Volunteering in Ghana (Part 3)

The Orphanage Closes

A few months after returning home from Ghana, around Christmas time, Olivia and I found out through Facebook that the orphanage had been closed down. Initially I was incredibly frustrated, worried and sad. I was frustrated that the hard work Elin had put in to officialising the orphanage had been futile, worried about the welfare of the children that lived there, and sad that the big family of the orphanage, along with all the bonds between children that considered one another brother and sister, would be broken. However, I would later realise that the closure of the orphanage was a positive thing, but for very negative reasons.

Olivia messaged a lot of people in Ghana, desperate to find information on why the orphanage had been closed and what would happen to the children. We were both very concerned. The information we received was vague and unhelpful but eventually Elin agreed to a Skype call. We ended up talking to her for over three hours. She explained everything from her point of view in detail.

The woman in charge of the orphanage, Evelynn Appiah (Grandma), was well known to social welfare. Her unofficial orphanage had been previously closed down and she was prohibited from starting a new one. There was no way they were going to allow her new one to remain open. After hearing the news, Grandma’s attitude to Dream Africa changed. She vehemently blamed Dream Africa for the impending closure of her orphanage: she thought they had conspired against her. Volunteers were barred from seeing the children and she broke off all communication with Dream Africa employees. Any attempts by the children to speak to anyone from Dream Africa led to vicious punishments by Grandma: usually beatings and denial of food.

After weeks of bitterness, the final meeting between Dream Africa and the orphanage took place around Christmas time. Gloria from Social Welfare had worked hard to find suitable relatives that would provide the children with new homes. These families, along with Elin and Jamal (CEO) of Dream Africa, met with the orphanage staff. It was naturally a sad day for the children that had to say goodbye indefinitely to the people they had called family for most of their life. Grandma made a point to warn the children’s new guardians about Dream Africa. She told them to ensure the children had no contact with any volunteers and warned about the evils of anybody associated with Dream Africa. She also took everything. All the books, clothes, food, and technology (including the laptop) that had been bought and donated for the children was taken. Literally nothing was left.

Returning to Ghana: July 2016

Olivia and I felt shocked and betrayed about how abruptly Grandma had turned against Dream Africa and her irrational spitefulness. However, it was only when we returned in July that we realised the full extent of Grandma’s viciousness. We returned to Ghana to see the children from the orphanage: we missed them and wanted to make sure they were okay. We met several of them at one of the schools partnered with Dream Africa. Next, we met Erica and her Auntie and Uncle with whom she was staying. We were worried about how we would be received but they were extremely welcoming, especially her Uncle who offered to drive us home.

Erica showed us where Christabel was staying. She also showed us where Grandma lived and told us that several children were back living with Grandma either due to their new families’ neglect or out of choice. Erica proved invaluable in locating other children and providing information about what had happened at the orphanage. She felt very conflicted in revealing information: she had lived with Grandma most of her life (she was now 14) and felt a strong sense of loyalty to her.

Erica was treated especially harshly by Grandma in the run up to the orphanage’s closure. She had made strong friendships with Elin and one or two other volunteers and received physical punishments for talking to them. Nevertheless, she tried hard to repair her relationship with Grandma, visiting her and offering money for her forgiveness. However, Grandma was furious with Erica when she showed us where Grandma was living. In what had now become characteristic spitefulness, she visited Christabel and Erica’s family, told them how untrustworthy and nasty they were and urged their families to punish them.

The more Erica and Christabel revealed to us, the more we became aware of Grandma’s appalling malice, selfishness and incompetence. She was horribly wasteful with money: biweekly money given to her for food by Dream Africa was spent on a mobile phone, spiritual ‘readings’, and her close family among other things. Money given to her for registering the orphanage was given to her family, donations of clothes or food were often sold and again the money used for herself and her family. It quickly became clear that running an orphanage was more business than charity for her.

