A visit from Afransi

A surprise visit from the Afransi moms has brought the question of giving back into focus. Grace, my mom, and Sarah, Anita’s mom, showed up unannounced and uninvited on Friday. They were waiting on the porch when I got back from fabric shopping with Kristy & Nana Aba.

Grace is five months pregnant with her seventh child.

I find their visits awkward, mostly because there is still a bit of a language barrier and there were times I could tell they were talking to each other about some detail or another that would have been rude to remark on in English. They missed the tro-tro home, because they were waiting for someone, anyone, to show up, so they asked to spend the night. Not a problem, except I had to find something for them to “chop” and because they wanted banku, I took them for tilapia near Duncans. It was a bit of a mistake, since they were absolutely scandalized by the price of the meal and insisted that we just order one fish and they would split it. I felt horrible, recognizing that dropping c60,000 on dinner – even for three – is a lot of money.

Anyway, the trip was a bit of a money grab, if I can put it that way. Maybe it’s nicer to say they were looking for charity. Sarah wants c600,000 for a computer course. Grace wanted c500,000 as a loan to buy supplies for a provisions shop she and her husband had been planning. She was quite ill in the fall and spent about six weeks in the hospital battling malaria and typhoid and so all their savings went to paying her hospital bill. She also asked for baby stuff, including lotion for her and the baby, some sandals and a new gas stove, a small one not a big one. She told me all about her stay in the hospital, how her mother in law chopped one of her fingers at the farm and had to have stitches, how her husband can’t find work, that her oldest daughter is done her studies but sits at home crying every day because they don’t have the money to send her to nursing school.

I was initially happy to give Grace the money. I’ve been wanting to give them something, whether it was “things” or whether it was money for school, I wasn’t sure, but they were a kind, honest, decent, sincere and generous family and I really wanted to make sure that I was as generous with them as they were with me and I wanted them to feel like they could ask me for things that they might not be able to afford. I wanted my presence in their life to be more than just four days visiting a village. And the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated the fact that Grace answered the question that I was too shy to ask: how can I best help?

But at the same time, as we were standing in the kitchen and Grace was reeling off her list of “wants,” I was filled with this sense of foreboding, like, Sheesh, lady! Where is this going to end? It was like coming into our house opened up Grace’s eyes to the possibilities; seeing me spend money on dinner, seeing that our kitchen has a stove and a fridge, that we have flush toilets, a television and a computer. She looked at my feet and saw new-looking sandals, so asked for some for herself. She asked whether the fridge had to stay at the house. She told me she wanted to a gas stove, much like our own, even after I explained that we can no longer use it because it’s broken. Didn’t she wonder why we hadn’t replaced it?

Afterward, in a fit of horridness, I joked that the best investment I could make in Grace would be spending c500,000 on a tubal ligation or condoms or maybe a diaphragm. I’m a horrible person. But part of me wonders why all these children are being brought into a family and a world that cannot support them!

Grace told me as we were standing in the kitchen that she and her husband had prayed and prayed. (I have no doubt of this, considering he was at prayer camp when I visited and I saw her practically in tongues in church…) She told me they ask for things from God and that he had delivered me, that praying to Jesus meant talking to me, that The Holy Trinity would tell me what they needed. It was an interesting mix of religion and greed. I felt like telling her that God is there for your spiritual needs, not your physical needs, and that talking to the Big Guy doesn’t mean a pipeline to my pocketbook.

But why should such inequality between my financial situation and her financial situation exist? I had the amazing fortune to be born to two wonderful parents in an incredibly supportive environment. I was given every chance, encouraged at every turn, literally handed hundreds of opportunities and cheered on as I exploited them to the max. I have been lucky to hit upon a career that I love doing something that some consider my talent. I have the good fortune to live in a society that supports women thinking on their own and doing on their own and being on their own, one that accepts that I am unmarried and without children at 28 and doesn’t pressure me – at least not until I hit 30 – to change that.

Grace has had none of those same opportunities. And her children are unlikely to have them either.

In some ways I wonder what kind of social experiment it would be. I’d love to follow the money and the progress, I’d like to write a story somewhere down the line about how $100 made a difference to this family. Maybe it would inspire people; maybe it would turn them off. Maybe it would convince me and others that simply giving money isn’t enough. Maybe it would turn into a situation where everything is simply a matter of asking the white girl, or maybe it would be just the sort of hand up they need. Who knows. Stayed tuned.