Ghana reflection

Three days after Christmas of this past year, I got on a plane to Ghana, West Africa. The decision to embark on this adventure was all a big leap of faith...but I knew it was the opportunity to help others and make an impact that I had been waiting for. I went as a Field Representative with Saha Global, a non-profit that focuses on bringing safe, clean water to people in rural areas of Tamale. Saha is also extremely dedicated to creating sustainable systems that have a long-term, lasting impact on the people we worked with. I raised my program fee, I didn't know anyone else I would be working with (it turned out none of them were from Tech or even from Virginia), and I did all the research I could on this place I had never been. Nothing could have prepared me, though, for what I found when I stepped off the plane in Ghana. The experience was full of challenges, triumphs, bonding with strangers across cultures, and more emotions than I could process.

At first when I got back, I didn’t even load my photos off of my camera. Looking back at them once I arrived back home would have been too painful I think-- a reminder of the piece of my heart that would always be there. Then I got back to school and gradually slipped in to my routine. My writing professor (who knew that I had gone to Ghana because I missed the first week of his class) wanted me to write about it, pleaded with me even. I finally managed to squeak out a short piece, but we both knew it barely scratched the surface. “Have you even had time to process all of it?” he asked me after class one day. The answer was a big, huge no. And how could I? People had stopped asking about it, I wasn’t talking to my team nearly as often, and I was trying desperately to jump back in to "business as usual." In a way, it was easier to not think about it. There was a part of me that was relieved when people stopped asking, because there is no way that anyone who wasn’t there with me on that trip will ever begin to understand it. I hoped maybe the longer I sat on it, the more words I would have, and the better I could explain. That hasn’t happened yet, and it might never happen.

People will look at these photos and read these words and draw their own conclusions. It’s human nature, we can’t help it. Each of you reading this will create your own sort of narrative and idea of what life is like for the people in the photos, what they were like, and what it was like to be there based on what you see. I can only hope that what I managed to capture will lead your thoughts and conclusions in the right direction. These are strong, smart, innovative, vibrant, incredible people. They have drive, they are full of life. My privilege on this trip was getting to know them, getting to talk with them, work along side them, and learn from them. We did our best to educate them and help give them resources that they would then use to improve their health and quality of life. But these people are far from helpless. And their way of life, while it seems worlds away from ours, is full of values and rich with culture. So I hope these photos will help you see them through my eyes: their beauty, culture, passion, and personalities.