She was also deeply superstitious. She would pay sham ‘pastors’ extortionate amounts of money to find out which of the girls in her care was a witch. When Erica and a couple of other girls were deemed witches, they were forced to stay outside all night with malarial mosquitos biting at them. Worst of all, Grandma had a violent temper. She was witnessed knocking one of the girls in her care unconscious with a brick. She was quick to deny food for days at a time to children that were already severely malnourished. She had her favourites and those she consistently punished.

On a personal level, it hurt to hear that food Olivia and I had bought for the kids had been sold. The food cost over £100. That buys a lot of food in Ghana. It speaks volumes about the character of a woman that sells this food instead of feeding it to hungry children in her care. It also hurt to hear that the children never got to use the laptop I had brought them: Grandma’s son took it and as far as I know he still has it now. Most crushing of all, a large amount of money was raised to provide a hearing aid to Gabriella, an infant girl with cerebral palsy. We later found out that Grandma had ‘lost’ the hearing aid, severely limiting Gabriella’s opportunity to ever learn to talk and live an independent life. It would not surprise me if this hearing aid had been sold.

On the positive side, most of the children were now far better off than they had been with Grandma now that they were no longer in her care. Three sisters stayed with their relatively wealthy Aunt and Uncle: one of them was given a bike for Christmas. Some stayed with very distant relations that kindly offered to care for them. Without exception, the children seemed better fed. I was taken aback by the tragic situation that had occurred: these children’s families had assumed that these children would be better cared for with Grandma; they did not know they had inadvertently neglected them by doing so. It is painful to consider the families these children had available if only things had been investigated thoroughly.

Things were not great for all the children. Some guardians, such as Gabriella’s mother, had given her back to Grandma. Emmanuel and Benedicta, both teenagers, returned out of choice. Hiswell and Amo were both related to Grandma and so she was their legal guardian. We visited Grandma’s place. The first two times she was away and, as mentioned, she was very unhappy that we visited. However, under the pretence that we would provide money, she agreed to meet us the third time we visited. She told us that Jamal was evil, she was starting a new orphanage and she had the paperwork to prove this. Of course, we did not give her money, and after hearing that we had visited many of the children, she phoned us and told us never to visit again, we were not welcome. She abruptly hung up and that was the last thing we ever heard from her.  

We spent most of the month we were in Ghana travelling to visit the children that had previously lived at the orphanage. I was taken aback by the friendliness and warm welcome from the children’s new families. I was amazed how many of them were willing to invite us into their homes and talk to us for a long time. I expected suspicion and coldness given Grandma’s ‘warning’. Erica’s family were particularly kind. They always offered us a drink and had time to talk to us. We managed to visit roughly twenty children. We compiled a report* on each of them and made notes on their mental, physical and financial wellbeing. We felt that Dream Africa were not sufficiently aware of these children’s situations. Dream Africa had started other projects and it felt like these children were no longer a priority. By keeping a reference of most of these children we hoped to highlight which children were being neglected and needed further help.

Conclusions

This has been very difficult to write. It is hard to admit that you invested a lot of time, money and energy into something so naively and uncritically. I can’t help but feel in some way responsible, through ignorance, for the mistreatment of the children in the orphanage. It is true that the orphanage existed before and would likely exist without Dream Africa’s involvement. And it is true that the teaching I had done with the children still had value.

However, my time would have been far more valuable to them if I had thought about things more critically. Why are the children malnourished when there are so many volunteers and donations? Why are there no attempts to place these children with relatives? How exactly is the money Grandma receives spent? These are questions that I did not fully consider. I hid behind many reasons, perhaps some legitimate: cultural differences, not having the authority to ask these questions, not wishing to be confrontational, naively assuming others were doing the best possible job to help these children and they would have already asked these questions, not having the power to control spending or the treatment of the children.

