this is a copy of the letter I wrote in November 2014 to friends asking for support for my school in Ghana from which I had just returned as a volunteer. It speaks for itself.
Hello everybody,
I know this letter is far too long. It just gets longer and longer. Not only is it now more than three times as long as I intended it to be –it has taken more than three times as long to write than I had planned! I started it in August. This is because I have been putting the website in place. The website is being constructed by my friend and colleague , Jones Musonda, who is in Ghana working under the most trying conditions in a school in a very remote part of Africa. Although a few lines from you would be a great pleasure to read when you can get around to it, I do realize that not everyone enjoys writing letters as much as I do, so rest assured: I don’t expect a long letter in return!
I can hear you groaning. You poor things! I hope you are not too busy. I will have more to say about ‘busyness’ later. But be reassured that you are unlikely to get such a long letter again from me for some considerable time!
It is so long I am now in a panic that after all –people are not going to read it!
So…please, if nothing else, read it in stages-and just enjoy it! If you are too busy to read the letter, please do visit the website at the link in the middle of the letter, watch the video and read the student biographies.
If you are a real glutton for punishment then you can read more about what I have been doing since I returned to Australia in the attachment. There is also a photo of the three of us under the mango tree. The Bishop is in the middle and Jones is on the right.
The letter is so long because it serves two purposes: to update you on my recent comings and goings and to inform you about a project I am initiating.
Update: Current Activity
Workwise, I have been marking with the University of South Australia for some time now–and they have requested me to do some teaching. This is a novel experience for me: being requested to do something by my employer. It is very pleasant. In the past twenty years, I have become accustomed to being told what to do by employers and groveling to most of them with my cap in hand and my hands clasped in prayer(perhaps this is not possible unless the cap is between the hands?). The ‘Corporatespeak’ term for this is being ‘flexible’ and as an Irishman/ Australian I don’t like it. We’ll see how long the warm fuzzy feeling lasts at UNISA.
Since returning from Malaysia in 2011, I have been unable to secure full-time employment-so I have been engaged mostly in voluntary work. I have been working with refugees at a Detention camp in Adelaide and doing some voluntary English teaching of migrants and refugees at the local community centre. For the information of those of you who are not Australians-you may not know that the Australian Government imprisons those wretches who have arrived in panic and distress from places such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq by boat. They are imprisoned with their children on offshore islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. If you haven’t heard of these places I don’t blame you because most others haven’t either-that is in fact a good reason why they are chosen as locations to encarcerate people- often for months or even years. They are not allowed to settle in Australia even if they are genuine refugees. They are processed and then sent to Cambodia for resettlement or allowed to settle in Nauru or PNG where they are often abused by the local ‘homelanders’.
I will expand a little on what I mean by “Homelanders’. Everywhere I have lived -be it in Australia, Ireland, Malaysia, England or Nauru-it is the smug, complacent and often ignorant ‘homelander’ who has little or no experience of cultures outside his own country who tends to be the source of the most savage, cynical and entrenched indifference to the plight of those outsiders less fortunate than themselves. There are exceptions: one exception is indigenous Australians or ‘First Australians’ who welcome all refugees and migrants-even the migrants and refugees who arrived from England in 1788 and then proceeded to brutally disposess them of their land and livelihood. Indigenous Australians are therefore also the original ‘homelanders’ of course.
