Emanuele and Philomena (oh those names!) Those kids and all of us have already coped without her for some time as Joyce had to arrange the funeral in her village and also wanted to spend time with her aged mother. Joyce’s father died some months ago but yesterday was the big occasion, the funeral, where people would come together in massive numbers to mourn with the family. According to the announcement-card her father had died at the grand old age of 103 years. When I met his wife yesterday I found her of ‘grand old age’ herself. A face chiseled with one-thousand lines and a tough old body like a broomstick, brimming with life as she was.
I drove in a car with two overseas visitors who joined the funeral crowd. That gives another dimension to such a happening. On the one hand join as a participant and on the other hand observe and explain with foreign eyes. So, after a long bumpy ride over the mud roads we reached the village of Senya. In the middle of nowhere, really, the only social events would be funerals and church-meetings. (Huge fresh signboard were put up everywhere along the road about an impending visit of a famous evangelist.) The village was so small that even from a distance you could see where the funeral was taking place, that is to say left and right on the main and only street of the village. As a long single file of PCC mourners we went to shake the hands of all the many persons already seated at the funeral grounds. That is the thing to do at the beginning of each funeral. The next part would be get a chair and be greeted in return by all those that we just greeted. First shake hand and then be shaken. But there we stood and we were kept standing. We were not offered a chair because there were not enough chairs. Joyce was gesturing and organizing, it seemed that she wanted us to go to her parental house instead. We kept standing, hesitating, in the only side-street leading to the inner village, a group of ten or twenty square houses. All was brown red, color of clay. Everyone was standing with sweat running into their eyes as the afternoon-sun burned hot in between two rains. The visitors from Holland were curious. ‘What are we doing now, where does she live, is that her mother, have you ever been into a village like this before, who is this, who is that?’ Good questions. I had explained before that at the funeral we would greet, sit down and be greeted in return, smiling being the only prerequisite for success. But here, right at the beginning, the flow was different, we were not asked to sit! ‘They don’t have enough chairs’ I explained. Was that true? Or had Joyce whipped up a little plan from the start to do it differently? To receive us in her own house instead, and pamper us. As we were to find out later that afternoon?
There we went, a line of twenty or so people, walking over the red mud street and jumping over erosion cracks towards her house. Eventually the chairs and benches arrived behind us, carried on the heads of women and children. The chairs were placed in the narrow shadow area in the inner court of her otherwise shadow-less square house. In two rows we all squeezed in the ribbon of shadow and sat down with a sigh of relief. Children popped up from all sides, standing in the sun. Curiously they looked at us and discussed us among themselves, grinning, all eyes and teeth. ‘Are those Joyce’s children?’ “Cousins, nephews, maybe?’ ‘Don’t know, maybe, think so, that’s always like one big family, all the kids of the village.’ Drums were being carried into the courtyard. Someone put a crate with lemonade in front of us, bottles that are as warm as the afternoon sun. I had earlier told the visitors that we would not take drinks if offered, so as not to add to the expenses of the mourning family. ‘Smile and say ‘no’ if they offer us, shake hands, maybe dance a bit, give a donation, go!’
Joyce’s uncle, dressed in a red mourner’s cloth, came to greet and ask us why we came. The question got handed on to me. I looked around. Who is our spokesman? Who carries the money of the donation? It is Kwaku. He nods at me, ‘you do it’ and so I do. In Twi I say why we have come. The Twi makes it more festive and provides them with a reason to smile. Hurray and at once the cola bottles are popped open as if it is champgne. (Popped open not with African teeth but with an African karate blow. The top of each bottle against the side of the crate) We all get a bottle of ‘pop’. My advice about not to accept drinks is null and void and everyone enjoys it, me too, despite the near boiling temperature of the bottles. It is so warm, even in the shade, that the lemonade is almost like a medicine, replenishing loss of salt and water from all that sweating. ‘What are they saying? What did you say?’ ask the visitors. ‘I told them why we came’. ‘What was it you said?’ ‘That Joyce works with us and has lost her father and that we have come to support her in her loss.’ ‘I find it hard to understand all that happens here!’ Who are all these people? How do they relate? What are the drums for?’ ‘I know, don’t even try to understand. Just be here.’ The boys start playing the drums, hard and magical. And beautiful to look at, those young men draped in black, finding their rhythm from within. Every kind of conversation now stops as the roar of the drums overrules all other sounds. Here comes Joyce, with a few women who look much like her, sisters probably. We all receive a plastic bag with a carton box inside, filled with rice and meat. And sate sticks with more meat. I expect that as soon as the drummers ease off the visitors will ask me what to do with this food, eat it or give it back. Did I not tell them not to accept consumptions in order to not bring the funeral accounts into the red? ‘What shall we do with this food?’ I laugh ‘Eat it, enjoy it. I suspect that Joyce has decided to treat us all like royalty.’ I eat from my McDonald box with nice food and leave the rest beside my chair. It disappeared immediately. ‘For the kids, the leftovers. Nothing goes to waste here!’ I turn to look at the row of caregivers behind us. Almost no-one has touched her McDonald’s box, kept for taking home after the funeral is over. ‘Where on earth do they get all these McDonald boxes from?’ asks the visitor in total amazement. Yes, and the contrast between the old mud African houses and these modern ways are of course stark. Amazing how the old culture of eating at parties has changed so quickly into a ritual involving McDonald boxes and plastic spoons. With the option of taking your treat home with you! Between thirty and ten years ago, when I would spend much of my time in the villages, this was radically different! Just to show how rapidly habits are changing.
Kwaku announces that some few will go to the ‘funeral grounds’ to give the donation while we stay where we are in Joyce’s inner courtyard and get yet another bottle of Fanta. Luxery driven over the top, Joyce! Half an hour later and there they came, the line of smiling people greeting us and shaking our hands! They are thanking us for our presence and for the money that Kwaku donated. Late, but the essence of the ritual still stands. ‘Thanks’ they say, ‘Thanks for coming’. ‘What do they say?’ ask the visitors. They thank us. We showed that we feel with Joyce her family. Now we can go. Kwaku is asking the uncle if we have permisisin to fall out. But in the meantime the uncle is busy settling an obvious dispute among other funeral attendees. He grimly talks to grim and excited faces. The tension eases however and we receive our permission to go. Last greetings with Joyce and her amazing strong old mother and off we go.
I seem to waver as we are walking towards the car, over that ancient road with the erosion cracks. One of the visitors stretches her hand to me as if she wants to support me from falling. I feel it and shrug the gesture off, unnoticed I think. Am I getting that old? I, the mountain goat, who could walk barefooted over the African continent, so to speak? We climb into the car and drive home, cozily. All in our own way we are content with the experience of today. Joyce has been supported in her mourning. Some empty McDonald boxes are thrown out of the bus in front of us. ‘Someone is hungry enough not to be able to wait till she is home’. We laugh and then the homecoming. The children. Bob with his outstetched arms, welcome!
‘How old for God’s sake do they think I am?’ I ask Bob when alone in the evening we sit in our house. ‘I don’t think Joyce’s mother, twice my age, would evoke a support-reflex, would she? ‘
Bob is 14 years older than I.
‘Bob, I hated to get the feel that I need support. The aged and the crippled! The first time that someone helped you because of age, when was it? Do you remember? How did you feel?’
Bob looks at me. ‘Don’t know’, he says with a twinkle, ‘but I do remember I liked it! I liked the helping hand. That’s the difference between you and me, my independent African lady!
What to say. It was a good day, yesterday, that it was.

