Staff Blog

My heart has been broken

Kelsey in Ghana shares how a broken heart leads to love and how fortunate she feels to have found a place where she has experienced such richness.

My heart has been broken….my eyes have become full of tears…my body feels shaky and somehow, I have fallen in love. My teary eyes have become open and my heart has felt love that has never before been there…
The last few weeks I have been overflowing with emotions. I have now spent a bit over five months in total in Ghana, this beautiful place I now call home. When I came here last year I fell in love with this community. I was fascinated by the culture and towards the end of my stay I really felt as if I was becoming a villager. I saw the richness that existed among the people and everything seemed perfect. I will admit now I really turned a blind eye to the poverty and hardships that do exist.
This time being here, I have become more a part of the village and it has given me a different perspective on things. I have started to see and witness a lot of poverty. The people here for the most part live day by day in terms of money. Yes, generally they do have enough for food at the end of the day but they don’t have the extras to do things such as buy medicine if they are sick, send their children to high school and in some cases even basic school.
The other night a lady who I am really close to and her children came by on her usual visit and said to me in Dangme that she was hungry. I asked if she had eaten and she said, “No.” I asked her why and she told me she had only a little money and she used what she had for her children, which meant she couldn’t eat. She said, “No money for fish so I can’t eat.” Hearing this broke my heart. I asked her if I could give her money and she said she would not allow it.
That night when I was eating with my family we had our usual meal of Banku and soup. In the soup we always have fish. Most of the time it is fresh fish but sometimes it is dried fish, which is the only thing I don’t really like! It tastes very bitter. However, despite the bitter taste that night the fish had a different meaning for me. I realized how lucky I was to be able to put that fish and food in my mouth when this lady and many others that day didn’t have the chance.
I have come to realize that everywhere in the world there is poverty but at the same time in that poverty there is an incredible amount of beauty. Sometimes we may need to search for that beauty but when we find it we will fall in love, the way I have in Ghana. I think everyone is destined for a “place” in their life that will help them to grow, love and be changed. Some people search their whole lives for it but I feel at the young age of twenty-one I have found it. I don’t know how I have become so lucky but I am so thankful for it.