Personal Narrative: Moving To Ghana

961 Words4 Pages
“A feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc.” This is the definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary for the word “compassion”. My desire to study health care, beyond my scientific interests, can be described by this word. It’s a word that describes an attitude that I strive to show others. I continuously hope to leverage this aspect of my character through my higher education and professional career that I pursue. In the summer of 2012, I traveled to Ghana which is my mother's home country. Until I went to Ghana, I did not truly understand or was able to contextualize the stories she had shared with me. Growing up a typical suburban teenager, I did not have the references to understand the poverty of…show more content…
As I journeyed towards my mother’s home in Accra I saw people walking in the middle of the streets with their children tied to their backs, selling products to make a living. I even saw children working selling products, like plantain chips to earn money for their family. It was not that I had never seen people in need selling products on the side of the road before, it was the sheer number of people that I saw doing this.Along with this what really shocked me was the health condition of the people I saw as I ventured through Ghana. As I saw these people, I began to have an intense feeling of wanting to help them in some way. Prior to this experience, when I used to see people in need I would help because,honestly, it made me feel good. However in this instance, I was prepared to give up all I could, and try as hard as possible to give these people what they needed. For a long time I had heard my mother talk to relatives when they were sick about mailing American medicines or getting them to American doctors for opinions or surgeries. It did not become apparent to me as to why she was concerned about this until I was actually there. I saw with my own eyes malnourished people, people with unresolved cases of basic maladies such as ringworm, and people that basically accepted being sick because the help offered was minimal and expensive. I started to think that if Ghana’s, one of the strongest performers in Africa, healthcare was in a state like this… What was the situation in poorer third world countries throughout the world?

More about Personal Narrative: Moving To Ghana

Open Document