But it is the “Second Australians’ - settlers who came from England and later Europe who are the main source of the ignorance about refugees in Australia. Many ‘Second Australians’ have never lived overseas for an extended period of time and these are the people who seem to find it so easy to ignore the plight of the less fortunate-such as refugees. For many of them indifference turns into outright hostility: the chief characteristic of such people is that they blame the victim for their problems-whether it be unemployment, poverty, disease-even mental illness.they seem completely incapable of empathizing with the victim. In the case of refugees, they would sit in judgement on the wretched refugee and blame him for his own misfortunes. I have observed that this ‘homelander’ mentality is particularly strong in several places in which I have lived namely: Ireland, England, Australia and Malaysia, and to a certain extent in Dubai and Abu Dhabi (although I don’t know many adults in these latter places-only teenagers, so it is difficult to judge accurately)
But, in the lucky country, the settler homelanders have never experienced the trauma of being burnt out of their home, intimidated, tortured or worse. (at least not while in Australia)
To add insult to injury, in Australia, both major parties and the millions of Australians who ‘vote’ for this policy are currently engaged in an orgy of self-congratulation at how ‘generous’ they are towards refugees! The media is full of it-politicians, pundits and journalists talking themselves and Australia up as being ‘generous’. The Priminister even boasted of this policy of incarceration (which has been reported to the International Criminal Court by an Australian Independent MP) at the recent G20 meeting in Brisbane! They are all in denial. The P.M. is no fool-he knows the ignorant and the smug will vote for him again and again. We’re all right Jack!
I digress?
Both volunteer experiences have been rewarding and I have come to the conclusion that Australia needs to take in about three times as many refugees and migrants than we currently do. This would make it a more dynamic, hard-working, hospitable and polite place to live in because refugees and migrants are about three times more polite, hospitable, hard-working and dynamic than we are. This applies not only to those who were born here, but to those, like myself, who just got washed up here. Don’t get me wrong: I just love it here. In fact I have a business selling tea-shirts with ‘If you don’t like it leave’ embossed on the front. I don’t like being out of step with my compatriots.
Talking of flexibility, my return to tennis last year, after about thirty years, was a dismal failure because I insisted on dashing about at the net like a Moscow circus acrobat as I used to do in my halcyon days as an international tennis player in Africa thirty years ago. Yes, fact is stranger than fiction sometimes in my life. The other players were saying dumb things like ‘Play from the back of the court!’. I didn’t want to play ‘pitter–patter’ from the back of the court. However, it wasn’t all bad: I was pleased to discover that my natural competitiveness had not diminished. I thought I was worried I might have mellowed with the passing of time: one smart-ass kept drilling the ball at my midriff at the net. I became so upset by this that, in order to make a point, so to speak, and in a display of petulance quite obvious to all, I forgot who I was playing against, and thrashed an overhead smash directly at the feet of his partner from almost point blank range-narrowly missing his foot. Had the ball struck him he would have lost it.. The partner was an 84 year old doctor who I haven’t seen since because I have been too ashamed to show my face again.
So, I replaced the tennis with Aerobics. Being women mostly, and lead by my wife, they amused themselves at my expense by mocking my efforts to keep in step. But I have learned to be flexible: I have moved to the back corner behind them all so they can’t see me. Perhaps this is a good metaphor for the last twenty years of my life.
Another piece of good news: I have taken up golf again. Ten years ago I injured my shoulder after slipping on some seaweed on a rocky beach after taking a little too much gin. It eventually became frozen (the shoulder) and I thought I would never play again. A couple of months ago I thought I would try again-and to my surprise and delight the shoulder has been fine. Golf is character-building: there is no opponent -so it will be safer for the people I play with: when I play a bad shot I can not reasonably take out my frustration on anyone except myself and the offending golf club.
I do a lot of reading these days and have taken to reading good books and watching good movies, documentaries etc that I have watched/read before. One of the unexpected benefits of getting older is that is fun for me to watch or read things every five years or so because I have forgotten them. It saves a lot of money.
Talking about being out of step, you may not know that, apart from wanting to be a weatherman, I have always nursed a secret ambition to work in the diplomatic service. In all fairness to myself, I do think I have all the requisite skills-including flexibility as I have been at pains to point out. I have made several applications and can’t understand why I have not been accepted. Can anyone help me here? Since I have some connections (not on this mailing list) and who now work in the service, I applied again recently, but they only offered me postings in Bagdad, Damascus or Liberia-and as a volunteer at that. I turned them down as I was suspicious of their motives. Am I being paranoid? At the interview the Australian Government guy said that they would not pay for me to be evacuated if I got Ebola and they would only pay for my evacuation from Bagdad and Damascus if I was dead.
Speaking of flexibility, again fact is often stranger than fiction: on arrival at my new employment a new boss once told me that a friend, who I had used as a referee, had described me as a person with ‘no enemas’. I think he meant ‘enemies’. I hope you will agree with me that this is just the sort of person we need in the diplomatic service.
