Dear Readers,
There is no denying the fact that ever since the current global economic and financial crisis began in the Fall of 2007 and whose end no one can unequivocally predict, most of us have spent at least some time reflecting and pondering on how this catastrophe has affected our personal lives and the decisions and adjustments we have had to make on a day-to-day basis. Truth be told, depending on our social standing, line of work, geographic location and other extenuating circumstances pertinent to us, the degree and scale of this self-introspection and re-adjustment could span an entire gamut of possible measures and resolutions.
Throughout the course of the last year, listening to testimonies and witnesses of people at various community events, talks and forums, I could not help but realize how important it was for people to fully understand the meaning of their work, what ultimate purpose it served, and how it could bring them closer in correspondence with their heart. Perhaps the relative calm and stability of our economy over the last 2-3 decades and the absence of any material shocks to the checks and balances in our daily lives had lured us into a false sense of security and made us refrain from asking ourselves these deep, piercing questions.
In my case, I found myself in the midst of this crisis back in September 2008 as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers right when it filed for bankruptcy. I had been working with Lehman since early 2005 after having finished my Masters degree at Stanford. Times were good. Capitalism and the fruits of creativity, enterprise and ambition had fuelled in young people like me a desire to build, expand and ultimately protect our intellectual and economic capital. In the summer of 2005 I was at a bar in New York with a dear friend having a round of drinks. Most of my close friends and family know that deep down inside I don’t have the heart and soul of a typical Wall Street banker and that I would probably find my true calling in life as an educator, working at a non-profit organization or a career in socio-economic development. Right before entering university I had even briefly considered joining the Peace Corps. So that evening as I sat across from my friend at the bar dressed in a crisp white buttoned down shirt, black slacks, cufflinks and a loosened tie, I wasn’t quite expecting him to ask me why I, of all the people he knew, was so excited to be starting a career as an investment banker on Wall Street. To be honest, I didn’t have a candid and frank answer, so I ended up quoting Nietzsche, saying, “Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? Then you also said yes to all pain. All things are linked, entwined, in love with one another. What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
I guess I never did realize over the course of the four years that followed that evening, why I was really doing what I was doing. I had never stopped to ask myself – ‘What is my one, true passion? What is the ultimate thing that I’m going to do with my life? What is the ultimate mark that I’m going to make? Was I being driven by an illusion of success and reward, or was I truly passionate about my work and found fulfillment in it? A Silicon Valley entrepreneur once said that ‘Passion and drive are not the same at all. Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do. If you know nothing about yourself, you can’t tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion.’
In my desire to ‘do more’ with my life and in my struggle to find meaning in my work, I spent a good amount of my spare time volunteering with community organizations like New York Cares, mentoring high school kids, helping children and senior citizens with computer and language skills, etc. In all this, I’d looked at my work as a separate world, desensitizing myself from the value it created for me and for people around me. To an extent, I viewed my work as an issue I had to deal with, a bone I had to wrestle with. In the summer of 2008, I had reached my wits end and having been just promoted at work, took a month off to go to Ghana as part of an international volunteer organization to teach English, Math and Art to elementary school children at an orphanage in a remote village. It was the most humbling, eye-opening experience of my entire life and it made me seriously meditate on what it means for us to be truly happy. The simplicity, joy and innocence in the lives of the families and children I lived with touched me so strongly it made me feel so humbled and naked in front of my own reality. What is beauty? How is it possible for us to live freely, love and feel truly loved in spite of our nothingness? Our lives are way too short for us to constantly worry and complain about all the little things that seem trivial compared to the many real problems and hardships that the majority of our world has to deal with everyday.
Getting back to New York in the Fall of 2008 was hard, not just from a mental re-balancing and cultural perspective, but also given how quickly and dramatically the dominoes had toppled in the world’s financial markets. Lehman’s bankruptcy was only the tip of the iceberg, a harbinger of further economic and financial distress to come. It was easy for me to demonize my work, blame myself for not listening to my true inner self, my gut and my passion four years earlier. There is no better sanity check than reality. But even then, the status quo and the forces of inertia make us cling on to what we possess and what we have control over.
