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You Are the Gift

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This post is to share a few final reflective thoughts on my experience in Ghana. Most of what I say will be based on a BYU forum given by Sister Sharon Eubanks. In Sister Eubanks address she shares this powerful idea: "I am going to speak to you from my own experience now about what I have seen that accomplishes the most lasting good. If you want to be involved in humanitarian service, this is the way—and I hope this is the thing that you will remember from the forum today. You are the gift. You yourself are the gift. It is not the clothing, the hygiene kits, the school desks, or the wells. It is you." Since returning home I have found my thoughts constantly turning to the question, "What now?" What can I do to keep myself engaged in a doing good? How can I continue to be involved in humanitarian work? How can I continue to find meaningful ways to serve others? At times I feel limited because I lack material goods and money to donate to local and international o
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Til' We Meet Again

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And just like that six weeks have come and gone. How the time has flown. My final week was just as amazing as the first five. We kicked off the week in Sapeiman. The church had a bunch of chairs with "Sapeiman Assembly" printed on the back, but they decided to abbreviate the word assembly to save ink I suppose. I personally felt that that is a word I wouldn't choose to abbreviate, but maybe I'm just too immature. Anyways, we spent about five hours there seeing patients. I helped with data entry where I put the patients information along with the optometrists recommendations and prescriptions into a spreadsheet. The patients come and sit next to me while I enter the information, so I love starting up a short conversation in Twi with them. Fortunately they don't usually talk enough to realize that I don't actually speak Twi. I was sitting close to Dr. Kojo, so I got to watch him checking people's eyes. I also learned that he studied in Cuba and speaks fl
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Seeing Sites and Sight to See

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Week five of six is over. I'm already sad with just the thought of leaving Ghana. All the same, we had a great week. We started off with a close outreach in Accra on Monday. We had around 100 people there. Unfortunately for me, most people in the area we visited speak Ga instead of Twi, a language I only know a few words in. They kept getting mad at me for trying to speak Twi to them even though most of them understand it. I guess I need to expand my linguistic abilities. I was helping with visual acuity testing that day. The chart we were using to test people's vision was taped to the wall of a bathroom with no roof which meant that I got to both hear and smell people's bodily functions. Booyah! The church in Accra we worked in. The bathrooms (or washrooms as they call it here). Tuesday morning we headed to Cape Coast in the Central Region. It is a beautiful coastal city with some amazing sights. We worked in an old Methodist church with some swee
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A Day in the Life of a Unite For Sight Volunteer

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The purpose of this post is just to give a little more information regarding Unite For Sight and to describe what my typical day is like as a volunteer working in Ghana. Unite For Sight is a non-profit organization founded in 2000. They work with local eye clinics in India, Honduras, and Ghana to provide quality eye care to some of the world's poorest populations. Over the last 20 years they have provided care to over 2,700,000 people and have funded over 100,000 sight-restoring surgeries. They work with local eye clinics and medical professionals to ensure that the care being provided is sustainable.  Most days we wake up by 6 or 6:30am and we are ready to leave by 8am. Breakfast is provided by our hotel and usually consists of toast with some Milo (a hot chocolate-like drink). The team from the eye clinic we are working with for the week will come and pick us up. Some weeks we have as many as 12 people, including volunteers, optometrists, ophthalmic nurses, and dri
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