Sacred Celebrations
Oct 5 2008

Between last Monday, the celebration of the beginning of the Jewish New Year, and yesterday, the Baptism of fifteen of our children, we had our share of mystical events and sacred celebrations. It was our special ‘Holy Week’ that was typically ‘PCC-Nkoranza-Ghana made’. A picturesque and deeply moving ‘holy week’ which could not have occurred anywhere else in the world except at Nkoranza and not without the inspiring presence of Osei, Fr. Andy, Bob, Ineke, our caregivers and our beautiful children. Monday we celebrated La Shana Tova and helped Bob to enter into the 5769th year of the Jewish calendar. This yearly ritual, always directed by Bob himself with the help of Osei, has become part of our fabric as a community. As always the sense of awe was accompanied by surprise. The awe stemmed from the inspired readings and prayers and from the beauty of the setting. The surprise this year was a rain-free day after two months of almost constant rain and the spontaneous get together that followed the celebration. Talking, laughing and drinking around a long table under the moon is not an every day event for us and provided a good way to close the celebration and begin the new year.



That was Monday-night 29th of September.



From Tuesday till Saturday morning the 4th of October Ema and Joyce were kept busy with the last preparations for the baptism of some of our children.



Before they left, the volunteers Barabara and Stephan had sewn white outfits for the kids to be baptized which made them look gorgeous. The ceremony took place at the rock-church which in itself is a celebration of harmony and beauty. The atmosphere was radiant. Mabel, Kojo Owusu, Moses, Emanuel, Joshua, Emanuelle, Kwaku, Kojo Charm, Theresa, Ahmed, Regina, Steve, Kojo Joseph and Kwabena were baptized into our family (as Fr. Andy expressed it so well). That was the awesome part. The surprise was that Aaron was forgotten! Simply forgotten! Thank God no one is to blame for Aaron’s oversight except Ineke, who is used to this, and a committee which consisted of so many persons that the blame can pass around for ever in a spiral down way till it dies out.
And… reason for another sacred ceremony in the not so distant future. Celebrations are good for us.



(See more pictures by clicking on the ‘slideshow link’ on the home page)

Amma keeps the Sabbath

21-sept 08

Our little Amma is ‘too’ everything. Too small, too dainty, too cuddly, too meek and, yes, too Jewish! Early morning, even before the sun is up, she has a habit of gently standing outside our front door, waiting for the moment we turn the key and open the door to let her in. In that sense she is a central part of an elaborate morning ritual where Bob makes coffee to wake me up, where the dogs fall over one another in silent joy of finding each other again after a dark night and where Amma fits in by sitting on the coach, close between Bob and me and usually a dog or two. When the dogs see Amma arriving they tone down their wild play and take on Amma’s energy. They climb beside her on the couch and, just like Amma, want to cuddle as much as be cuddled.
That’s how at least an hour is spent, the best hour of the day as far as I am concerned.
Then, getting to seven, Amma starts disentangling from Bob or from me or from the lap of the dog and wakes up, getting stirred by the longing for…music! We know and love the whole ritual from beginning to hopefully ecstatic end, but only on Saturday does the ritual end in real ecstasy!
Amma gets up from the coach, starts pointing excitedly at Bob, accompanied by impatient shrieks. She is commanding him. Don’t delay, play the music. Now! Now... please! Amma knows that Bob controls the sound system, in fact does everything in the house, in the early morning. She points to Bob, to the row of DVD’s, to Bob again. Amma is ready for her music and she wants it now!
Every morning Bob finds a music DVD for Amma, one that she likes, one that she can see as well as hear. Amma must be a rebirth of a soulful conductor, musician or both. She demands to see the conductor at work on the music-DVD.
Sunday, my holy day, it may be Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, and Amma co-directs with the Italian conductor. Mondays she may choose an opus from Tchaikovsky and Wednesdays it may be Schubert who you hear in the early morning. All are well conducted and well received by an always passionately solemn Amma. But Saturday! Saturday is Bob’s Sabbath day and Amma knows it. Bob opens the morning with songs by Richard Tucker, a tenor from the forties, and then continues to play all his Jewish sacred music. What excites the whole house, what excites Bob and me and what absolutely excites Amma is hearing Richard Tucker. She goes overboard. She davens like an old orthodox Jewess, she screams wildly like a Beatles-addict, she dances, swings her director’s arm, makes large bouncing steps through the house, jumps, shouts, is so much in ecstasy that she sometimes falls. Amma , the Saturday girl, the Jewish Amma! It is a feast for the eye and the heart, it is a hidden early morning joy, a treasure for only us two to behold. But today maybe you too can feel Amma a little bit. A reincarnation of a conductor? Or musician? No, more likely Amma is the reincarnation of a Hassidic Jew. Anyway, an angel!

