AKPE Ghana - Thank you, Ghana! .........

I am now back from Ghana and am delighted to have the opportunity to provide an account of my experiences.
 

It all started with my plan to go to another country and work there for a while with the skills and qualifications I had so far acquired. With all the arrangements in place, I flew to Ghana on 4 January. My concerns in the preparatory phase were “to feel ready for the challenge”, and I was ready when I departed for West Africa.
 

“Arrival”

Upon my arrival in Accra I was met at the airport by the N.N. – I looked for him expectantly as I left the airport building, and found him. But my arrival was not simply limited to the few moments of the actual touchdown, it was also anticipation, amazement, wonder, helping and understanding the situation. Through the reliable contact persons whose names I had been given by Ingrid Maria Böhm before my departure, I felt very well looked after in this initial phase of my project.  

Fr. N.N. had arranged for me to spend my first night in Accra, at the Guest Centre of the University Campus. A driver from St. Anthony’s Hospital collected me from there on the following day and took me to my house on the hospital grounds and introduced me to my work in Dzodze. A doctor from Vienna, whom I had contacted with the help of the administrator of Dzodze before my departure, shared our bungalow with me. In this way, we spent four months of our time in Ghana together. Mr. Brown, the administrator of the hospital, and his wife supported us to make it easier for us to find our feet in this initial period of our stay. We were made to feel very welcome in Ghana.

 
“Accept – feel accepted”:

During my time in Ghana I was part of the physio team of St. Anthony’s Hospital. I very much enjoyed the good relationship I had with my other colleagues and the patients. I soon felt very much at home and each day looked forward to the work and the new challenges. Something that was always entertaining were the recurring questions and the reaction of amusement or surprise at my answers. But we also learned from one another, and some patients for example called “Adzo” (name given to women/girls who were born on a Monday).

In Dzodze, physiotherapy is overseen by one physiotherapist who is in charge of the section, one physiotherapy assistant and one general assistant in the section. In addition, there is an occupational therapist who is responsible for a room where patients can sew, read, play games or watch television. As the hospital does not employ any orthopaedic surgeons on a regular basis, and the physiotherapist in charge of the section has substantial experience with patients who are here for orthopaedic treatment or suffering from a traumatic event, the physiotherapist in Dzodze performs a variety of tasks. These include putting limbs etc. in plaster, setting fractured bones with the patient under a general anaesthetic, and applying weights to legs with a bone fracture to facilitate a healing of the bone. The additional activities therefore add to my responsibilities in Dzodze. In addition to the in-patients, we looked after out-patients of every age who were referred to us by our doctors or other medical institutions. I integrated myself, was accepted by the others and, despite recurring illnesses, I was happy to be able to work in Dzodze for a while.
 

“Taking a stand”, “exchanging thoughts and ideas”

It was very exciting to talk with people who had been raised in Ghana, and for whom other experiences, a different language, different customs etc. were important. Some habits such as those associated with the sense of “time”, which in Ghana is entirely different to that in Austria where everything is planned down to the last detail, were sometimes a test for strong nerves. There are some things such as unpunctuality due to a different lifestyle, attitude and circumstances (traffic) which I believe one simply has to accept, or discuss/inquire about to get some idea of the way people think. I found that being authentic was important for an exchange of thoughts and ideas. The language barrier sometimes resulted in amusing, or in time-consuming misunderstandings. Some patients only spoke Ewe (the language spoken by the people of the Volta region). In such cases, after some brief but amusing gesticulation, I had to ask my colleagues to act as interpreter.

My trips and visits, e.g. for the week-end to Accra, or to the orthopaedic rehabilitation centre in Nsawam, afforded me the opportunity to meet even more people, who achieve great things. As I was very content with my workplace I was always very happy to return “home” to Dzodze. 

With our white skin we were of course very conspicuous. Wherever we were, people shouted “Yawu” to me and my white friend from Vienna as we passed by, which means “white”. We were also invited to drumming afternoons, festive events in the Roman Catholic church, etc., and enjoyed Ghanaian hospitality. On days when we were close to our limits, these public events were almost too much.

The team of the Dutch orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Rompa, which operates twice each year, had announced their arrival for May. Dr. Rompa has been a reliable partner of the hospital for over 10 years. More than 30 young and older patients came for the doctors to determine, based on their illness, how urgently they would need an operation. The patients suffer from badly healed fractures, deformed extremities, a degeneration of their joints, the consequences of previous infections of the bones and/or the surrounding tissue, etc. Many of these people were operated in the second week of May. The operations were performed by Dr. Korpisah, Dr. Moh, Ghanaian orthopaedic surgeons who work in hospitals in Accra and Duayaw – Nkwanta, and another surgeon. The hospitals in the diocese are well-connected, something which adds to the quality of the operations, the physiotherapy and the rehabilitation of the patients. But the system of course is not as perfect as that of Austria, for example. The financial resources to buy medical technical equipment, to pay specialists who can/want to work in rural areas, to make the enlargement/refurbishment of premises possible, are very scarce.
 

Saying farewell:

In May the time had already come to say farewell, to let go. I had meanwhile become attached to my work and my patients, I had found friends and had acquired my life rhythm in Ghana. When we visited the market in Dzodze, my Austrian bungalow mate and I loved to buy beautiful cloth for dresses, or our food such as tomatoes, onions, tuna, sardines, rice and noodles, tomato puree and delicious fruits from persons whose faces were now very familiar to us. The people at the next Internet café, a few kilometres away on the border to Togo, also already knew us quite well.

I had celebrated my birthday in April with a party, and before my departure that was followed by an official farewell party that was held for me. I was of course busy all of May getting ready for my departure. In Accra, too, I said goodbye to my newly won friends and was then accompanied to the airport by the N.N. and Mr. Brown, the Administrator of the hospital, and his family, and other friends. I am now back in Austria and miss Ghana a lot.

The time I had there was very precious, and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to visit the country.