In two distinct ways, my experience volunteering in Ghana reflects popular criticisms of the aid industry in general. Firstly, that money and goods designed to provide aid often don’t go to the recipients they were intended to help. There are too many greedy, unscrupulous people in the way to make aid effective. Secondly, the belief that charities are ineffective because they don’t have a clue what they are doing. Dream Africa proved themselves to be astoundingly incompetent: they provided large sums of money and many volunteers to an orphanage without even doing any background research into those that ran it. They never stipulated how money should be spent, never researched how effectively the orphanage used their money and provided inadequate records of the children’s wellbeing that lived there.

Personally, when things go wrong, I always find the most constructive approach is to ask: how can we learn from it and move forward? What can be learnt? Firstly, it is not enough to want to do good or to try and do good. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you try and do good uncritically you will either end up doing more harm than good or doing far less good than you could have done if you thought things through. When giving charitably, be demanding about where your money is going. Always have a healthy dose of scepticism. And if volunteering abroad, don’t allow ‘cultural differences’ to blind your critical faculties: if something seems wrong, question it rather than accept it as a cultural difference you do not understand.

The most important lesson I have taken is to not be so arrogant in thinking that I will do an effective job in helping others without any expertise and training. Take a more humble approach and understand that people have spent years analysing the most effective ways to help people in poverty. Projects have undergone intense rigorous testing in order to prove that they make a difference in reducing poverty. These are far more worthy of your support than the work of organisations that offer no proof that their work has any positive effect at all.

How to move forward? I focus my energies more on the effective altruism movement. Effective altruism asks the question: how can money be used for the most possible good? It emphasises supporting charities that have proven to do a lot of good with the money they are given. They allow you to do (significantly more than) your bit in making the world a better place for less time and money.

I still think about the children in Ghana a lot, especially the ones with Grandma. There were talks about involving social welfare to have the children forcibly removed but I haven't heard anything since leaving. Olivia and I currently sponsor one of the children but we don't have any plans to return to Ghana, and if we do it would be in a tourist capacity rather than as volunteers. I also want to say thanks to Erica and Christabel for all their help whilst we were there. Going to the cinema with them was the highlight of our trip.

*I still have the document with information on how the children were doing in July 2016. There is a lot of information I have left out about them. If you want the information in the document I can give it to you. Just send me a message on Facebook or email jimmygough3@hotmail.co.uk. 

Volunteering in Ghana (Part 2)

I returned to Ghana to volunteer with Dream Africa in both the summer of 2015 and 2016. By the end of 2015 I felt tired and disillusioned with Dream Africa and Ghana public services. Everything from registering children for health insurance to the police force was cripplingly inefficient. It felt like such an ineffective use of time, especially for a foreigner that did not understand the system well enough. It was only with reluctance I returned in 2016 for a month. This time I was completely convinced that this was a very ineffective use of my time and money. I realised that my volunteer experiences were too focused on me and not on helping others, which it should be. If I  genuinely wanted to help others as much as I could, I was going about it in the wrong way.

What changed in these two visits to radically alter my perspective? I returned in 2015 full of motivation. I did not book a return flight. I wanted to stay for a very long time - at least six months. I felt there was no better place for me to be than volunteering with Dream Africa. Olivia and I returned near the same time and brought with us as much for the kids as our luggage restrictions allowed us. I decided to buy a laptop online and a lot of educational software to go with it. The kids loved laptops and I thought it to be a very effective way for them to learn. We also brought statonery and focused on bringing small things with a lot of utility. 

We spent a lot of money whilst we were there that summer. Neither of us like to say no, especially when it is children in need. Shoes, school fees, health insurance, trips out, electricity money, new lightbulbs, medicine, new fans, new books, hospital visits, and taxis...so many taxis. Elin, the only other experienced volunteer, was unwell so the burden usually fell to us. At some point, the staff in the orphanage started expecting us to pay for things rather than asking. "Oh our fridge is broken, the repairman is here, you need to pay him". We made it clear that the requests were getting unreasonable: that we were not giving them money from the organisation; this was extra money out of our pockets and it was getting too much. The requests lessened, but it was nevertheless an extremely expensive trip and one that was unsustainable in the long-term. 

