Space to Breath.

Today we arrived in Axim on the former gold coast. It is a beautiful beach...a little marred by thoughts of the slave trade…but I can’t compare it to Kintampo. Doing that wouldn’t be fair to landlocked, bush-filled, poor Kintampo...but what can I say I grew up on the beach (that's right, Long Island has amazing beaches!).

I took this weekend off from doing work on my research project…but not from thinking about Baby Ray. As I sit in my new hotel room with the sea breeze blowing through the window...I’ve been thinking. Most of my thoughts revolve around Stephanie and my last conversation with Dr. Buckle.

Dr. Buckle views The Life of Ray as a campaign or a seed project. It’s a nice little one-year development plan…but he wants us to think bigger. He says we should take the first six months of our project to learn what development is about, and the next six months to define what it is we want Baby Ray and his mother to symbolize…

Our original impulse was to help Baby Ray by allowing him to stay with his mother. We inadvertently entered into supporting the mother as well. So this didn’t become a project to save orphans, but a commitment to helping an entire family…an exercise in sustainability. (Note: the Ghanaians don’t have a word for orphan in any of their languages…that’s a western concept…in Ghana is you don’t have parents communities will often assign you them…but the traditional aspects of the culture are fraying…).

For it to be sustainable, do we buy Ray’s mother everything her heart desires? Do we up her standard of living, pull her out of a state of poverty? I asked Dr. Buckle that…and he automatically worked to alter my thinking. Poverty is subjective, just as happiness is. We can’t “pull her out of poverty” because she is surrounded by a certain living standard. The key becomes having her adjust to life meaningfully in her environment...and out of that comes the concept of social risk protection…providing people with the basics of life – food, clothes, shelter – so that they don’t have to worry…and can think and dream of planning a future.

So I’m taking some space to breath now…and imagine how in the future I can change the world.