Depressurization!

Depressurization. I cannot think of a better word to describe the last week than that. There are times in life when pressures and situations build up to a point where they are almost about to break. The build up to this point is always nerve-wracking and the breaking point is always feared but as with every buildup, there is a time after the break in which things truly depressurize and calm down. It is at this final state that we are currently at in Ghana.

As I mentioned in my last entry, the team last weekend got the chance to go off and spend a night in a very small farming village about an hour or so away from the town which we are currently in. In truth the experience should have been extremely pleasant the whole time. We arrived at the village on Saturday afternoon fully unannounced due to a mix up that took place earlier (the original village that our friend had arranged for us to go to was not a village at all but a large town and greatly disappointed the team, thus lending to our change of plans) and were greeted by the entire village as a welcome. After explaining our intentions in the village, the city council member gave us the keys to a mud store building that they used to keep cocoa beans in (being that the village was a cocoa plantation village). Our team soon settled in and spent the rest of the day reading, going down to a nearby river and, in the evening after a heavy rain, running around the village with the children chasing fireflies, imagining that we were all Lost Boys in Neverland and were actually chasing fairies. The night was beautiful and cool and everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

However by morning all this had changed. Due to the nature of the village (we all slept on a huge bamboo mat) and due to the fear of spiders (we had the unfortunate experience of finding an extremely large spider crawling over someone’s net) many of the team members did not sleep soundly. In addition to this, throughout the morning a series of strange, albeit cultural events, took place ranging from people constantly staring at us, giving us gifts of food (and a chicken) and sadly ending with the city council member coming to us raging drunk at 9am. So by 11am (our planned departure time) a very serious Sinicism had arisen in the group, bring birth to a great negativity and numerous complaints.

Now I wish that I could go into more detail but I am limited both by time (I have a meeting soon) and also the attention of you, the reader, so I will keep my reaction short and give you my 5 minute version of the events that followed. As I mentioned in the last blog, over the course of the last few weeks there has been an increasing skepticism and negativity in the group that, as I mentioned, I feared would have bad consequences if not checked. Well by the time we got back from the village the skepticism and negativity had reached what I would call a breaking point to extent that me and my leaders decided that it was time to have a group meeting to discuss it. There was a major underlying sentiment in the group that was poisoning people’s attitudes and we decided that enough was enough and we would open the closet to see what things would come out.

For over an hour we all sat down and discussed everything that was on peoples minds, listened to complains and basically had a big venting session. While asking people to say something positive, we also asked everyone to state one negative thing about the trip and how it has been affecting them. The result of this was an outpouring of frustrations (done, I must add, in a polite way) and a chance for us all to say what was on our minds. It turned out that a lot of the frustrations that were taking place in the team were very much due to Africa in general and the typical frustration that would attack anyone should they be thrown into the crazy and sad situation that often is Africa. When it came down to it many people were having a difficult time adjusting but, by fault of none, had also taken to complaining and being skeptical. The result was the negativity and skepticism that had been affecting the moral of our group for the last few weeks.

Though so much happened we ended that meeting by trying to readjust people’s views on Africa to one that focused not on ourselves but the people we were trying to serve. It was a good reminder. As servants here, we are called simply to love the community we are in, putting their needs and wants first before our own. While this may seem like a simple concept, when actually put in the situation of serving for long periods of time without any of the normal comforts that culturally we are used to, the idea of loving someone can actually be quite difficult. I think that really we don’t often realize how difficult it is to fulfill the sacred commandment of ‘Loving your neighbor as yourself’. When over here serving, it is important to always keep that commandment at the front of your heart and truly offer yourself as a servant. Otherwise your ability to love others is severely hampered and what should be a positive experience can quickly become negative. I am thankful to God that our group has made this realization together and has now readjusted the way we look at things. While we are now in depressurization, I feel that we are all headed in the right direction and that in the end, this experience will be truly amazing.