Taking on more administration work also changed my perspective on volunteering. As mentioned, Elin was an important volunteer for Dream Africa and she was unwell. She took on the bulk of the organisational and logistical work. Basically, she did all of the work that wasn't fun. Helping her out, was an eye-opener to the barriers she faced. Many frustrating hours were spent with Social Welfare trying to create a license for the orphanage. The name of the orphanage had to be changed multiple times, new documents with information about the children were now needed, previous documents that took painstaking hours to create were no longer needed. At times the guidelines were completely contradictory. Deadlines changed. Communication from Social Welfare was also inconsistent and meetings were missed. 

Aside from the paperwork, getting things done was always a struggle. Registering the children for health insurance often meant a four hour queue and the children all had to be brought along in person. Most frustrating of all, Grandma (who was in charge of the orphanage) frequently lost the health insurance cards and they had to be replaced. Furthermore, hospital trips that summer were a nightmare. There was a nationwide doctors' strike and all the nearby hospitals were closed. Instead, we had to take children two bus-rides away to a military hospital that was completely overrun. It was often an all-day activity to have the children seen and to receive their medication. 

All of this made me realise how little I understood about working for an NGO when I was there last year. I was oblivious to the difficult, frustrating work involved behind the scenes and the difficult decisions about allocating money. It also made me see how ineffective and misguided most volunteers tended to be. When volunteers decided to organise a 'pizza party' for the kids in the orphanage, it upset me just how short-sighted they were being. These children needed bags of rice - they needed cheap food, not to be stuffed full of pizza for one day and then be starving come November when all the volunteers and all the money is gone. But what fun is there in buying rice? You don't get to see the kids having fun. You don't get the happy selfies. You don't get the same gratification. I became increasingly aware that most volunteers cared more about feeling good about themselves than doing what was best for the children they had come so far to help. And I saw myself in them and I hated it. 

What drove me crazy more than anything else was the preoccupation with pictures. So many photos. "Take a picture of me holding this child", "sing this song to the camera", "do that dance again so I can film it". It's natural to want to take photos when you're having fun but during hours when they should be teaching I just felt like screaming at them "children are not a tourist attraction". Worst were the self- righteous Facebook/Instagram posts that followed, patting themselves on the back for the work they had done. The people that made these posts also tended to be the ones that didn't even teach the children or provide any sort of sustainable benefit to these kids they claimed to have helped. Again, I saw a bit of me last year in them and hated myself for it. 

The saddest thing is that these volunteers are usually lovely, kind people who genuinely cared and showed love to these children: they were just misguided in their approach. That is my biggest criticism of Dream Africa. It puts too much emphasis on providing a good time for volunteers and not enough on guiding them into being effective volunteers. Without intelligent guidelines and training, it is inevitable for volunteers to be misguided and incompetent. Their potential is never realised.

Nevertheless, this sense of disillusionment paled in comparison to the sense of crushing despair that was to follow with the news of the orphanage closing. 

Volunteering in Ghana (Part 1)

The streets of Accra

My first time volunteering in Ghana for 2 months was one of the best experiences of my life. I immediately fell in love with the place: the warmth of the people, the energy, the colours, the sense of freedom. The exhiliration of being in an unfamiliar environment, knowing nobody and being completely lost was incredibly liberating. The bright, hand-painted shops and homes of Accra reflected the energetic, entrepreneurial soul of the city. It made me feel alive in a way I hadn't felt in the concrete greyness of England. And although this romanticised first impression faded, it was replaced by a strong sense of purpose. I woke up each day feeling like I could make a difference -  it felt like what I did really mattered. That was the best feeling of all.