Alienation and Ema the Paymaster
Sept 14th 08

One more time, in order to give closure to a bit of a dip-episode over the last few weeks, I’ll write about something that strikes me as tragic-comical, and will end up with journaling an important weapon-fact, about Emanuel being ‘First time Paymaster’.
Bob and I watched a film yesterday night which we have seen many times (like all our films!) but which remains one of our favorites, ‘About Schmidt’. Mister Schmidt, who works at an insurance office, is getting to be 65 and therefore of retiring age. You see him sitting behind a cleared out desk during his last day of work. You see a brand new camper parked beside his house, bought by his wife to help make his retirement more meaningful, a new adventure. Schmidt attempts to play the game of exaggerated positive expectations while entering this new phase in his life, but he of course fails to give a happy impression as he is feeling so terribly unhappy.
A scene from the film. It is night and Schmidt and his wife are laying in their big king sized bed. Schmidt is staring at the dark silhouette of the woman asleep at his side. ‘Who is that? The one with whom I am married over 40 years, who is it? And why does everything in her annoy me? Even something small like the way the takes her car keys out of her handbag long before we have reached the car…?’
Is it because I am soon going to be 65? Because I have started to work part-time at the hospital? The image of myself waking up in a foreign country asking myself ’What is this? Where am I?’ keeps recurring to me. Just the way Mister Schmidt woke up beside an alien wife, with a delayed Alice in Wonderland reaction. Estranged. Strange. Stranger. Alien. Home. All words that keep triggering tears in my eyes. It is comical and at the same time it frightens me. I, who was always so convinced, so without hesitation or doubt. So very much at home.
‘Where am I?’ I am asking myself, while waking up. The comical but positive element in this life episode of Mister Schmidt and me is the waking up part (somewhat late!) and while awake being able to have a good look at things. The tragical part? Hmm. Nothing really. The human condition. A lot of noise and infatuation. And if they fall away? Nothing. A smile and a tear.
And now about Ema the paymaster.

Since over a year Ema has returned from a course and resumed in the position of overall coordinator of the PCC Hand in Hand Community. Since long I have been searching how to delegate and reinforce local leadership and within this search the story of Ema is a success story. He is in charge of the daily running of all the programs and at the end of last month he has also, for the first time ...paid the salaries. Big deal? Yes that’s a big deal! This year Bob has started to delegate financial responsibilities to Ema. Thus he receives at the end of each month the budgeted amount of money for food, personal needs, maintenance and now, since the end of August, also salaries. So now all the larger daily, weekly and monthly expenditures are handled by Ema. Of course within the category of salaries the amounts are fixed but with the other accounts Ema has the freedom to spend according to his discretion. Spend on yam or maize, on fish or meat, on soap or nappies. Here a new light bulb and there a fresh layer of paint on the wall means that the repair of a faulty kitchen table has to wait till the month to come. It is going so well that Bob has asked him to pay the salaries at the end of August and from there onwards. This is not only about spending money wisely but also about showing who is in charge. And, yes, the caregivers should realize in this way too, that Ema is their boss. While he hands you your monthly allowance he will ask you ‘how was the past month for you?’ and will give you feedback as needed.

What was at first the office of Bob has now become the office of Ema as well.
(And now that I am on it, next week let me write about the new office for Baffo which is about to be completed.)
Whoops, or is this second part of my story also about retirement and new phases of life? Yes. Looks like it!

She is ill, she is quiet, she is crying

7 Sept 08

All week I have been following Baffo’s ‘Be Happy, Maame’ admonitions with only moderate success. In the meantime I have for sure learned (or better relearned again) a lot from ‘not being happy’. I should have remembered that there is no legitimate state of ‘being unhappy’ in Ghana except for three reasons.
When I look unhappy most frequently I am ill. This explains why people can look so completely down and out with a slight fever or the mildest common cold. There are few other expressions for unhappiness other than being ill. So I must get the most out of it for people to console me.
When I am not sick and still also not happy I am called ‘quiet’.
Maame is quiet, Maame has been quiet this whole week. What would be wrong with us? Did/do we do anything wrong to make her so quiet? Let’s try harder to greet her well and look after our children well and cook our food well so that Maame will stop being so quiet. True, last week I was trying to work with feedback from Europe that our necklaces were not done well. Too tight, too long, too short, no symmetry, etc. So being quiet is a good time to solve problems. For everyone is ‘at attention’, ‘what did we do wrong’, ‘how can we do better’.
‘Well, better not do the necklaces so tight that they look like beads stuck on an electrical wire. It does not sell and we get a bad name.’
That was the time to tackle problems like that, last week while I was quiet!
Finally when the quietness does not stop and especially if one sees tears rolling over someone’s cheeks it is the ultimate diagnosis. ‘Oh! She is crying’. ‘O su ( literally: she waters). ‘She cries’. Crying without illness or problems in the house is seen as merely a weakness, nothing serious. So all the community is relieved that it is not ‘them’ that mother is worried about, their performance or whatever, and they come one by one into the house, where you are sitting trying to swallow your tears.
‘Maame, don’t cry, be happy.’ ‘Maame crying is not good, makes you sick.’ ‘Maame, we are soooo worried, yesterday I was soooo worried because you did not eat my soup. I thought you do not like me because you reject my soup so you reject me. Today you cry and Maame, you know what? Don’t cry! It is not me you cry about, it is not illness you cry about so don’t cry, there is nothing to cry about1’ ‘You will make yourself sick.’ ‘Your eyes will pop out of your head, Maame. Stop. Tears will turn into the body and make sickness!’

Last Saturday I had a day that would befit Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands on her birthday. There was a procession of Caregivers with their Children, one by one coming to me, shaking my one hand, holding my another hand, looking at me the way you look at a child with a sore toe. Compassion, a twinkle, laughter and relief.
‘Maame, stop’. Bright is good at it. He looks you straight in the eye, kisses you fully and wetly on the lips, and says ‘Maame, no. Stop that!’
Okay, I stopped, that did it! Not only the amazement of more then 60 persons, pushing simultaneously through our swing-doors, flocking all around me, holding me, admonishing me, laughing out loud at me and making generally a party out of it, but Bright’s clear command.
I stopped. If I am unhappy it is my own fault and I don’t try hard enough. Okay, point well taken.

And I have to use that argument more often in the future when my caregivers look burdened and unhappy. ‘Come on, Agnes, just be happy. Be happy! Good girl!’ I should not have forgotten that people have a custom of doing that in Ghana, and that anyway the outcome depends not on your words but on the amount of caring behind it! That saves time and counseling skills!
I would usually ask what’s wrong, why do you walk with your head down, are you unhappy? What makes you so unhappy?” …to get after long waiting spells answers like these: ‘Bodily pains’ or ‘no money in the pocket’.
Okay. So that with medicine against ill health and the promise of a salary at the end of the month everybody can be happy again. I will in future go around and shout ‘Be happy’, just like Baffo and all our people did for me.
(Unless I may suspect there is a real depression at work. For I know and should have remembered from my days working in mental health that depressive disease is not considered as a disease. It is considered as a moral failure, a weakness. There I should not accommodate but put up a fight to help enlighten my people and broaden the specter of diseases to include emotional diseases.)