Even today, I still question the true meaning of my work and its purpose in my life. I see my bosses who have worked in this business year after year, often spending long hours toiling away to bring in additional revenue. Many of them hardly get to spend quality time with their families and end up being on conference calls during the weekend, traveling in and out of major international cities getting business done, and all-in-all, just do not have time to stop working. After all, what is life if full of care, if we have not the time to stand and stare? (Henry Davies). I remember once sitting in my manager’s office on a Monday morning and he casually asked me how my weekend was. I told him I’d volunteered at a homeless shelter and met a lot of really interesting people whose life experiences had taught me so much about how we cannot take life’s gifts and blessings for granted. His reaction was one of discomfort and unease, and not knowing how to talk about it, quickly switched the conversation to work-related matters.
I find it so hard to have a real conversation with anyone at work about something human, something that affects our personal lives, our relationships, our fears, concerns, troubles and joys. It’s almost as if being free and giving of oneself makes you more vulnerable to being judged and possibly being hurt. What a lot of us contend with (often subconsciously) is the fact that in the humdrum and business of our lives at work, it is somehow okay to put up walls around us, barricade ourselves from reality and be comfortable in our own facade that society tacitly approves of. While this may seem to be all the more reason for me to lay down my arms and unburden myself of the pressures of being someone I really am not, I do realize that it is possible to find meaning in little things if I want to. Meaning doesn’t exist only if you are able to understand it and explain it. Atoms and molecules still existed with reason and meaning before we were able to quantify and eventually qualify their existence and meaning. Every person and every thing is meaningful and meaningless in equal measure according to ones perspective. It’s how you love them despite your state of awareness that matters and brings some sort of ‘meaning’ to your existence.
Most of all, I take comfort in knowing that our least action when done for the common good of society is precious. Never must we let it enter our minds that we cannot be good or useful in the station of life we are placed in. On the contrary, that is the very place that has been appointed for us, and a performance of the duties of it would ensure our happiness. We can help others more by the peace and tranquility of our hearts than by any eagerness or care we can bestow on them.
Wednesday, July 30. It's been a rainy afternoon. 2 days from now I'll be on a plane across the Atlantic heading into the concrete jungle that the city of New York is. I daresay even the thought of it seems quite disconcerting indeed. Since I last updated my blog a week or so ago, I.... for the first time ever witnessed a live birth in the labor ward of a local hospital, danced in the rain along with fellow travelers to distinct African beats on the sidewalks of Accra, spent a night on a Rastafarian beach listening to live reggae, climbed up the tallest mountain in West Africa, played and fed bananas to monkeys in the rainforest, played 3 straight nights of poker, taught English, Math, Hop-Skotch and Jack & Jill to 2-4 yr olds, went for a morning run and almost reached the border of neighbouring Togo, and yes I think I did manage to read a few more pages of A Farewell To Arms :)
Things have been great thus far and everyday is just such a wonderful experience in itself.. I seriously do not know how to describe it in words - the lifestyle, people and atmosphere are just so soothing and comforting. Watching a live birth at the local district hospital has to rank as one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life. It was just precious. A moment in time. Men - you will never be able to appreciate the sheer pain and intensity that a woman goes through during childbirth until you actually see one. It truly is a humbling experience.
Yesterday, a few of us hiked up to the top of Mt. Afadjato which is the highest point in Ghana. The views were gorgeous. Tomorrow we are planning on exploring some caves and hope to do some rock climbing there. Tonight I'm planning on going to a shop where they teach you how to make drums, how to play them and then maybe I'll be able to bring a small one back to New York. Most of us have really fallen in love with this place and don't want to leave. I can't believe my stay has almost come to an end.
My time at the orphanage this past 2 1/2 weeks has been wonderful. I feel like I've really begun to understand, appreciate and love the kids and it is so sad that I'll be leaving them so soon. I've learnt a lot though after my first few days here. Initially I was trying too hard to make sure that every child was learning the alphabet, math, etc. without stopping to get to know them, play with them and build a relationship with them. I gradually started to explain the story behind various nursery rhymes through pictures, drawing on the board, getting them to role-play, etc. and they love it! I feel like the repeated memorization patterns they have will slowly make way into concept-based learning.. On Monday I taught them different verbs like run, jump, play, fight, dance, etc. and had them act out various actions along with me and do drawings on the board. It was so much fun! Today being my penultimate day at Christ Orphanage, I took my guitar along and the kids were incredibly excited.. I taught them about what music means and how singing is complemented by musical instruments. They were so excited when I let them sit on my lap and strum the guitar while I held the chords :)) And then to mix things up I taught them how to play hop-skotch using chalk markings on the floor. All in all, it's been absolutely outstanding. It's going to be a very sad day tomorrow when I leave. Maybe a tear or two. I think I'm going to get them some candy.