For those of you who can’t remember my sense of humour, or who are struggling with my use of language, much of the foregoing should be taken with a pinch of salt or with tongue in cheek..ha!..ha! The entertainment part of the letter is mostly over now. I know we all need to be entertained these days or we simply won’t participate-read,view etc. Education, politics and even the news has to be entertaining or we won’t watch it. How sad is that? Is life really so tedious or so busy for us? More on that later…
Ghana 1975 and 2014
Seriously…
Some of you will know that I have been in Ghana for the past few months doing some voluntary work.
Some of you also may know that my first job was in Ghana forty years ago as a volunteer teacher with Voluntary Service Overseas. If I have ever talked to you about this I am sure you will have gathered that I found it to be an inspiring experience. It was certainly the experience which defined my career. For me, inspiration in life is like gold-rare and very hard to find.
So perhaps it was because of this early inspiration that, in an attempt to experience it again after nearly forty years, I returned to Ghana in May as a volunteer consultant to a school–albeit to a different part of the country.
I am delighted to report that this time I was again inspired-perhaps even more powerfully than the first time! I was very nervous about my return. Before my departure I was so anxious that Ghana might have changed that I had put on a lot of weight through comfort-eating! But I need not have worried. I was most relieved and gratified to find the Ghanaian people still truly hospitable. Everyone made me feel welcome: the students were a sheer delight to work with; as were the teachers, unqualified and untrained though all of them were. The parents I met were a pleasure to work with. Even the ordinary citizen in the street in Kpando made me feel most welcome. As I walked in the searing heat to my motorcycle taxi station from my ‘hotel’ a cheery wave and ‘Hellooo…!’ was offered by many people. That was and is the Africa I have always been privileged to know...I wonder do the natives do the same on Christmas Island?
But the most inspirational figure of all was Bishop Forson himself. Here was a gentle but single-minded giant of man who had a dream, and without the slightest trace of self-interest that I could detect, was making his dream a reality. He had no assistance from any source. His school was financed with his own money. The Bishop had no means of transport other than the school bus - no car of his own. His budget was very modest– so was the school as you can see in the photos. But, he was giving a future to countless children, many of them orphans, who faced a life of certain hardship at best, and at worst, complete drudgery as child labour either inside or outside the home.
To get a clearer idea please go this website which we created when I was there….if nothing else please watch the video of my interview with the Bishop!
The video
No derogatory remarks about the website please! ‘NGSS’ won a prize in a competition as the most memorable website name for 2014. It took us a long time to think of it-about twenty minutes. We were under the mango tree and in a rush to register the NGO before I left Ghana.
Yes, the video of my interview in the rain is rather amateurish and a little difficult to hear at the start because of the ‘shower’, but please remember the context in which it was filmed ‘Under the Mango Tree’. Our time was limited as I had to leave Ghana. Yes, Ghana is still an unhealthy place for an elderly white man (not because of Ebola-but because of Malaria and Dysentery)-and we did not have the resources of Holywood to make the video. There were daily outages of power. Rather than cut bits out I thought it worthwhile for you to see us as we were/are.
The interview was made under a mango tree which served as the office for the Bishop. Every day at about 11.am, in order to escape the sweltering heat and catch the breeze, the Bishop would hobble on his crutches (having been injured in a car accident in January) from his office to run the school for the rest of the day from his chair under the Mango tree.
It only rained once during the 3 months I was there- on the day we made the video! Because it is difficult to hear then we have made a summary/transcript of the interview which you can download. Unfortunately, the technology is beyond us to show the interview as sub-titles, or at the same time as the video is playing. The transcript is a summary, but is almost verbatim in the latter part. I suggest you download the transcript and read it as the video sound plays.
Please let me know if the link doesn’t work!
The Project: ‘Under the Mango tree’
So much was my inspiration that, upon my return to Australia, I decided to try and assist the school.
