Stories from Ghana: Sara Griffin

I think the most touching experience for me was the day we went to the clinics in the more rural areas. There was one village with some very sick people, such as a man with polio and a boy whose muscles were so atrophied that he couldn't get out of his wheelchair. We did what we could, but were only able to stay in that village for two hours, not nearly enough time to treat everyone. We certainly couldn't help the people with serious diseases. I was also impressed by the poverty of that village. It seemed they didn't have much money for things like clothes. One little boy was dressed in a man's long-sleeved flannel shirt, which hung off him and made him sweat in the 85 degree temperature. One old gentleman was draped in a towel. Was that all he had to wear? As our team was packing up to leave, the mother of the atrophy sufferer asked if we would like coconuts, and we thought she meant to sell us some. To our surprise, she gave us her entire basket of coconuts, probably what she could sell in a day, for free as a token of her gratitude for coming to her village and doing what little we could. She forfeitted what could have been her means to eat and feed her son for that day in order to give us each a snack. To me, that was the purest example of the Ghanaian spirit: loving, serving, giving and overflowing with joy even in the midst of terrible poverty and pain.