Unsettling In

Brando and I have been back for about six days now.  After a month in Ghana, it's been hard to "settle in."  Part of that is jet lag.  But part of it is trying to wrap my head around the juxtaposition between life in Ghana and life in Portland--or, at least, my life in Portland.

Here's a photo of part of what I was missing while in Ghana--watching my son play soccer. Thursday night his defense helped vaunt Central Catholic High School to the top of the 6A standings with a tough 1-0 victory.  As it was for me back in the first half of the 1970s, sport is at the heart of Peter's high school experience.

But I had just spent a month around people who seemed to have much more pressing needs: university students trying to figure out a way to help schools be able to graduate sixth graders who were literate; technology teachers grappling with how to teach the subject without computers; school administrators trying to decide whether to turn desperate students and parents away or to fit still more children onto the floors of classrooms that were already crammed way beyond capacity.

My first impulse is to try to fix all of these problems.  And of course that is impossible.  So my second impulse is to try to forget them.

I think that at the heart of what Yo Ghana! means for its U.S. participants is how to live in a way that is poised between these two impulses, to struggle to figure out how to live in such a way that is honest both to what is beyond us and what is not.  I don't know what that means in practical terms, and I may never know.  But I am pretty sure that it begins with the realization that the cocoon of wealth and comfort in which many of us live is both highly exceptional and that it offers us the possibility, if we proceed thoughtfully and respectfully, to help others whose lives are much more difficult than they should be.