I hope you are all enjoying the summer (or winter, if you're down south!)
Take care,
-Ronnie
On The Road. I think Jack Kerouac would be proud of me if he were alive today. Or may be not. I'm not really a free-spirited wanderlust moving in a vacuum while the ivy grows over the door, am I? :) But this past weekend, lying in a hammock at 6:30 in the morning reading Hemingway's 'A Farewell To Arms' while the waves from the warm waters of the Atlantic came crashing down on the rocks a couple hundred feet away from me, I sure did feel like one :)
Cape Coast is a pristine, palm-draped rustic beach town just a hundred miles west of Accra where the young go to have a fun time and the elder folks go looking for a little peace and quiet time to unwind. We were 11 people ranging in ages from 18 to 40 and stayed in small palm shacks literally 200 feet from the water!
The little town of Elmina is a few miles away, home to the famous St. George Castle, a 300 year old slave castle, one of the biggest in West Africa. The Portuguese, Dutch and finally the English ruled over much of the Gold Coast from within the castle, using it as dungeons for thousands of slaves from West Africa as part of the gold/ivory for arms trade. Unspeakable atrocities and tortures that strike at the very core of human existence were carried out during the centuries of imperialist dominance here, things that have often caused the locals here (oblivious of the true history of this place) to be moved to tears upon seeing the gruesome remnants of a past that we can only hope will never ever be repeated again in the world we all live and co-exist in.
Elmina being a fishing town had hundreds of canoes and fishing boats docked at the harbor when we passed by that afternoon. Never one to miss out on an adventure, I quickly hovered over to one of the local fishermen and suggested he take a few of us out to sea for a little trip. Imagine a bunch of foreigners on a tiny boat floating around on a Sunday afternoon while Ghanaian fathers and mothers watched us from aside the crowded fishmarkets scattered along the coastline :) I doubt we'd had too many predecessors!
I've realized one thing though about volunteering in developing countries. If you really look at where a lot of the prominent NGOs set up their bases, you will find that most of them are pretty far away from major cities or tourist-infested towns. I initially didn't think much about this fact but after my sojourn through Accra and Cape Coast I realized that local people who often live in poor to lower-middle class environments can tend to unfairly look at foreigners in a very pre-set, typecast kind of way - we have more money than they do and that we are indifferent to their troubles and hardships. In towns further away from commercial centers or tourist hubs (like Hohoe where Cross-Cultural Solutions is based), the locals are often quite simple and open minded when it comes to understanding cultures different from their own and look at volunteers as people who genuinely care about helping communities empower themsleves.
Saturday night all over the world is party night, so we didn't want to break any rules :) We went out to a nice place for dinner right by the ocean. The seafood was amazing. Checked out a local nightclub right after. Sunday morning came around and we drove up to the Kakuma rainforest close by. There is a canopy high up above on the trees that stretches for about a few hundred feet. It was a surreal experience walking up so high on wooden planks suspended from ebony trees and looking down on the entire forest!! Acrophobiacs, beware! I doubt if there are too many places in the world where you can experience something like this. I think Costa Rica may be one of them.
I am back in Hohoe now and was at the orphanage this morning. I am slowly getting a better hang of how to interact and teach my little kids :) Since they're so young (2-4 yrs) I've been doing mostly nursery rhymes but trying to explain the concept and story behind it using pictures and actions instead of plain memorization, so I think things are getting better and the teachers here are appreciative of my work. You tend to get quite attached to some of the kids here and I know it will be hard to suddenly leave them behind 2 weeks from now :( I wish I could upload a few pictures but the computers here are quite antiquated, so I'll post them when I'm back in New York.