I have been exploring various avenues to raise money since my return and have sought and gathered a lot of advice about how to proceed. You can ask for too much advice and some of it is contradictory..I have been down many blind alleys. At the moment, I have several strategies which I am pursuing simultaneously including : selling the project to other larger donors like Rotary or Lions clubs; writing a proposal to even larger organisations like the UN; wrestling with the bureaucracy in Australia to register a charity to obtain tax free status for donors; working on twinning the school with one in Australia or the UK.
But, in the shorter term I intend to do some ‘trash and treasure’ days and set up a barbecue outside a supermarket here in Adelaide.
It is not a straightforward matter to do any of these things – they will all take time-months –or even years. I am in the process of setting up a trust or governance body to administer and disburse funds which I raise, especially as the quantity of money becomes more substantial. I do hope I will be able to return to Ghana to monitor progress some day.
But that is all in the long term. My recent trip to Ghana was expensive-costing over 5000 dollars. Volunteering has changed. 40 years ago, as a volunteer, my flight was paid, as was accommodation for two years, and a small stipend was provided. Now that volunteering has been privatised most NGO’s pay for none of these things. This means that volunteering has become the preserve of either the wealthy or the fanatic. I consider myself the latter.
In the meantime, in the short-term, the school struggles to provide basic necessities such as food, pens, exercise books, textbooks, mosquito nets and drugs to treat dysentery and malaria. So I also want to provide some support to the school immediately. That is one reason I am writing to you all at present. At present, only two students are sponsored–both by volunteers who have worked at the school. I am going to sponsor a third student. I hope some of you may also wish to sponsor a student. But no donation is too small. We need mosquito nets, textbooks, exercise books-even pens.
I know some may have reservations about assisting ‘noble causes’ in Africa, especially now as the mass media has successfully demonized Africa as being the source of everything from exotic disease to corruption, internet scams and terrorism. In my opinion we (represented by the media) in developed countries do this because we have failed to assuage our guilt for our ruthless exploitation of this continent in the past. Leaders are always looking for victims to blame for their mistakes and their own selfishness. They demonise Africa so they don’t have to think about their guilt.
We are told our Governments are “keeping us safe”. I do not believe it for one second. I have never felt safer than I did in Ghana. I have felt more threatened in Adelaide on a Saturday night when the alcohol is flowing (or in Manchester or Belfast). Dancing and singing were ‘the alcohol’ of the school in Ghana. But I must not digress any further or I will never finish..
In the short-term, until I have put in place a system of Governance to disburse funds, I anticipate that the sums of money raised will be modest. If you do choose to assist you will be putting your trust in me–not in anyone else. I worked with Bishop Forson for three months and I can vouch for him. If you don’t feel comfortable with that then it is tragic and regrettable. But it is understandable in a world where we are fed fear and terror and negativity by the mass media and politicians. The mass media’s misinformation and disinformation has misinformed and miseducated us about Africa. There is no longer any information or news in the mass media-just entertainment designed to sell the media outlet. The mass media has hijacked the debate to such a point that people no longer have the vocabulary to even discuss Africa–many people can’t have a conversation about the continent without using ‘sound bites’ such as “Ebola”, ‘Terrorism’, ‘Boko Haram’ or ‘Corruption’ somewhere in their first sentences.
40 years ago such cynicism did not exist. I regard this demonisation by the world media (enthusiastically supported by Governments to distract us from their own failings) as just another form of neo- colonialism-a type of global terrorism. I see it as an attempt to soften Africa up for the next round of exploitation. Africa is the next, and the last, major source of cheap labour on the planet. Its further exploitation is imminent, and in many places, is already well under way.
Against this backdrop of misinformation, there is probably little I can say or do to convince you of Bishop Forson’s integrity.