The sequels of what happened next on this Sunday morning leaves me embarrassed however!
Embarrassed with how I began this story, rather flippantly, about sadness in Ghana life.
I sit here typing into the laptop, laptop true to its name balancing on my lap, when A., one of the workers of the hospital, comes to visit. An old friend who I know for over 20 years.
I will repeat exactly what he said and then sign out.
But not after saying that I have not understood much about the depth of suffering that life here and everywhere can cause and that we really maybe after all face the tune in the same way, some more emotional, another more cerebral, with emotions swallowed away.
A. comes, sits down with me. I close the laptop. A glass of coke? Yes. How are you? What’s going on in your life?
Good, all is well. But I want to tell you about all my problems.
Yes tell me.
You know I have a young baby, since 5 months?
Yes.
Well that makes 4 children. The oldest is a soldier in Accra, the second a tailor, the third is the girl who has an open leg, you met her, and now the youngest, 18 years later.
Yes? Is there something wrong with your new baby?
No. With the mother, my wife. She had to undergo the test, the way they do now in Ghana. It was positive. Then they tested me, I was negative. That was at the end of last year. They tested me again this July, I was still negative. My wife is positive. What is worse is she gets lean and is wasting away. Cannot eat, coughs, all kind of treatment, included retroviral treatment but getting very thin and ill. The baby is okay.
God! I’m sorry for you. My God. I did not know this.
No doctor you did not know this, because I did not tell you. Now I am telling you for I need help. I want to keep helping my wife for she is my wife and the mother of my children and she has no-one else. Do I sleep with her? No. Not only that, but trust has broken. Do I care for her? Yes. She was a hairdresser but now she cannot work. I go there every week or two with milk-powder, lactogen, meat, flour, eggs, bread, all that I can get. Sometimes I feel like stealing but don’t know from whom to steal. I swear I would like to do something to myself so as to do away with my life but I lack the courage. And I can’t for I have a wife and four children. That’s what I wanted to tell you. But I am fine. No, you don’t see me look sad. I will be fine.

So- point taken about myself? Somewhat flippant and self indulgent? Or even if I were not, how does my state compare with that of the poverty of my people? Ah. Do I want to start crying again? Now for A.? But how shall I explain this to the 21 caregivers and over 60 children? And if I do not explain it? Well, they will all flock into our house again and push the doors out of their hinges and fill our room laugther and hushes of compassion, no, not again.
Close the doors, you need to be alone. Alone, with Bob.
Bob who yesterday night recited me some lines of a poem by Walt Whitman:

‘…
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another
I stop somewhere waiting for you.’

Tonight, alone, we may, or may not, read Beckett’s Waiting for Godot’ together. Just to get things in yet another perspective.

Maame, be happy!
29-8-08

Frustrations in me were building up to such a level that this morning I allowed them to overflow in the safe presence of, of all people, Mr. Baffo. Mr. Baffo who speaks very little and likes to summarize the state of the PCC, Ghana politics or the world in three words at most. ‘Not so good’, ‘Could be better’ or ‘That is okay’. Mr. Baffo who gets acutely uncomfortable with the slightest displays of emotions.
He was sitting at the restaurant, books and papers spread all around him on the table, trying to balance his August statements, and I was on the way to the hospital, when I changed my course and instead fell down on the chair beside him.
‘I’m not happy!’
‘Oh Maame why?’
‘Don’t know why. One thing after the other after the other after the other. Little things but all the time. Just not happy, very frustrated, very unhappy, not sure what to do. I’m angry. Frustrated. Want to go home, wish I could go home right now. Just to be out of here. Just for a while.’
‘Oh Maame, why?’ ‘This is your home, Maame, don’t talk like that. Why?’
‘All kind of things. All the time. You included!’
‘Me? Maame why?’
‘You. Too often you act like a lawyer to our staff. I wish I could be their lawyer more often. Instead it looks like almost all the difficult confrontations are for me to do. I get tired of it. I feel lonely. Hate to make it my job to confront people, hate it!’
‘When did I act as the lawyer to whom, Maame?’
‘Oh like with Angela, that time. Janet that other time.’ Baffo rebuked me and explained to me what happened instead, to his own perceptions. So I said to him ‘Sorry, then I am wrong, there! But still, I feel unhappy. So… maybe you feel unhappy too? Do you find it as hard as I to be a leader?’
‘No, Maame, not so hard. Be happy, Maame!”
‘Hate to go round and hope to see good things yet more likely meet all these faulty things instead. Then to decide all the time, ignore them or tackle them. Which means to expose them, to discuss them. Oh at times like now I could shoot this whole community. Could shoot all the caregivers. They seem like a bunch of twelve year olds, all of them.’
‘Twelve year olds, why Maame?’
‘Solidarity is good, false solidarity is false, is what 12 year olds do. Keeping secrets from their parents, swearing allegiance to their teenage loyalties instead. That’s what I mean. The caregivers do that, covering up for each other when secretly they go out, lock their kids, have their girlfriends over at night, whatever. You know it. We have lost a child because of that. Even that I had to find out by chance, while all of you knew it. The child who died while some were out and others covered up the case. You know it Baffo, it happens all the time, it’s teenager stuff but with our kids at risk it is dangerous.’
Oh Maame, no, be happy Maame!’
‘Leaders like I are in solidarity with the care for the child. Not with the desires of the staff when those oppose the care of the child. I hate it but what else can I do? Do you think I would not want to pamper Mercy, and Charity, and Janet, and Patrick and Gifty and Joyce and Lydia and Christie and Jerry and blablabla?’ But if they do wrong how could I pamper them? Then I need to discipline them. Right?’
‘Right, Maame. Be happy Maame’
‘If you say right, why then am I all alone doing this, the difficult conversations, the disciplining? Affirming, praising, oh how easy, how nice! Makes you feel good, makes you popular. Don’t you think that I too want to be popular? But how should I praise and embrace if a caregiver has just … Ah well. What should I do?’
‘Oh Maame, Yes. But cheer up. I will help you. We will all shape up. You will see, in a week everybody will be on course again. Just watch me, Maame. Maame, be happy!’
‘Hmm, thanks Baffo, but I would really want to go home. Get out of here. Just for a while. And it is the same at the hospital no, worse! Far worse! Shall I tell you what happened yesterday evening, at evening rounds? You want to know? And it amounts to nothing, it is a small thing, that! I come there at 5 pm, a bunch of boys and girls in uniforms or semi uniforms hanging out around the nurses desk. The TV blasts out loud, assisted by two or three radios, all off key of course. One nurse is talking into his cell-phone and looks at me upset. I am disturbing his conversation. A female nurse balances on a bench, her upper half doubled over the nurses desk asleep, her lower end, her behind sticking outrageously far into the corridor! Blocks my way. ‘Hello’ I say. Those that are not asleep or on the phone look. ‘Who is in charge?’ I ask. They look and then start laughing. Is it funny? ‘You do not have one in charge?’ ‘The one in charge just walked away’. ‘Ah, okay, who is the next in charge?’ The nurses, the mass of intertwined laziness, disentangles as they look at one another, giggling. Me? You? You? No, we two! ‘Doctor Bosman, we , we are the oldest!’. ‘Ah okay. Then you two, show me the new admissions and the severe problems please’. ‘Problems?’ ‘Yes problems’. ‘We have no problems’. ‘Aha no problems, good. Then show me the surgeries for tomorrow’. ‘They have gone out’. ‘Okay then show me their bed and their files’. The twosome gets on their feet and starts rummaging through a box with folders. After twenty minutes they recover two files. A discussion between the twosome that is together in charge. No not him, this one, him, this. No, this one. No! Yes! Then they both lift up their heads and smile at me. ‘We have found them doc. There is their bed, over there!’ they point. “Show me, bring me there’ I will follow you’ I say. But they delay, I hear them talk to one another about the advantages of Onetouch over the MTN, mobile calling with vodaphone or orange…’Come on, on the double’ I want to say but suppress it. “How about it?’.
‘Oh yes, Doc! Here, this bed’. Now they stand beside the bed.
The comedy of errors is to be taken for what it is, a comedy, a sit-com show, and I decide to swallow my frustration and act as if this disarray is completely non-offensive.
‘Have you heard of bedside manners?’ ‘Do they teach you those, where you went to school?’ ‘No Doc.’ ‘Ah, Okay. I am going to show you. I will role-play the role of the nurse in charge and what he does when the doctor comes for rounds, okay? Watch me…’

