“He looks exactly like my younger brother when he was sick.”

I messaged that to my best friend back home immediately after I laid my eyes on the young man or boy (I never did find out his age). His full cheeks were shaped as if he were hiding food for hibernation. They were covered by an oxygen mask and I could see his discomfort ooze from his attempt at a smile. Wide-eyed. Helpless. Yet strong.  I could not erase the image of his eyes meeting mine. I could not erase the feeling of wanting to hold him and make him feel safe. I could not contain the feeling of wanting to hold his hands and say “I’m here for you.”

This week at Komfo Anoye Teaching Hospital, I shadowed doctors and nurses in the Emergency Unit. I was originally scheduled  to shadow doctors in the Pediatric Emergency Unit. However, the unit was overcrowded with medical students and doctors so it was difficult to hear what the medical professional were discussing and stay engaged. Therefore, I decided to pair up with Anna in the Emergency Unit. We decided to stay in the Red Room, where patients with the most severe cases were placed. After about half an hour of shadowing nurses, Anna and I were informed that three patients in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) died over the weekend. Two of the patients who died were patients that I saw for a week and developed a kind of attachment with. You know, the kind of attachment where you want the person to do better and not see them in pain. Yeah… I was almost on the verge of tears when Anna reminded that the situation is painful, but we needed focus on the here and now (words can’t explain how much I appreciated that). I then turned to my right and saw a patient who had the kindest eyes. The way in which his eyes gracefully pierced my heart then nursed it back to health, scared me. I needed to know why. I spent a lot of the time trying to figure out why he looked and felt so familiar. I could not help but search for an answer in his movements, his height, his hair, and his eyes. And then… I saw it. I saw my younger brother bleed from his flesh and crawl into my arms for comfort. I wish I could go into deeper detail about how I felt at the moment, but even that would be too much for me.

We waited in the Red Room for the doctor we were assigned to shadow for about an hour. When he arrived, Anna and I asked him various questions and overwhelmed him with our hunger to learn. We asked about each patients’ symptoms, diagnosis, and sometimes their prognosis. Towards the end, I asked about the young man who reminded me of my younger brother. The doctor told me that he was suffering from complications from Sickle Cell Disease and that he needed to be monitored.

On Wednesday, Anna and I found ourselves in the Red Room of the Emergency Unit again  and to my surprise, the young man was still in the room. I was confused because patients who arrive in the Red Room do not typically spend more than a day in that unit. Once again, I found myself watching him, monitoring his vitals and wanting to talk to him to make him feel safe. I spent most of the day stopping myself from bursting into tears. I eventually left a couple of hours early because his respiration rate decreased and he looked as if he was under a lot of stress. His pain somehow became the pain of my younger brother’s.  I knew I could no longer be in the hospital.

From that moment I started to think more about my future as a doctor. I also internalized something Ernest told me about the origins of Haitians. He told me that Haitians were 60% Ghanaian. At first, I thought his comment was just for kicks and giggles because no one in Ghana asked me if I was Ghanaian, but what he said had truth to it. I started paying more attention to the physical features of the people around me and I could definitely see my family in them. I was so used to feeling a connection to Haiti and thinking of it as my “home” and my “origin.” Now, I am starting to see past that and deeper than that.

I cannot believe that I’ve been in Ghana for almost three weeks. This trip is going be so fast. By the time I know it, it will be July and time to travel back to America. I’ve made some new friends, tried several local dishes, and have come to understand what Ghanaian life entails. My favorite dish so far is red red with plantains and fish. I think I could have this dish every night and be content. It’s interesting because I did not like plantains AT ALL prior to visiting Kumasi and I love it now; Ghana is already changing me for the better.

Besides the food, one of the things I adore about Kumasi is the cultural diversity. There is so much diversity and overall appreciation for other cultures. The locals are eager to get to know the different identities present in our group. They consistently point out the fair ones, i.e. white people, and are interested to see what other differences there are between the members of our group. They question us about our lives back home and what seems to be common experiences as Americans, like visiting New York. As much as we want to learn Ghanaian social dances and slang, they also want to learn American social dances and slang. In fact, I’ve been given the task of showing the teachers from my performing arts class black social dances.

Although Ghanaians are proud of their culture and want to share it with tourists, there is a huge fixation on American culture and the hopes of one day living in America. As humans we sometimes think that the grass is always greener on the other side, but in reality, it isn’t. From my experiences in Kumasi, Ghanaians seem to think ALL grass in America is green, metaphorically that is. As a collective, they believe that Americans live this dream life filled with glitz and glam. They think it is easy for everyone to make a living in America and that we can all buy expensive, luxury items. Despite the dominant, global portrayal of America, there are thousands of people who go hunger every day, are homeless, and unemployed. From conversations I’ve had here, some people do not even know about the struggles some Americans face, especially minorities like myself. A day does not go by without someone asking me to take them back to America, as if I had the power to do so.