In the short term, If you do make a small donation, we will post on the website photos of the mosquito nets we have bought for the boarding department or the textbooks or exercise books we buy. When I was there at least one child every day could be found shivering with malaria on a bed in the dormitory. The Bishop gives them drugs for the malaria which they would not get at home in the village. We will post a photo on the site of the dining area we hope to construct so that they don’t have to eat under the mango trees on campus as they do now. (If you decide you would like to sponsor a child we will send you photos of the child and a letter each term from the child telling you how he/she is doing)
No donation is too small. I am sure many of you are in a situation of financial stress yourselves. Most of you, like myself, are of the baby boomer generation and will be aware of how somehow we seem to be less financially secure than our parents were. If I knew the answer as to how this has happened. I would be a wealthy man and not need to ask for donations. One child can be sponsored for $600 Australian dollars a year. $150 dollars would sponsor a day- student for a year. $20 dollars would buy drugs, textbooks and pens, or a mosquito net..If you do decide to help please let me know what you would like your donation used for.
My peripatetic lifestyle has meant that almost all of you who receive this letter live in far- flung places. I am unlikely to be able to visit many of you in person in the near future, if ever. For some of you, this message may therefore simply serve as an update letter on my comings and goings. That is well and good. As I said, I don’t expect a long letter in reply.
But I do fervently hope that some of you will want to know more about this project and wish to assist by making a small donation. The details of how to donate can be found by clicking the ‘DONATE’ button on the home page of the website.’ You can click on the “Students” button on the Homepage to see the students who need sponsorship.
In Defence of Africa
I would be delighted to tell you more either by E-mail or by phone. I am on a free overseas phone plan so I can call you if you wish! Daily, I am becoming more irritated by the mischaracterization of Africa in the western media that the rest of this letter will be a defence of Africa a critique of developed countries. I do feel strongly about it, so, if you are not in the mood for this and want to skip this part then feel free to skip to the end - but I hope you won’t.
Of course Africa has major problems but we should also be aware of our own shortcomings in developed countries. Unfortunately, the developed world continues to look after itself at the expense of the weak. Nowadays, it is much more difficult even to send small sums of money to Africa because we are afraid of it ending up in the hands of ‘terrorists’. (Further details of what I have been doing are available in a document attached. The ‘Good News’ is: some Lions Clubs and Rotary clubs want me to address them. The bad news is–not until January. So, everything will take time)
Our propensity in developed countries for unnecessary ‘busyness’ is often used as an excuse not to respond to need. This, together with ‘overplanning’ often not only smothers good initiatives..but it also kills off the enthusiasm and spontaneity in social life necessary for the enjoyment of everyday interactions. In developed countries–we are obsessed by work for its own sake. Work has become an end in itself. The truth is, if we stop to think about it-and we don’t-basically, most of us work because we want ‘more’. Africans work hard too–often harder than we do in developed countries-but they are working to to get ‘enough’ survive. That is the difference.
Although many Ghanaians may not have the resources to help others they are never ‘too busy’ to help others. They are certainly never ‘too busy’ to welcome you to their country and invite you into their home. In this important aspect of life we have a lot to learn from them. They always make time to do these important things. ‘Busyness’, in developed countries causes more suffering to ourselves than ‘Ebola’ ever will. Smugness and indifference and our sense of superiority continue to have devastating consequences for the developing cultures we come in contact with.
In the developed world we talk up our credentials as creators of material wealth while criticizing the corrupt and primitive mindset of developing countries. But look closely at our own culture and we find that it is full of contradictions. Here are some of the contradictions the young person has to cope with in Australia.
We encourage children to speak their mind at school and defend the truth, and then punish them when they do just that in the workplace.
We teach them to pursue truth and speak their mind in their relationships and they then find they lose their friends because people can’t handle frankness.
We expect our children to be perfect and to expect themselves to be perfect. So, when others are not perfect are disappointed and criticise them. When our children turn out not to be perfect themselves –they criticise themselves and have low self-esteem and make themselves ill.
We teach our children never to borrow money and then force them to live in debt to banks from the age of eighteen for the rest of their lives... We are obsessed with work and wealth creation, yet we can’t build affordable housing for our young people to buy?
We never stop to think about the results of our materialism: an ailing and obese population with many of its elders hidden away out of sight in institutions playing pokies, bingo and being ignored by everyone (two thirds of Australians are now officially obese).
We are encouraged by our own leaders to consume a poisonous diet. We do not stop to think that the economic ‘machine’ of which we are so proud could actually be dependent on poisoning our bodies and minds with processed food , salt , sugar, nicotine , alcohol, pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs and gambling machines.