I will write another blog sometime this week talking specifically about my experiences at the orphanage and about my friends who've volunteered at hospitals and AIDS awareness programs, so if anyone of you is considering volunteering abroad, you'll get a better perspective.
Hang in there eveyone. Our lives are too short to constantly worry and complain about so many little things that seem trivial compared to the many real problems and hardships that the majority of our world has to deal with everyday.
Let's all try to be happy with who we are and what we have.
Eat, pray, love.
Fondly,
Ronnie
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Internet access here is slow and quite sporadic and I get to check it once every 2-3 days so I'll keep these short.
Ok so I got here the morning of the 12th. Met a bunch of fellow volunteers on the flight and at the airport at Accra. We drove down in 2 vans to a town called Hohoe (pronounced Hoe-hway) about 4 hrs north-east of the capital. People here drive like crazy and there aren't too many road rules! (but I'm used to it from how it is in India so not a big problem for me :) We're staying at Cross-Cultural Solutions' Home base (kinda like a dorm for volunteers) where they have bunk beds, toilets and a common dining room. Cool. The food here mostly revolves around starch. Cassava, yam, potatoes, rice. So I'd advise all Atkins diet lovers to skip Ghana during an African visit ;) They do have nice spices though so the food isn't all that bland. Of course, I haven't ventures out to try the street kebabs and grilled corn yet but I likely will after the first few days here! The landscape around here is pretty hot and arid although Hohoe being closer to the hills and Lake Volta gets a nice cool breeze in the evening which is refreshing.
A word on the volunteers - they're a fabulous bunch! A lot of them are kids who are still in college and are here on summer break but have a great interest in either the education or medical field. There are a few elementary and middle school teachers, a pharmacist from Australia, a couple of doctors-to-be from Canada and a group from UC San Diego. All in all, very interesting, intelligent, passionate and fun ppl. Even though it's been just 3 days since I got here I think a few of them will be friends way beyond this trip.
Went to Mass on Sunday morning. Quite an experience. Went from 9 a.m. to 11:30. Almost 3 times as long as regular Catholic Masses. Fun nevertheless. Lots of people all decked up in extremely colorful clothes. Loud singing, drumming and dancing (seriously). The women (esp the elderly) habe this habit of waving white handkerchiefs in the air whenever the priest made a joke during his hour-long sermon in Ewe (the local dialect). For the offertory procession, in addition to gifts of bread and some fruit there was a girl eho presented the priest with a live chicken! Unbelievable. Was a great experience though. I think I was the only non-Ghanaian there :)
Most of the evenings we spend around the house chatting, reading, playing board games, etc. We played soccer with the local kids, awesome fun. We met up with a group of young children whop taught us drumming and local dances. I think I may have picked up a few moves :) The local market is amazing with all its varieties of food and colorful dresses. Some of the kids kept hugging me and it was a joy carrying them around! The kids here always have a smile on their face and are amazingly happy and contented despite their extremely poor condition. It just goes to show how simple yet strong the human spirit can be. I have been very touched by what I've seen so far.
Today was my first day at the orphanage. 110 kids. 3 teachers and 4 of us volunteers. Pretty hard work. This is definitely going to be a challenge but I' m all up for it. I will write a lot more about my time at the orphanage and the learning experiences from there over the next few days.
Hey everyone,So I'm kinda new to this whole concept of blogging. You can call me old-fashioned, retro or just plain lazy :) I'm the kinda person who would just rather pen down a few notes on a jotting pad or a journal when I'm on the road or visiting places. But this time around, I'm gonna be away for 3 weeks volunteering at an orphanage in a village called Hoehoe, about 4 hrs north of Accra, the capital of Ghana. I'm doing this on behalf of a non-profit organization called Cross-Cultural Solutions (http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/) Needless to say, I'm very excited and a bit nervous at the same time. A few friends of mine suggested that I write a blog about my experiences while I'm there, and so I decided I would! I'm not sure how regular or irregular my access to the internet will be, but I'll try and post something once every 4-5 days.. Please do feel free to add your own posts, comments or anything you like! Well, I'm gonna go and start packing now. Insect repellant, raincoats, malaria pills, childrens' story books, flash cards, a frisbee.. gosh when did I last pack all these into a suitcase? :))-Ronnie