There are some structural differences that allow the U.S to be the leader it is globally, however there are some things that Ghana does better than America. Due to America’s history of genocide, sexism, xenophobia, etc, there is no sense of community as a country. When my parents were growing up all the adults in their neighborhood acted as parents to every child. Children had to listen to and respect all elders. This is also a common practice in Ghana. They even have African unity across the continent. I wish we had this type of community in America. I hope Ghanaians could witness the beneficial parts of their culture from my point of view and understand the importance of it. Some wish they were Americans but would be missing a very integral part of their culture if they lived in America.

As a person I am constantly aware of the blessings I have in life. However, before traveling to Ghana I never viewed American life as being inherently better than other nationalities/cultures. I hope those I encounter with the mindset that America is the greatest thing since sliced bread will be able to understand my perspective and acknowledge that America is not exactly what it is advertised as. America is not better than Ghana or any other African country. The system is just different and brings about different results.

On Thursday, our class lecture covered Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, which tells the story of a Ghanaian villager named Mara and highlights the difficulties she experiences at home and abroad. Although the book was extremely intense and I personally had trouble finishing it, I appreciated its treatment of numerous important topics (especially ones that rarely receive the attention or gravity they deserve). Although Beyond the Horizon is a work of fiction, Darko’s story effectively brought to light many of the issues facing sex workers, particularly those who are transnational migrants. There is certainly a lot to learn from this text, and Dr. Yeboah discussed several of these key themes in class, including consumerism and the contestation of women’s bodies. Her claim that Darko employs “calculated exaggeration to enhance realism” personally struck a chord with me, as I believe it illustrates the ways in which the genre of literature can illuminate personal experiences while simultaneously making broader connections to the outside world. Additionally, her acknowledgment of women’s (albeit forced) complicity in their own subjugation was a valuable and valid perspective.
However, in attempting to unpack “the psyche of the prostitute,” I believe we neglected many of the nuances necessary to have a productive conversation about sex work; therefore, I would like to complicate mainstream understandings of the industry and the way we are generally taught to view sex work. In order to do this, we must dispel some common myths about sex work, primarily the idea that it is inherently exploitative; in fact, it is the way in which worker’s bodies are controlled and their agency and opportunities restricted that ends up causing them harm. The way we assign moral value to sex is different than the way we judge any other type of work or industry, and it is this association with immorality that often stigmatizes workers.
In her book Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, Laura Maria Agustin discusses how, in the Western world, work is seen as something that “realizes personal identity”: in other words, it has some deeper connection to our interests, values, and our very constitution as an individual. This belief, unsurprisingly, is not universal – work is a complicated aspect of life that, while obviously economic, intersects with different aspects of society, culture, politics, race, gender, sexuality, ability, age, and countless other factors. Agustin also outlines how the treatment of sex work in the media contributes to the work’s portrayal as dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. In reality, as she and many other scholars have argued, the lack of proper regulations, access to health care, worker protections and labor unions, and client accountability are what most often contribute to the violence faced by sex workers. Her analysis is valuable for a reader of Beyond the Horizon in many ways, but perhaps especially in the connections Agustin makes to European markets. In outlining how domestic and sex work is largely outsourced to women of color, predominantly immigrant women, she traces the ways that associations of sex work with immorality are constantly racialized.  Darko makes this abundantly clear in her treatment of Germany, particularly in reference to the racial dynamics at the brothels.
Similarly, Agustin warns her readers against treating sex workers as purely victims, noting that many workers have diverse experiences that should not and cannot be oversimplified. A crucial part of this conversation is the fact that the often-employed Western approach of attempting to “save” or “rescue” sex workers (especially women) is largely a product of colonialism and is therefore infused with white savior narratives. Rather than attempting to “help” people with little to no understanding of the violence and discrimination they face, those who do not perform sex work should instead listen to workers and act as responsible advocates for and accomplices in their own activism. The issue of sex workers’ rights is a global one, but that does not mean we should feel isolated from it. On the contrary, sex work almost certainly plays a key role in each of our communities: for example, a growing number of college students in the US rely on sex work to support themselves. None of this is to say that Mara’s experiences are unrealistic, because the violence she faces is very real for many people across the world; instead, I simply want to illustrate some of the ways that we should work to strike a balance between individual narratives and global patterns, as well as how we can interrogate our own interpretations when it comes to complicated issues like sex work.

Works Cited
Agustin, Laura Maria. Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industries. Zed Books, 2007.

Darko, Amma. Beyond the Horizon. Heinemann, 1995.