I first applied to volunteer with Dream Africa Care Foundation in the summer of 2014. I was interested in working with an NGO in the future and I wanted some experience. On a more basic level, I hated how unequal the world was and I wanted to make a difference in changing it. I understood that there were more cost-efficient ways of doing this than travelling to Ghana, but I decided that if I focused on teaching I could make my trip ethically worthwhile if not exceptionally altruistic. I chose Dream Africa because it was a local non-profit NGO that would understand local needs, rather than one of the expensive gap year companies that often work for profit and seem more focused on providing a positive volunteer experience than making a real difference to the lives of others.

My new environment was such a refreshing change from a miserable year at university where everything felt so meaningless. Nobody seemed to care about anything other than deadlines, relationships and getting drunk. My passion for my degree was completely gone and I felt like I was wasting my time. It was a refreshing change to be around people that were committed to helping others. Some of the kindest, most amazing people I have met were those who were there when I first went to Ghana. They helped to make my time there so special.

Most of all though, the children I worked with completely stole my heart. It was overwhelming how friendly, intelligent and hard-working most of them were. It was a joy to teach them because most of them were so willing to learn. I felt like I was making real progress in English and Maths, especially with the higher ability students. I went to bed feeling tired but more satisfied and fulfilled than I had ever felt at home. It wasn't just that I was doing something that mattered but also that I mattered. I had something to offer others: I was worth something to others.

The weeks fell into a routine of teaching at the orphanage during the day, and sometimes teaching football in the evenings. On the weekend, we travelled on trips, relaxed, went drinking, and generally had a good time. The time seemed to go so quickly and before I knew it, the summer was over, the friends I had made had flown home and now it was my turn too. I knew for certain I would come back and I told the kids at the orphanage that. They had made such a strong impression on me. They had ignited in me a strong sense of purpose to try and help them as much as I could.

I returned sooner than I intended. A week after I flew home, I missed Ghana immensely and my time there had left such a strong impression on me that I decided to my dissertation on Ghanaian independence. I booked a 3-week trip back to Ghana in Spetember which meant I was back there about a month after I had left. I was so happy to see the children and the staff at the orphanage again and they told me that I was the first volunteer to return for a second time.

Whilst I was there the first time, Olivia was the volunteer I got on with the best and she came back again just like me but a few days afterwards. We had such a great time together that second time. Other than when I had to visit the archives. we spent all our time together. We organised a trip to La Palm Resort's swimming pool. La Palm is a luxury hotel in Accra and the staff kindly gave us a large discount to use the facilities. It was a perfect day and the kids loved it. At the weekends we'd go out dancing until 5am. We just had the best time together. We were both so happy and in love.

Even with everything that happened afterwards, I still look back fondly on that summer in Ghana and the amazing time I had. The attachments I made and desire to help the children in the orphanage never left me. I worked hard at poker, my source of income that had funded my previous trips, in order to help as much as I could when I returned next summer. I wanted to return for a long time. My time there seemed far more worthwhile than anywhere else. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.

In defence of 'Voluntourism'

'Voluntourism'

'Voluntourism' has very negative connotations. It generally means somebody, usually young and inexperienced, that travels abroad to volunteer for a short period of time. It evokes the image of somebody for whom volunteering abroad is simply a narcissistic adventure: an opportunity to change their profile picture more than change the world. The criticisms of voluntourism fall into three categories.

Criticisms of 'Voluntourism'

Barbie saving the world

Firstly, it perpetuates the 'white saviour complex'. Photographs from volunteers are mostly rich white people hugging clearly impoverished black children. The images seem to say 'look at what a great person I am saving these helpless children'. Barbie Saviour provides some important satire that does a good job illustrating this argument.

The second criticism is economic: travelling so far to play with some children is an incredibly inefficient use of money if you actually want to help these people. Send them money instead and do far more good in the process. The volunteering work undertaken is inefficient, focused on the volunteers rather than helping local people, and is ultimately very ineffective. This article summarises the argument of ineffective volunteering.

The third criticism is that volunteering is not just ineffective but actively harmful to those it intends to help. 'Orphanages' have been investigated by UNICEF among other organisations and the findings have shown that up to 90% of children in orphanages are not orphans. These orphanages exist for voluntourists, often leaving the children in these sham orphanages susceptible to abuse and unneccessary family breakdowns.

