9
Larger than Life.
et us set the scene, shall we? It’s somewhere in 2011. The backdrop, Ghana’s Senior Correctional Centre, otherwise known as the Bostal Home for juvenile male delinquents. If you will pardon me, I shall place myself as the lead character. What my role was, I cannot currently give an intelligible name. The only context I can confidently give is that I had successfully found a way to convince my family and myself that this was the best possible place I could spend my holiday. After all, with college applications looming near, would it not be great to say that I had spent my break from school volunteering to change a life? No, better still, saving the world?
Ever since then, it has taken two years comprised of watching millions of people rise up against the supposed ‘menace’ that was Kony in the Kony 2012 campaign, various organisations and individuals bending their backs to save ‘doomed’ Africa from herself, and a solid year roaming the campus of an American university characterised by initiatives to ‘bring water to Rwanda’ and ‘feed the starving children in Benin,’ for me to finally call myself to order. The question I consequently asked myself was, “what truly is activism?”
My answer, devoid of the verbosity that has now become accustomed with the world of activism, is simple – ‘activism is being true to one’s self’. You see, back then at the Bostal Home I was slowly being introduced to the fact that I did not fully understand the situation I wanted to help. In more ways than one, I was doing what I was doing more for myself than for the people I wanted to have an effect on. In short, I was unknowingly being selfish and dishonest; traits that are unfortunately beginning to clothe many of the attempts at activism the world encounters today. That is not to say that all the people behind these attempts do not have good intentions, far from it. Rather, we recognise that trouble is brewing when people cannot afford to spare a smile for the next person but choose to fly halfway across the world to be agents in one social action or the other.
So how do we give activism the worthy face it deserves? My answer again is simple – we must be true to ourselves. One form of activism may lead to a person literally helping someone who has taken a fall get back on their feet. Another form of activism may lead to someone else starting up an organisation to enable migrants find gainful and legal employment. Neither of the endeavours supersedes the other. All that matters is that each individual takes steps that feel natural and comfortable to him/her. What we are not reminded of enough in our quests to ‘save the world’ is that little drops of activism represent something that is much larger than ourselves, larger than life even. Each drop embodies something that can evolve dramatically over time to make a historic change. Thus each drop must be approached with the respect it deserves, keeping in mind that the repercussions of a singular action may have ripple effects that do not necessarily have to be witnessed in this day and age.
At the risk of sounding hackneyed, let me say that what I really should have done back in 2011 at the Senior Correctional Centre was to have been receptive to the words of Mahatma Gandhi when he said:
“It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
I should have done what felt right to me, and written about the stigma the residents of the Correctional Centre constantly repeated to me they faced, both whilst they were residents and once they had left the institution. I should have also documented some of the hardships they so frequently expressed to me, perhaps even started to blog about it. I should have understood at the time that my love for stringing words into sentences was my greatest tool in effecting a change, rather than nursed the hope that my physical presence would turn me into super woman.
Let me leave you with the picture of a bright and colourful butterfly that flits merrily from one flower to another. It feeds delightfully, totally oblivious to who might be watching it and not putting excessive thought to what it is doing. Weeks after it has departed, a new flower blossoms where it has once been, unbeknownst to the little butterfly. What has our little butterfly friend really done? It has unconsciously engineered new growth through a process we know to be pollination.
So be that butterfly! Do your thing, be true to yourself and flap your wings
ABIGAIL SAH
L
Abigail is a rsing writer and aspiring engineer.