‘Baffo, this is what has come of the nurses attitude in the hospital. Have you not noticed? When you go there? Is one of my pains.’
‘Maame, you should go to the matron or to the administrator, and complain’.
‘Baffo, I’m done complaining, I am the greatest complainer as it is, and really that is not about manners, that is for example about withholding medicines to life threatening snakebites or infections or what have you when patients cannot pay. I holler more then enough about these issues alone!
‘Oh. But Maame, be happy. It is good you tell them! Do not be discouraged Maame.’
This is your home, Maame, you have no other, this is where you like it. This is where people like you. Remember, Maame?’ ‘Cheer up, be happy, Maame’

I do not know how many times he said ‘be happy, be happy’, it became like a mantra of a meditation exercise. And…. like a strange but well meant meditation exercise he is getting me ‘right’ again! Baffo touches me and starts to help ease my pent up frustrations. That’s Baffo. A person like Baffo can decide to just cheer up and then indeed he cheers up! I, I thought it really did not work for me that way.
But now that I write this an hour later…. now that I think again….haven’t I cheered up?
Baffo has showed his care, he has listened. He has said ‘be happy’. He is like a sorcerer, this Baffo. Because now, an hour later, I am somewhat happy again!
Maame is happy and at home!
Or is it because I wrote about it? Whatever it takes, maybe the two together, Baffo and a pen.

When you is smiling….
19-8-08

‘When you are smiling… the whole world smiles with you’.



A line from an old song which might have been written for Lisa specifically. This girl, who already joined us in 2004, when she was approximately four years old, is made of eyes and a mouth which can break through in the most amazing smile I have ever seen. Her body is limp and light, as Lisa is paralyzed from the neck downwards. Lisa does not talk or seem to understand the meaning of words. But she certainly understands kindness, food and laughter and responds to it like a thermometer!
I know caregivers and volunteers who line up in queue just to get a closer look at her smile. Emanuel is a master in inducing her smiles, and Felicia has a knick for it as well. You can watch people coming to her, wanting to lift her up and help her eat, just because of this reward they receive, a dose of wonderful healing smiles!
Healing, yes. I know that on a gloomy day I may search the company of Lisa, just to get a glimpse of her smile and feel better for it. In fact, since I discovered her smile, I may go on a sunny day as well! Lisa’s smile is utterly innocent, utterly void of manipulation even of the mildest type. Her smile is as natural as the shining of the sun and as pure as a reflection of light on a still water.

We have a house full of smiles.
Alice’s smile is engaging while Amma’s smile is invoking feelings of protection and tenderness.

3


Philomena’s smile brings out the giggly girl in me and PaaYaw’s smile definitely charms me out of my wits.



Mabel’s smile is loving, while the smile of Pakor is as rare and as shy as a falling star.


Steve’s smile is inviting me into his life while Marielle’s smile is turned deeply inwards.

Ema? Ema is coming close to Lisa’s smile.



But Lisa? Lisa has no agenda. Other then to be with me. And smile! Little God among people.

When you are smiling, eight-years-old-Lisa-who-cannot-do-anything-else, when you are smiling, the whole world smiles with you. ….when you are laughing, keep right on laughing...

Voluntary affairs
10-8-08

Volunteers in Ghana are mostly young people who want to work hard and help a lot, and yet often they cannot do by far as much as they had hoped. Why? Ah why!
Because of the need be time-limit they impose upon themselves (I commit myself for 3 weeks, three months, a certain time).
Because of insufficient or sometimes false information from the agency that helps them find placement in Ghana (“We need volunteers to give classes at the primary school.” The volunteers troop in. Happens to be summer vacation and there are no kids and no classes!)
And because of a tendency to use volunteers for their money. (Internet posting: ’Volunteers needed to look after children in an orphanage’. There you come, you have arrived and you are ready to wash and feed and cuddle children. But it so happens that there is no money to even feed these children! Now what, what do you do? Yes, you get angry, and you may pull money out of your own pocket and go to the market and buy food…and feel used. It happens a lot.)
But the greatest of all challenges will always be that of the difference in culture.
Hard to bridge when it concerns quality of child-care, or work- attitudes, or the different ways of exchanging ideas and feelings… especially the feelings.

While living in a different culture I am challenged to shift my perspective of myself and the world around me and this is exhilarating. But it also generates a lot of loneliness while doing so. Because I am thrown back upon myself. And my own ways in life, which I took for granted, I now have to explain. With a big chance of not being understood. Even to get laughed at. When I talk about my deepest feelings (I feel sad) I receive ten-to-one an encouragement in return. (“Then my dear try harder to be positive in life!) instead of the expected exchange of feelings. So empathy is expressed on very different terms here in Ghana, as compared to the West. And feelings that are ‘negative’ will be suppressed and rationalized away by the true African. Well, then the mutual exchange will soon stop, at least in the verbal realm. Right?

