Just about everyone who has gone to Africa from the United States comes home feeling disoriented. My cousin was so put off by the supermarkets and glut of consumer goods that he found in America after two years in Northern Ghana that it took him about a month to get home. My wife, Wendy, had a similar reaction after more than a year in Kenya.
My own trips to Africa have been much shorter, and I've stayed in very nice hotels, eaten expensive food, and traveled in relative comfort. Even the schools that I have visited have been, on the whole, better than average. But I, too, find myself struggling to reconcile the comforts of home with the reality of life for the teachers and students I met in Ghana. Part of the difference is material. I spend about as much on clean drinking water while in Ghana as the average Ghanaian spends on everything. The difference in average income is somewhere between twenty-five and fifty fold, depending on how you calculate it. Ghanaian students treasure books at school and home, a place to study, light to read by. American students take these advantages for granted--and commonly squander them. Observing Ghanaian students and teachers at all levels prompts me to realize how carelessly I have led my life.
These realizations prompt me to feel uncomfortable. I don't like to acknowledge how privileged I am, how little I've accomplished with those privileges, or how skipping a dinner out or a magazine subscription can allow a student from a poor family to go to a fine school for a year or put several books at the disposal of hard-working students. But it's a very necessary and, I hope, productive discomfort. Imagine how different both Africa and the United States would look if those of us leading privileged lives shared our bounty with our less privileged brothers and sisters--and were inspired by their commitment to learning.
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