Stepping outside of an idealistic paradigm

All three of these criticisms make very important points that need to be addressed. However, my main criticism of those arguments against 'voluntourism' is that they come from an idealistic point of view that neglects the practical needs of poor communities.

Ghana has potential for tourism

Firstly they neglect the 'tourism' half of voluntourism and the immense benefit that can come from it. Ghana's tourism industry gains immensely from volunteers in a country that would otherwise struggle to attract tourists. The benefits of a constant influx of foreign capital for local traders, local transport and local markets should not be overlooked. Even if the volunteering aspect is ineffective, this is a huge benefit offered to the economy.

Furthermore, the stereotype of a short-term volunteer as an overprivileged narcissist on their 'gap-yah' is frankly unfair and untrue. It does not stand up to research on the motivations of short-term volunteers. Also, in my experience, the overwhelming majority of volunteers genuinely want to make a difference: if they only wanted a good time, there are plenty of other places they could go with more comfortable surroundings, far less effort and far less cost. The passion and commitment to help others that many volunteers possess, even if it is misguided, should be harnessed effectively not disaparged and scorned at. It can be an extremely powerful resource if used correctly.

The most misguided criticism of voluntourism is the idealistic assertion assertion that people are better off staying at home and just donating their money instead. This article flatly suggests that most volunteers should just stay at home and not bother. However, this ignores the reality that most people just won't donate money that has no immediate benefit to them. Yes, in an ideal world, all volunteers would just donate that money and save the journey. I don't doubt that it would be a more effective use of money. However, it takes a quick look around to realise that we don't live in an ideal world and people simply don't like to share. 

The reality is that this money would probably end up on holidays, iPhones and new shoes and not large anonymous donations to effective charities. It is better to use this money for some positive impact than none at all. Added to that, the physical connection often leads to donations from past volunteers and their families.. Volunteering also encourages a long-term interest and commitment to development. There are so many indirect economic benefits beyond the actual work undertaken by a volunteer that even if a project is ineffective, it is still worthwhile to the local community for this person to spend their money in a country they would otherwise not have contributed anything at all. 

Bad regulation rather than bad volunteering

The potential for voluntourism to do active harm is by far the most important criticism. If volunteers are actively doing harm to a local community then the points previously mentioned become redundant. Orphanages in general are the biggest problem with voluntourism. More than any other volunteering, they perpetuate the 'white saviour complex' (what better way to feel like a hero than saving orphans?!). More worryingly, they create a constant cycle of abandonment from short-term volunteers that can cause psychological problems for vulnerable children. They also attract unscrupulous organisations that create 'sham' orphanages: essentially rupturing families in order to cash in on volunteers. 

However, this simply highlights the need for better regulation on volunteer opportunities. It does not mean short-term volunteering is an inherent problem. Volunteer organisations should have more stringent guidelines on what projects volunteers undertake. They should focus more on utilising the skills of volunteers to create sustainable change and not promote playing and taking selfies with chldren in orphanages. More culpability should be put on organisations to educate volunteers on how their time would be best spent, the importance of cultural sensitivty and to make them aware they are not there to treat children as a tourist attraction. 

Conclusion

Too many criticisms of 'voluntourism' are often hand-wavingly disparaging of naive volunteers that might be misguided in their desire to make a difference. Such scathing condesension does not help anyone and simply serves to give the critic a sense of self-righteousness. Those volunteering abroad have the potential to offer great benefits to impoverished communities - even if this is mostly as a tourist, it should not be neglected. The self-conglaturatory selfies on Facebook make me cringe as much as anyone but that desire to do good should be harnessed not hindered and it can be a powerful positive influence. It is up to organisations to direct international volunteers' energy in a positive way so their contribution is a genuine asset in reducing poverty and not just a new profile picture.