Is it amazing that volunteers often troop together with a beer to talk with one another about this ‘other culture’? ‘Our own and the other?’ Oh these eternal questions. “Who am I?’ ‘Who are they?’ ‘Why is communication so difficult?’ ‘What is with this land?” ‘What is with my own land?’

As a volunteer you don’t just give up, you try in other ways to get to understand your beautiful strange colleagues from this strange beautiful country. Working together, laughing together, eating together, being together. If I cannot talk about our mutual feelings let me then try to touch the other in different ways. Touch him. Do her hair. Let her do mine. Feel the skin of a hand. Read someone’s eyes. Crack jokes. Flirt a little. How else? I don’t want to come home with the confession that I have not understood my fellow-men in Africa, that I really did not get to know even a single individual at any depth on this alien continent?

Does it amaze us that the inter-cultural puppy-love may be at an all time height in Ghana? ‘I am in love. He is so handsome, so pure and so sensitive!’
The woman in love has so much energy, she feels so good. Not only from being in love of itself, but also from having pierced the cultural barrier!
It happens frequently that foreign girls have an affair with Ghanaian boys, maybe simply because there are so many more females than males among the volunteers.
‘A relationship! I think that is the summit’. Now I get to know ‘him’ and with ‘him’ I get to know ‘the people’. The intercultural barrier does not one two three melt away by a kiss, a fling or a tender puppy-love, but your ‘in love’ experience, (if you are,) provides for a state of mind where the differences fade to the background and you feel at one with one another. That’s the essence of the ‘being in love state’, that magic experience. When you are in love you live in heaven, is it not?! At least as long as that magic state lasts. Of course one day it is no more, as we all know. That’s where the ‘big love’ starts, the work part.

Sometimes such a relationship blossoms to an awesome love story that lasts, despite (or maybe exactly because) the difference in cultural background of the partners. More often however the affairs end in a failure. Painful for the girl who has gained yet another experience and will soon take a plane back to her native land. But more deplorable for the Ghanaian boy who gets to hear that it ‘really does not work.’ He cannot take a plane, he simply returns to his small community and his friends will ask him: ‘Where is your obruni girl? Did you lose her? What a shame. You should have kept her and gone on that plane with her. Why?’ Why, well the boy may understand why or he may not understand why, he may not understand till later when an email arrives, or a phone call, or just nothing, silence, the worst one, forever guessing.

In Tamale, where you see forever larger numbers of volunteers arriving, a whole sub- culture has grown around the phenomenon ‘female volunteer’. Not something cute, not something to be proud of, neither by the Ghanaian nor by the Western side. The volunteers, mostly girls, know a number of cafes where at night they hang out. A certain type of Ghanaian man is attracted to theses bars like bees to the honey. Often these are men who have already experienced a few affairs with foreign women. Some coach new Ghanaians in the business of how to go about it, how to catch a girl. Among them may be some old timers that are even known by the more experienced volunteers, so they warn the newcomers. ‘Please, don’t! How can you throw yourself in an adventure with that guy! Before you he dated Hanni and Lizzie and Maggy and Lonnie and June! What he wants, all that he wants, is white flesh and a ticket to Europe. A one way ticket. Don’t!’ All the same some of them succeed: “You want to be my friend?” “Eh, well, maybe, why not!’ For such a girl the experience is new and fresh and she may think that she and he are the exception to the rule.
This is Tamale, the shameful situation is sufficiently known.

Now here at the Hand in Hand Community some of these things have been introduced as well. We are of course smaller and the volunteers have more to do, but still. Every now and then one of our volunteers has a fling or, more seriously, falls in love with one of our caregivers. Outside of our community, in Nkoranza town, this would be less of an issue and people could decide for themselves how to behave, but on our land, at our community with the beautiful but precarious balance between kids, staff and strangers, these kind of relationships are discouraged.
It is an absolute ‘no no’, especially in the presence of children who one way or another are always there, to do that kind of number. Certain things are not allowed and the caregivers know this from the moment of their first interview before taking the job. ‘No person of opposite sex allowed in your room’. Of course they can meet whoever they want outside in town but if they are ‘home at work’ these things are out.
One does of course not always know what happens at night in all these rooms, but nightly visitors are taboo. Westerners even more so because of their destabilizing effects.

‘That caregiver looks so tired, would he be ill?’ (No, he spend the night in bed with a girl.) That volunteer, vacantly staring in the distance, would she be unhappy? Homesick maybe? (Hmmm, maybe homesick for another nightly encounter in dark Africa!)
Our children are at the center of our existence as a community, they are vulnerable and need protection. Our staff is also vulnerable and deserves to be protected, if only because of their care for the children. While most volunteers and visitors are absolutely great, a few are either lost or hardballs. It’s the lost ones that often go under themselves. The hardballs may return from where they came from untouched. Possibly stating that Africa is interesting but treacherous and that that one holiday-flirtation was just what it was, a flirtation, a nothing.

Here no-one can leave, Here only the hope keeps burning that maybe, one day, one might get the chance to go overseas. To Holland, to Germany, To Denmark, to America, anywhere but here. Who will help them with their escape dream? Not obviously the puppy love of last year! But maybe a new puppy love which is in the pipeline, a better one?
It has not happened yet but it is possible, our staff too can gradually transform in hardballs. In lover-boys and tourist pimps. While others get lost. I feel like their mother, I need to protect them. Young people at the other side of the ocean, could you open your eyes a little wider and see what kind of love Africa needs?
Ah but what does Ghana herself say to us by way of her proverb: ‘The stranger has big eyes and yet he sees nothing!’ Okay then, defy the proverb and understand more than you can please, for the sake of our community.

