Oh Julie.

Meet Julie. Auntie Julie, some call her.


I sat talking with her on the telephone last week, cutting in and out as she babbled abut how bad the 'network' is. The shotty MTN cell service is a trait characteristic of all of my phone calls to Darmang. They usually last about one-two minutes before the service goes bad and we have to call back again. This conversation was the same.


"Hello. Akosua? Hello."
"Hello. Julie? Julie? Hello? Are you there? What?"
"Oh the network is no good."
"What?"


After the service improved we began to talk about how life was, reminiscing about our go-fish games, the goats, and my deep fear of chickens and toilets.


Julie is my Ghanaian mother as she calls herself, the woman that I lived with, cooked with, and endlessly laughed with. She is over sixty years old and a day does not pass when she ceases to amaze me as she stands with a giant ax cutting down a tree while chasing the chickens around the yard. If anyone has found the fountain of youth, it is her. 


When I was there last summer, Evan and I decided to teach her go-fish. Despite her vivaciousness, go-fish was not a game she easily picked up. It generally went like this...


"Akosua (my Ghanaian name), do you have six?"
"No, go fish."
"Oh bone (meaning bad)"

The next turn, "Akosua, do you have six?" And the next. And the next. For five rounds she asked only me, and she asked only for six. After a few more times we encouraged her to ask someone else. "Okay" she agreed finally seeming to understand. We waited for her turn to arrive and when it did she asked,


"Akosua, do you have six?"


"Daabi (no in twi), go fish"


"Oh bone!"


As I laughed at her unyielding persistence, I couldn't help but feel silly myself as I reflected on what had just gone on minutes before the game of go-fish had begun.


Right before our game had commenced, I had went into the outhouse, a place I had come to dread in every way. It was a hole in the ground, filled with small black gnats that flew up and mosquitoes that circled your head. As I walked in, a few new creatures had joined the crowd- three large lizards. With that I ran out screaming, white with fear (whiter than usual).


Julie ran over, desperately trying to help my panicked self. Once my breathing began to slow I explained to her that there were lizards in the outhouse and I couldn't use it. She stopped dead in her tracks, look to Diana (her daughter), said something in twi, and broke out into hysterical and infectious laughter. She repeated whatever it was she said in twi, crippled over in hysteria. She then proceeded to go into the outhouse, batting away the lizards with a giant stick, shaking her head.

"Oh obruni."

As ridiculous as it was, after that point Julie would not let me use the outhouse without first making sure there were no lizards. I still don't know if she did this to mock me (I hope so) but I'm pretty sure it's because she is a mother, always worried about her weak, little American, and always loving in every, single way.

The Dilemma

I am using this blog as a means to connect our donors, our supporters, our people of interest. I am using it as a means of engagement. I am using it maybe even as a means of persuasion. Because of that it is expected that I reflect our project in a positive light. I tell about our successes, our progress, our triumphs. I fuel optimism.


But I feel that every single person engaged in this project needs to be a part of the processes and progress, not just those parts that are positive. We all are all a part of making this project a reality and sometimes it becomes necessary to face the struggles inherent within its reality.


So here it is. Here is the dilemma.


I, like many of you, want to be an agent of change. I want to make a difference. I want to use my privilege to the advantage of those that lack such privilege. But it is not always that simple. Who asked me to use my privilege for change? Who gave me the right to impose my privilege, my resources, my reality on others? And even if it was invited, who is to say it will make any difference? Maybe change must come from within. Maybe change is more than just the transfer of resources and the equalization of privilege.


In the case of Darmang, we were invited. We told the community that we wanted to support them in any way that they needed. If they named the game, we would play. So they named it. They asked for three things: a clean, stable water source, a public toilet, and a vocational training center. We, with the idea of water already in mind, agreed to engage in a project in pursuit of clean and stable water. And we ran. We ran to American organizations for support, we ran to our professors for guidance, we ran to Seattle NGO's for grants. We ran and left Darmang completely disengaged. We ran back to America to solve the problems of Africa. We played the game in our own court, with our own people, and our own vision.


To be fair, we had a plane ticket out of Ghana before we even began on this project. We had registered for classes, rented houses, and made plans for our return long before we even stepped foot in the houses of the Darmang elders. And because we left, communication is inevitably limited. Shotty cell phone service is the only medium of communication which is further limited by the language barrier. So when we ran, we ran for reasons. We were playing the game that way because of circumstances not because of mal-intent.


But does that make it right?


When we show up a year and a half after leaving with the money for the well in our pocket, ready to be handed to the local contractor so construction can begin, will we really have empowered the community? Will we really have taken them one more step out of poverty?


