A Goat I Named Gimpy

Zoe’s friend Joy came to visit me mid-week to see how I was doing. Joy is like no other Ghanaian I had met – he was a vegetarian atheist (like myself). He said what frustrated him most about people in Ghana was that when they want or need something they spend extra time in church praying for it rather than spending that time and energy actively working to get it. He says that is why church services are everyday and sometimes all night, and each of these services are packed to the brim. He said first they try white people, and if white people won’t give it to them they think God will.

At the request of Zoe I had asked Sammy earlier if the orphans that she had sponsored had their school uniforms yet. He told me that the back-packs were bought but the material was sent to the dress maker’s weeks ago and no uniforms had come back yet.

Zoe had also informed me that there was a child in the village with a cyst of some kind and that she had paid for the boy to see a doctor and hopefully get it removed. I asked Sammy what happened with him. He took me to see for myself. He called the little boy over, turned him around and lifted his shirt to show me. I was not prepared for what I saw. My jaw hit the floor and it’s fortunate his back was turned to me and he couldn’t read my face. This lump protruding from between his shoulder blades was as wide as his back and sagged all the way bellow his buttocks, I had never seen or heard of anything like it.

“What is it?” I stammered. Sammy just shrugged. “We can’t take him to the doctor’s because he and his mother do not have health insurance”. He was one of seven children in a very poor family and his parents needed 18 cedi (AUD $9) to get health insurance. I didn’t understand why, if Zoe had offered to pay for the surgery, had they not gotten health insurance. And why wasn’t the village helping? The church collection at mass last Sunday would have made half that amount, and there were two other churches no doubt also collecting money that day. One or two church-happy Sundays is all it would have taken to raise that 18cedi!

I told Sammy I would pay for the health insurance, he told me he would take the money, and not to give it to the parents, that way it would get done. I trusted Sammy - he was a good and honest man. However, he also warned that it would take three months after the paper work was submitted for the insurance to be processed. From there the boy would be able to see a doctor but to see a specialist and then a surgeon would mean going on a long waiting list. It was systematic foot-dragging.

“Why were the younger children not at school”? I asked Sammy.

 He said that at the end of last year their German volunteer teacher had quit prematurely and gone back home. They had requested another volunteer to be sent over and were now waiting until August when a 19 year old German girl was due to come and teach the younger children for a year. I asked Sammy why, in the meantime, one of the local adults who is able to read and write doesn’t take over the class until the German volunteer arrives. He looked at me like I was a complete idiot.

“Because they are not teachers” he said matter-of-factly.

“But I am sure”, I interjected, “this 19 year old is also not a qualified teacher, in fact she may be fresh out of high school with no life experience whatsoever and English is her second language”.

I seemed to offend Sammy. I wanted an answer to what I had just said, but instead he said that they rely on German volunteers to teach the children, even though only one volunteer had actually worked out in the past. I was frustrated. Frustrated that instead of teaching the children the basics of reading, writing and counting they let the children spend the day playing with sticks and rocks. I was frustrated that since 2009 the bakery still didn’t have a floor, I was frustrated that this poor child had a growth half the size of him weighing him down for years.

Things began to appear worse and I let everything upset me. I had a favourite goat that dragged its hind legs with great difficulty, when I asked what happened I was told that one of the old women had beat it with a stick. I wanted to cry. I did cry when my favourite child Selassie was beaten repeatedly one afternoon. I began to really notice the protruding belly buttons of malnourished children, the woman whose skin was dark green on her hands and arms, I wondered about the eight year old boy who had never uttered a word in his life and I totally lost it when my favourite goat got hit by a speeding car because it couldn’t drag itself out of the way fast enough.

Why was it that the worst physical affliction I had faced in my life was a winter flu? Why was it that the problem with Australians is that they have too much to eat?

I let myself dwell on some of the regular interactions in Ghana. The way many people had tried to befriend me, only to ask within minutes if I could sponsor them to get an Australian visa. How many had people beg you in the market place to buy their goods, they plead for coins on the street, they demand “give me this!” whether it is my sunglasses, my torch or even my wet-wipes. Several times in the market place someone will pick up a bag of rice or a box of tea and wave it in your face commanding “buy this for me” walking off with the item in hand before you even have a second to object while the seller stands impatiently waiting for you to fork out the cash for their now missing item. When the village kids came into my room at night I offered them a banana each… they always took two.

The fact that in the past two weeks I had lived in two totally different worlds had finally hit me, there in that village, the evening after my chat with Sammy when that goat got hit by the car.

Gimpy the Goat

Selassie my favourite child