For a rainy day…
Aug. 2nd 2008

John Abrose Fabeson has been living with us for almost six years. He was brought by one of the Benedictine monks, Fr. Ambrose, of the nearby monastery of Tanobuase, which happens to be the village where John’s family lives. According to his old grand-father John was sixteen when he arrived here, which means twenty-two now, an adult.
John has suffered since birth from intense and long lasting epileptic fits with secondary brain injuries. So he was mostly kept home in his room. His capacities to learn are reduced but he is now able to spell and count and most enjoyable of all do games and educational programs on the computer. His natural mother lives over a day-journey away and has no more interest in her child. John had been left alone with an old grandfather and was neglected, frustrated and almost continuously having epileptic fits before he was brought to us. (Medication was not then used in the villages as epilepsy is after all ‘caused by possession of evil spirits.’) Now he is on good medication but even so an occasional fit occurs, so we usually don’t let him go somewhere alone, especially not where he can’t be easily heard or seen, like the forest.
However…John himself has other ideas about that! John is a bit of an entrepreneur. In the sheltered workshop he weaves and does that very well, but he wants more. He has been urging us to give him his own room so as to live semi-independently. Because of the occasional fits we have found a compromise for him. He has a room to himself but when he wants to go out he has to wake up his caregiver in the other room.
Well, he has been caught many times not doing that but climbing out of his window and then jump over the wall and into the forest in the dark. In order to gather grasses, the long sturdy type of grasses that make good brooms when bundled together, and sell well at the market. Quite a number of times he has been caught, warned, punished, talked to reasonably (imagine you climb that wall and then you fit and you fall down, who can help you then?). Quite a number of times he had to give all his illegally assembled brooms back to the coordinator and all the time all that was on his mind was to start again and this time not to get caught!
With downcast eyelids and an apologizing smile he would express his regrets at having put his life in danger, pledge never to do this again and five days later early morning we discover a new underground hiding place filled with assembled brooms ready to be sold at the next market.
We think he has a mind for enterprise and moneymaking so let’s give him a legal way to make money! Therefore, apart from his weaving he was invited to do people’s laundry for an amount, gather weeds for a price, help to paint and clean for a buck and so on and so forth. Was this too legal, therefore not stimulating enough?? All he did was complain, complain and complain about having to work so much. The fun of making extra money was obviously lost to him this way. So this we stopped too.
For some time it was quiet with an occasional report that he was seen at night climbing the garden wall and disappear into the bush. Occasionally we found his brooms. We were about ready to decide now to let him sell his brooms officially at the gate and gather the grasses by daylight and at places where he could be traced.
But it so happened that, for a reason that had nothing to do with his nightly escapades, he had to change houses. That was about two weeks ago. He objected, in fact he was wild with anger and insulted one caregiver after another, even told Ema that he had no authority over him, John Ambrose! Another caregiver was called a snake and a witch. Well, anyway.
The caregivers helped him clear his old room and bring his things over to the new room. He and Ema were amazed by the sheer number and heaviness of the large flour-sacks and bags and bundles to be moved and they opened one. Surprise, surprise! It became obvious why John had been so agitated! The bags and sacks were filled from top to bottom with neatly folded trousers, shirts, tee-shirts, socks, jeans, shoes, even a couple of jackets, suits and ties.
The story was told among the caregivers, ‘have you seen what a number of clothes John has gathered, he can dress a whole town!’ Now Joyce came in, with the ‘Ahaaaah’ of an enlightened idea! ‘Oh my God’ said Joyce, ‘this John has been coming to me a lot!’
Apparently in threadbare shirts with holes in it and bare feet. ‘All my clothes are worm, Mum, I have worked so hard, may I have some new clothes?’
Would Joyce ever say no? Would she be the type? No! She would say ‘Yes!’ ‘Of course, come on, does not matter, here is some more. Is that all you need? Go slow, do not wear it out so soon!’



John with a sweet smile telling her ‘thank you’ and ‘you are my real mother’ and ‘God will reward you’ and so on, and zap, gone with his loot!!! Nicely folded and joined with the other clothes in the bags and wait a while and back to Maame Joyce! With yet another wonderful story.
‘I fell, Maame, I had a fit. Mud all over, had to dump all clothes. Had to throw them away.’
‘Oh Maame, I gave my clothes away. Will God reward me?’
Yes, Joyce had been suspicious of late but still not at all prepared to see the amount of ‘loot’ folded so neatly and densely in all this bundles and bags, ready for sales.
Oh entrepreneur Johnny, what else were you saving for a rainy day???
There was a meeting, John confessed. Sort of. ‘I couldn’t help it. The devil forced me to…!’ Well we had to take action, that much was clear.
John’s family was called and another meeting took place where John’s amazing hoarding tendencies were exposed to his brother and grandpa.
‘So now John, you go with your brother and grandpa back to your village. You go and find all the bags with clothes that you have sold or given away, you go everywhere where you have ‘donated’ or sold clothes. Bring it back. Bring it to Fr. Ambrose, your benefactor who in his goodness brought you here. Tell him all that you did while saving for a rainy day…
Only when we hear from Fr. Ambrose and all is made up for and you have promised never to do any of this again can you come back.
It is two weeks ago. He is not back yet.

National Award.
July 18th 2008

It is quite an honor to be awarded by the President of Ghana and that is how I felt, honored! But I received the unexpected telephone call less than a week before the occasion and I was still in Holland, two days before returning to Ghana. My plan was to make a long walk along the beach on that last day but obviously things were going to work out differently! It was in the train that Bob called me enthusiastically with the news and Baffo’s call followed, in his own style:. ‘Maame, you’ll get an award from the president so I need 4 passport pictures and your life-story single space on two pages. To be in Accra before 10 am tomorrow. Please!’ ‘Oh really? That’s nice! But how? A lifestory? Four passport pictures? Okay, yes, I have a story stored in my laptop, will rewrite it tonight, after returning to the apartment. But pictures? I’ll call you back, thanks Baffo!”
It was evening and I was somewhere between Maastricht and The Hague. With mixed feelings I let go of my plans for that night and the next day in order to do what had to be done, emailing into the night and not a beach walk but shopping for new clothes during my last day in Holland. Bob’s latest set of ‘new’ clothes stems from 1997, from our wedding, and I needed at the bare minimum a hat and a jacket. It had to be, no way out, a shopping day on that last Friday. The next morning I set out to the fancy shops nearby the beach in Scheveningen and I find myself a white jacket. Bingo! Then a hat, where to find a hat… ‘A hat? Noooo! Not anywhere here!’ I walk to the old shopping center of Scheveningen and try again. ‘A hat? Hats? No, madam, not here!’ A look as if I arrived from Mars. I jump on a bus to The Hague and straight into The Bijenkorf, one of the big magazines in the city. That’s where they must sell hats. Yes, I am going to look like royalty, the Queen of The Netherlands, once we have accepted to live up to the occasion! I sail through the revolving doors and, my luck, straight into a designer’s corner with hats and accessories. I grab the one hat that I like and am lucky again because the thing fits, despite my exceptional hat-size. I find two scarves to match and not knowing how to choose I take them both.
Don’t look at the price-tags but just pay by pulling your card through a machine and press ‘yes’, keep your eyes firmly squeezed is what I say to my money-worried-mind. Bingo, I am set!