It is too painful to contemplate–so we don’t! We look down on Africans as being primitive yet what can be more primitive, cannibalistic, and parasitic than a society where the food industry makes people sick so that the medical industry (Doctors, Psychologists Nurses and Pharmacists) can earn its livelihood by looking after them? What can be more paradoxical than a society where the work ethic is so obsessive that it makes us sick while there is an army of unemployed who can’t find any work at all? What can be more paradoxical than a culture that is so materialistic that it prefers its cars and filth and a planet frying beneath its feet to clean air and healthy backyard?
Are we really surprised the younger generation is disengaged?
As if this all isn’t enough reason for young people to disrespect their leaders, we actively encourage our youth to disrespect us! If a teacher makes a sarcastic remark because a youth is rude , the youth is encouraged to report the teacher and have him reprimanded. If a parent reprimands a child verbally or physically touches him, we encourage the child to sue the parent. Children are encouraged by counsellors to leave families and set up on their own. When the young people struggle the counsellors are nowhere to be seen - but so that we don’t feel uncomfortable with ourselves, the youth are blamed for being ‘maladjusted’ and the psychologists, counsellors and doctors only reappear when they are paid handsomely to do so.
This is all anathema to many African societies. Most Africans do not share these mercenary and cannibalistic values. Africans value cooperation, generosity, courtesy and harmony. Africa does have plenty of violence, ethnic conflicts, corruption and social problems-but we take the prize in developed countries for destroying ourselves. Competition for everything has become a religion. Trust has broken down in developed countries to such an extent that people are allowed to die basically of loneliness. African cultures do not encourage the individual to isolate or promote his/herself at the expense of the group.
You will decide for yourself, but I know which model I prefer..
Africans are happy to be in developed countries away from war zones and poverty. But why should they see intra-family harmony, courtesy, good manners and respect in their families disintegrating before their eyes as their children are ‘bribed’ and seduced by society to sally forth like robots to become independent, tax-paying ‘consumers’ at a ridiculously early age. All of this is so that the economic juggernaut can grind on- so that we, the elders, can have not just one–but another home, car, holiday, boat, etc. There must be a better way..We can learn from other cultures. There are alternatives if we would only look for them.
The lesson is almost over! I am in danger of digressing again…
I have not been encouraged by my church contacts to approach the churches for funds as I am assured they would be ‘too busy’ to be interested in a modest project like this one. The same applies to some Lions and Rotary clubs (but, I hope, not all of them)
I do accept that we are all busy at times-but not to the extent that we claim to be in the developed countries. In these countries ‘busyness’ and smugness have reached pathological levels. Many people are too busy even to exercise-to look after themselves. How tragic is that?
‘Being busy’ is mostly a choice. We choose to be busy doing ‘A’ because we think A is more important than B. What we really mean is ‘A’ has more value to me than ’B’. Other times of course, ‘being busy’ is just an excuse for laziness. It can also just an excuse to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the megacontradictions in our own society. Yes, it is much easier to blame all the problems we have on boat people, Ebola and Boko Haram!..much, much easier!
There are alternatives to the complacency, indifference and sheer tedium of living in developed countries. Alcohol is not the only answer. If only we were humble enough and adventurous enough to look for them outside our own culture, we might find answers that are much less destructive to our health and wellbeing. One day we may realize how much Africa has to offer, but judging by current attitudes to Africa, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for this realization.
In the meantime I do get frustrated with the bureaucratic processes-waiting for registration/tax free status etc etc. I know that assistance for the school is badly needed and will be greatly appreciated in Ghana right now.
If you have any other ideas regarding fundraising please let me know.
If this letter hasn’t been enough for you can get more in the attached document!
I do hope I have given you an idea of the ‘flavour’ of my experience in Ghana ‘under the Mango tree’
For me, it was worth waiting forty years to see again.…
If nothing else, please enjoy the letter and the website: please… look at the photos of the students on the “Donate” page and enjoy their short biographies by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.
Regards,
Don
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