Maybe.


We might very well save the lives of numbers of children otherwise destined to cholera or typhoid. We might very well allow children to truly benefit from their education since they no longer have to walk three hours a day to fetch water. We might very well have a profound impact.


But we will make an impact our way. Doing it on our turf, completely apart from anything the community had been a part of. This project was a consequence of our action and not a direct result of the people of Darmang's desire to create change in their lives.


If they had done it themselves, would they have chosen water? Would they have built four sealed, hand-pump boreholes? Is that the change they really wanted to see, or was it just because we offered to make change?


The dilemma, then, is not the change itself. Clean water is good. Clean water is necessary. Clean water will save lives. The problem is what is behind the change. The problem is that again and again we come in and make change without considering that such change is a consequence of the action of the other, and not of the community.


Where do we do from here? I cannot say. I, to be honest, do not know. I think that from here we sit, we think, we reflect. We step back and analyze our position. But I think we cannot  stop working towards our goal. We keep seeking support for clean water on our turf, but we engage more fully in dialogue with the people of Darmang. We bring them in. We bring this back to them. We play the game with their rules, on their field, with the support of both teams- ours and theirs. Maybe that is the solution.


Whatever the solution is, we have not found it yet.


Poverty is deepening, equality is becoming more rampant, and injustice is the plague of our generation. So this project needs to be more about a means to an end. It needs to be more about than just getting four boreholes. This project needs to be an exploration of what works. What has been tried on the global-scale has largely failed. We need to change something.


With that- let it be our goal to find out that something. Let it be our goal to produce more than water, but to produce a revolution of thought. A revolution developed by the insight of the people of Darmang and fostered by the strengthening of our relationship. It need not be anything that will revolutionize the world, but something that will simply creating lasting change in Darmang because that is where we must begin, locally. In the field of Darmang.

Where it all began...

Who are we? Who is Project:Darmang? What are we about? Why do we exist? And what exactly are we trying to change? 

This is where we begin. With these questions. To me, the words passion, justice, and change are thrown around so much that they have lost their meaning. So when you read our first post and look into our mission I think that you may very well miss what we are truly about. 


We are not about using buzz words and rhetoric, but sometimes we cannot find the words to describe what moves us, what drives us, and what we are committed to. It is so deeply interwoven within our consciousness, our hearts, and our minds that it cannot manifest itself in any other way but action. Words are not enough for us. 
So that is where we begin, I suppose. 


Project:Darmang began when I, an eighteen-year old recent high school graduate, hopped on a plane to Ghana in 2008. I found myself in a small, rural village- Darmang- surrounded by 2,000 of the most loving, generous, and joyous people I have ever encountered. I found myself surrounded by poverty, sickness, and dire conditions. 


In a way,  I had expected the poverty, the crises of illness, and the deplorable conditions, but I had not expected to see the resiliency, joy, passion, and unfaltering love and generosity of every person in Darmang. I had expected them to be angry, to be sad, to be defeated or desperate. I would be, they are not. 


I came there to help them, to teach their children, to be a person who really did change their lives. I left having learned far more than I taught. I left having not 'helped' them, but having them help me. They helped me realize the power of the human spirit in overcoming adversity. I left a changed person. And this, I think, is what happens when any obruni (white man) walks into Darmang. They leave an obibini (black man or African) at heart not because of the African sun, but because for the first time they see the beauty that transcends our daily reality- the beauty of community, of faith, of altruistic kindness. They see the beauty of sisterhood and brotherhood in its truest form. Or so I believe. 


So that is where the inspiration for Project:Darmang began. Since 2008, my heart has been filled with the love of Darmang and I was inspired to return this last summer, in 2010 with my best friend. This time, though, I wanted to give more than receive. This desire is what birthed this project. This is what created the question, 'What is Project:Darmang?'


The answer is simple- it is the pursuit of clean and stable water. Project:Darmang seeks to build four boreholes built of all local materials. The contractor of the well is a local man in the village of Darmang who has been trained by a NGO to build simple, hand-pump wells. We are working with Engineers without Borders, Rotary International, and Volunteer Partnerships for West Africa (a Ghanaian NGO) to build these four boreholes, as well as a vocational training center for the youth of the community. 


What started as the simple pursuit of the most basic need has flowered into something more. It has become a lesson and an inspiration for me. It has showed me how many wonderful people there are in this world, willing to be a part of great change. 


And so here we are. This is who we are. This is what we stand for. 


We are Project:Darmang. Join us.