Now for Bob. Energized by my ‘hat-success’ I march with my all my bags into the mens department of De Bijenkorf. Here it is harder to even see where the jackets are. Jackets, pants, shirts, all are arranged on different tables according to their designers name. Not lined up according to type and size from small to big, no, the store is divided into a series of smaller boutiques according to the trade-name. Like a market. It’s clear I need a salesman to help, but the only salesman present is stationed at the cashier desk and he is busy with a long line of people. Pity, I walk away to another store, C&A and to the next and to the next. Everywhere the same, no-one to help and everywhere clothes are presented by the one who designed them instead of by size, makes you feel you have visited ten shops within the one where you are. (Obviously I have missed some of the changes during the 35 years or so that I lived outside Europe, not essential, but yet…) So this must be the new trend, to make your own selection with no other help than from your mirror and yourself. Makes sense, too. But what mirror could mirror Bob’s image all the way from Ghana! I return to The Bijenkorf, ready to give up and see a middle aged balding man disappearing through a door with ‘private’ written on it. I almost pull him back by the slips of his coat.
‘Sir! Do you work here? Could you help me please?’
He must have heard the S.O.S. sound in my voice for he turned and looked at me with astonished but kind old eyes.
‘Yes of course I can help you. Let me take an aspirin and I’ll come. ‘How can I help you, lady?’
‘I have a husband who is not here now but I absolutely need to buy a good jacket for him. Today. For a reception in Africa.’
‘Allright, then let’s see. What is his size? XL? That means nothing, absolutely nothing to me, lady! I need more than that, madam, you understand? You have no idea of a number? No? Is he your height or taller maybe? Shorter maybe?’
‘We are equally tall, maybe he is a little shorter these days. He has an American size, that’s different system. Bob, 77 years old. Has a bit of a stomach. But finely built. Usually sleeves are too long for him.’
‘Let’s try it this way. Does he look like that gentleman over there?’ (He points towards a little man with a small stomach and an enormous moustache. The man looks back at us real mean.)
‘No. Not at all.’
‘Hmm. Maybe my size? A waist like mine?’ My salesman seems to start enjoying the situations. He lifts up his jacket coquettishly the way a ballerina might lift up her tutu, and reveals a rather heavy belly-part. ‘No, more rounded.’ Ah then I know. Does he have the appearance of a dwarf, maybe? Remember the seven dwarfs?’
Yes! I start beaming. You’ve got it, exactly. Like a dwarf, that’s it. Relief!
‘Right, I bet your husband has a 56, quarter size of course. Let me look. Voila, here it is. The only jacket left in that size. A beauty. Look, please?’
I look, it is nice, but a dark crayon, looks to be part of a suit. ‘This is part of a suit, it’s nice sir, but it needs matching trousers with it! Right?
‘Ah lady! Maybe you have not been in Holland for a long time? That’s how people wear their clothes nowadays, you can mix and match such a jacket with every type of pants, even a khaki docker or a blue jeans, all that is allowed these days. ‘
I did not believe that Bob would feel comfortable at a State reception with a black crayon dress jacket and a khaki pants so I asked for matching pants and buy the whole suit.
“If you want the suit I’m going to search for the pants, there should be one or two left in that size. The computer says it. Wait. Stand there. I’ll be back in a few minutes, have to search the basements. Please’.
I stand there with the precious jacket and all my shopping bags plus my great hat. My stomach feels empty and I’m tired. After some minutes he returns, red-faced and panting but with a broad grin. ‘Got it! The last 56. Look here. Good?’ Positively beaming!
The suit is a beauty and looks like it could fit Bob. ‘Yes, good, I’ll get it. Now I need a shirt to match, where do I find that?’ The salesman is radiant with professional pride as he should be. He points around again, at a number of clients in the store.
‘The neck? Like him, over there? Or him? What neck is closest to your husband’s?’
He is spotting for the right neck and I do the same. See a guy with a cheerful face and well developed neck.
‘Him!’
‘Sir, would you allow me?’ and the salesman slings his measure tape around the man’s neck. Thank God the man chuckles instead of going to customer’s service to complain. Size 43! I start knocking over a pile of cellophane shirts in my desire to pull out a shirt of that size and my salesman comes to assist again, picks unfailingly the shirt I need, a dress shirt. The deal is done!
‘Got it!’ It was five pm. ‘I’m done. This is it, let me pay.’
Pins, price tags, magnets, all is removed and the suit and shirt are sliding into (another) two large plastic bags. Carefully and solemnly for it is beautiful stuff and costs a small fortune.
‘Thank you sir. I appreciated you helping me, really.”
I don’t ask for his name. Now, 2 weeks later, I wish I knew him.
‘Oh pleasure, it was my pleasure. And of course you can change it, within 30 days that is. Well that won’t help you much over there in Africa but still. And enjoy that reception in Ghana.’
I’m home at seven, drop all my shopping bags on the floor and sit and stare at the sunset over the Northsea. The phone, my friend Gilles, says he’ll come to Ghana to be there at the celebration. Just one night. ‘See you in 4 days in Accra Ineke!”
Strange, beautiful, racing day, better than a stroll along the beach after all.
So from then on cleaning the vacation apartment, packing all the stuff in the suitcases, except my hat and a present from my sister, a wooden boat. Unpractical and to be cherished I keep them both in my hands all through the journey back to Ghana. Next day airport and 48 hours later home in Nkoranza. Two days to unpack and woops back to Accra again, with a very enthusiastic Bob. Next day, July 3rd, Award day! We look great despite the fact that Bob’s trousers needed to be changed by a tailor after all. But as long as he does not lift up his jacket (like my coquettish salesman at the department store had done) it would serve its purpose.
This is what we looked like.



It was good to have spent all that energy on clothing. Africa knows all about dressing for an occasion and this was not just ‘an occasion’ and was one way to show our appreciation. The day itself was cumbersome but great.
I have used all my words already in describing my last shopping day in Holland so let me tell you the rest of the story of the award by way of photographs, they speak better anyway.
Our staff and children could see that days program life on TV. ‘Maame you looked sooooo nice!’ “The way you walked on the podium, so self-assured. How did you feel, Ineke?’ ‘What did the president say to you, Mum?’ ‘Congratulations doctor, you deserved it!’


3rd July 08, Ineke receives the award from the hands
of President Kufour.


With Gilles who came from Holland for the occasion.


With the Chief of Nkoranza who apparently was the
engine behind the nomination.


With the children.


At the big party later, in Nkoranza.


With Emanuella!

Dear Mister salesman of ‘The Bijenkorf’, in all likeliness you will never read this little story but yet I want to say ‘Thank you’ again. It was good to be helped by you. And no, no need to change the suit!

Archief Ineke's colum aug 2007 tot june 28th 2008

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Archief Ineke's colum may 19 2006 tot december 20th 2006

Archief Ineke's colum June 2005 to may 10th 2006