A story about hope retold
Two weeks ago, on the same day the Vancouver Canucks’ regular season ended, Province sports columnist Ed Willes travelled to Ghana on the west coast of Africa with four Canadian Winter Olympians to witness Right To Play programs at work. The story of that trip is told in detail on The Province’s website. This space has been reserved for some final thoughts from Willes, excerpts from the diary of long-track speed-skater Clara Hughes and pictures from freestyle aerialist Steve Omischl. To learn more about Right To Play, visit their website at righttoplay.com
It is our last morning in Accra and as we wait for the bus that will take us to the airport and, ultimately, home, I am talking to Steve Omischl in the lobby of the Labida Beach hotel.
I’d met Omischl, the best freestyle aerialist in the world, for the first time six days before and he is telling me about our farewell dinner the night before. He was sitting at one end of the table, I was at the other and I’d been under the impression that this meal, like the rest of our experiences in Ghana with the Right To Play team, was one extended Oprah moment full of warm feelings with our new friends.
But that wasn’t the case. Omischl was sitting beside one of Right To Play’s volunteer leaders chatting amiably when the conversation took a turn. Apparently this man didn’t want to hear about Omischl’s life-changing trip. Apparently he didn’t want to hear a story from another visitor who dropped into his country, played with the kids for a week, then went back to their life of privilege.
“This guy was serious,” Omischl recounted. “He said, ‘What are you going to do? You come here. You take your sad pictures. Then you leave. But what are you going to do?”
Omischl, as things turned out, had been mulling over that very question. Earlier that day, the four Canadian Winter Olympians who were on the trip with RTP had visited a refugee camp in Accra, and that encounter had hit him like a sledgehammer. As he began to speak again, his voice was clear and strong but tears were now rolling down his face.
“[The man at dinner] was right,” he said. “How can I go back? How can I do what I do when these people have nothing? My biggest concern is starting my summer training. Their biggest concern is surviving.”
He went on.
“I’m scared s—-tless the pain I feel is going to go away. I want to feel this. I want to remember all of this.”
This, we remind you, was two guys who barely knew each other and who’d spent most of the previous six days making jokes with a gastro-intestinal theme. Africa will have that effect on you. Right To Play and those kids will have that effect on you. But there’s one thing Omischl and the rest of the group who travelled to Ghana — speed-skater Clara Hughes, whose diary appears elsewhere on these pages; skier Emily Brydon; skeleton slider Mellisa Hollingsworth; Right To Play’s Canadian director Warren Spires; and yours truly — don’t have to worry about, and that’s forgetting everything we saw and felt over those five days.
“I knew I was going to see some pretty awful things,” Omischl said. “I just didn’t know how I’d react to it. Now I feel like it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” And you couldn’t lose that feeling if you tried.
Right To Play, for the uninitiated, is the humanitarian organization started by Olympic legend Johan Olav Koss. It is based on the novel idea the world will be a better place if children are allowed to play in a safe environment while they are learning a few basic principles about co-operation and self-protection. To that end, Right To Play is now operating in more than 20 countries, and I say this for them: They don’t exactly pick their spots.
Among other places, RTP is in Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Liberia, Pakistan, the occupied Palestinian territory, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Thailand, Uganda and Zambia, i.e. those countries most affected by war, poverty and disease on our planet.
Ghana, by RTP standards at least, is a relatively peaceful, stable and prosperous country. But in Ghana, 35 per cent of the population also lives below the poverty line and while we saw evidence of a modern, developed country during our trip, we also saw things that will stick to us like Velcro.
When confronted with problems of that magnitude, in fact, it requires a giant leap of faith to believe structured play can change things. But something is happening through RTP in Ghana. Two years ago, there were 186 trained coaches and 4,475 children enrolled in RTP programs. This year, there are more than 30,000 kids in the programs and almost 700 coaches involved. RTP also has the full endorsement of the Ministry of Education and it is administered and operated by Ghanaians for Ghanaians.
Is it enough? Well, it’s all of two years old and when you see the energy created by the kids and the leaders, it’s hard not to believe. Maybe it’s the program. Maybe it’s the teachers. Maybe it’s just someone taking the time to demonstrate to these kids that someone cares. But it is real and it is powerful.
You leave, in fact, wanting to do something, anything, to help, and that brings us back to our original point. Like Omischl, every one of us wrestled with guilt and wondered if our presence here made a zot of difference in the lives of Ghanaians. We came, we played, took some pictures and held some hands but, after five days, we got on a plane and came back to lives of comfort. Sure, it had a huge impact on us but that doesn’t really help these kids so, realistically, what can we do?
The answer, as it turned out, was provided by the Ghanaians.
There is a story-telling tradition in all of Africa that goes back to the tribes. It is how they shared their history and their beliefs. It is how they shared those things that were most important to them. In ancient times, they would sit around a tree or a campfire and tell the stories of the spider and the snake, the chameleon and the antelope. For centuries, this is how they passed down their culture.
And, in the end, that’s the best thing we can do for them. Tell their story. Tell the story of the courageous children and the brave leaders, tell the story of the Ghanaian people helping themselves. In telling that story, maybe others will be moved to help the Ghanaian people.
And who knows? Maybe one day in Ghana they will even tell the story of the six strangers who came and played with them for a day. We hope they’ll remember.
We know we’ll never forget.
