Name: Autumn Thompson
Type of Project: Internship
This summer I was lucky enough to find a healthcare internship in Ho, Ghana. Another student from OSU and I were placed in a local health center that focused on preventative care that was about 30 minutes from our home base. For a month we were able to witness the healthcare system in Ghana, weigh children, monitor their growth and development, visit local schools to educate them on important topics such as AIDs and malaria, and travel on home visits to patients in local communities.
It had always been a dream of mine to go to Africa, and the fact that there was an internship there that was directly related to what I want to do for the rest of my life made it the perfect trip. The only thing I really knew about Africa was that they had cool trees, elephants, and what the news portrayed as thousands of starving children. The funny thing is, the only stigma that held true after I got to Ghana was that they did have beautiful trees. During the month I was there I saw only a handful of people that were malnourished. All of these cases were due to the fact that they were elderly and ill, not a result of not eating.
Another thing that schools rarely cover is the amount of pride and hope that Ghanaians have. I never felt endangered or unwelcomed. Everyone was respectful and wanted to learn about our ways of life as much as we wanted to learn about theirs.
One of the experiences that I think impacted me the most throughout this whole trip occurred during a home visit. During the first week we walked to a local community to perform a monthly visit. During the home visit we walk from hut to hut and talk to every family about their illnesses and give them medical advice. When we arrived at one hut an elder women came out with a bad case of scoliosis. She was in extreme pain and couldn’t work in the fields anymore to make money for her family. Something as simple as a back brace would’ve meant the world to her and her family. We were told by the medical staff with us that a brace for a person in Ghana without insurance costs 5,000 Ghanaian pesos, roughly $1,250 here in the US.
During that same home visit, we stopped by another hut where an older man lived. I was watching the door, waiting for him to exit when I saw movement by the ground of the doorframe. When I looked down I saw the man that lived there crawling outside to come and talk to us. He had no muscle on this legs, only skin and bones. They were covered in dirt from having to drag them through the sand. His legs were cross-legged and he used only his hands to get from place to place. Amazingly, this man never once asked us for help, money, or for a wheelchair. All he complained of was pain in his wrists from having to use them at an awkward angle to crawl everywhere. He knew a wheelchair was out of the question for him; it was way too expensive. If you looked into his eyes he didn’t look sad or defeated. He still had a light in him that showed he was happy to still be alive.
These were the moments when I saw the differences between Ghana and America. In America, we have so many things that are purely for our comfort. We have heated floors while they have dirt. We have casts and medical supplies and they have home-made casts made from sticks and twine. Hot water and air conditioning? Not a chance. Even our clinic didn’t have running water. But the beautiful thing is that people didn’t care that they had so much less because they didn’t know any better. The sense of community was so much stronger. Kids played outside all day and had to walk to school. They took the time to cheer for each other and help each other reach their goals. In America, it’s so fast paced and individualized that we never slow down and take the time to make sure everyone around us is okay. Everyone just wants to be the best version of themselves that they can be. They want to be the CEO making millions or the doctor with a huge second home in France. If someone else comes between them and success, you better get out of their way because they don’t care if they have to crush your dream to get to theirs. At what point did we get to be like that? Has the American Dream always been every man for himself? When did we lose sight of going out of our way for strangers?
This trip has meant the world to me. Not only did it give me friends that will last a lifetime, but it reminded me of why I have the dreams that I have. In the future I hope to become a doctor and travel to impoverished countries like this to help wherever I can. In America I have met so many doctors that are in it for all the wrong reasons. The over competitive drive and self-interests of my peers made me wonder if this was really the path that I wanted to follow. But seeing these people with so much hope and faith, I realized that this was what I was passionate about. I have no other wish than to help as many people as I can during my lifetime. Ghana reminded me that there are people that want you to succeed more than anything, an
d believe that you can do it.
I also decided that I was going to try and start a club at Ohio State for Ghana. I want to focus on raising money by fundraising during the school year to send medical supplies such as braces and wheelchairs for those in Ghana without health insurance that need them. I also wanted to have biweekly meetings focusing on ending the stigmatization of Africa. Hopefully this club will encourage students to go on this trip themselves to experience what I have experienced first-hand.
I really couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity to have gone on this internship and for the funding I received from STEP. It truly was a life changing experience and I wouldn’t have used this money for anything else. It opened my eyes to a whole other way of living life and gave me the motivational boost that I needed to continue through college. I can’t wait to share these experiences with others, educate peers, and hopefully inspire others to give Africa a try.