Wednesday, Day 95

Today I help lead a service project to the Osu Children’s Home, an orphanage that provides shelter for approximately 250 children up to the age of 18.  Established in 1949 by private agencies, it is now funded by the Department of Social Welfare as well as private donations and sponsored scholarships.  There is a preschool in the walled compound but most students go to public schools offsite.  A number of students are more severely disabled and are cared for in a separate unit.

We are welcomed in a large group that includes student nurses in the Public Health School.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be adequate planning for all 75 of us to volunteer at the same time that day.  There is only enough work planned for about 15 nurses and 15 students.  I take a group of 15 or so of our students and approach a mother-auntie group sitting outside in the shade of a large tree with a large number of babies and toddlers, the ages 0-3 unit.  I ask if they would like additional hands to hold the babies and play with the toddlers.  We join two students from Denmark and Finland—Katya and Kristina—who are there as volunteers in their service year away from school.  The students wish to take photos but it is not allowed and I can’t say I blame the orphanage for that policy.

The children suffer from a lack of attention and touch.  There are nowhere near enough hands to take care of all of them.  It takes a lot to get the little ones to smile but the students give it their best try.  Some are AIDS babies, others cry much of the time from causes that no one can tell us about, and others are developmentally delayed.  One or two seem fine.  We help with the routine of getting them in for baths, feeding and nap time.

Orphanage visits are awkward and painful but they are also a good way for our students to see the great difficulty that many people have from the very start of their young lives as children.  I certainly wish there was a mandatory program in the USA like the national service programs of Canada and Europe that require all post-secondary (or post-third form) students to give one year of volunteer service in societies much less well off than their own.  After a mere four hours with such needy children it can be very difficult to leave them but we must.

In the evening, the ship departs the inner harbor late because yet another trip has been delayed on the poor roads from the interior of the country.  It then needs to bunker for fuel which means it rocks pretty wildly through much of the night until we finally pull away from land.  If it has to rock, being in bed is the better time so we do not complain.  We just pick up everything that’s slid on to the floor overnight and start classes up the next day.

The next and final port is the historic city of Salvador in Brazil, over 2,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, following the same sea lane of the three centuries of slave trade from Africa to America.

The Royal Poinciana which grows just as beautifully in Ghana as it does in our final destination of Florida.