Reflections on Volunteering Abroad in Ghana
By Brandon Baartman
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Summer 2010 Global Impact Fellow
During the month of August 2010, I spent 3 weeks in Accra, Ghana and surrounding areas working closely with local ophthalmologists, optometrists, and other local eye clinic staff as we provided care to patients with treatable and preventable blindness. My role as a Global Impact Fellow was to aid the local doctors in outreach efforts to help screen for eye disease, implement educational programs for patients, and coordinate sight-restoring surgeries for the people of the region living in extreme poverty.
The first week of my trip, I spent my days working with the staff of the Crystal Eye Clinic participating in their outreach efforts. Outreach generally consisted of a 2-3 hour drive in a small but comfortable van to a village, where we would set up for a long day of screening patients and distributing medications. On average, we saw about 50-100 patients everyday and usually referred about 2-3 of the patients for surgery. Crystal held surgery in the operating theatre at the Crystal Eye Clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so the Thursday of my first week I spent in the operating room signing off on the surgeries sponsored by Unite For Sight. Although my role in the operating rooms was purely observational, it was exciting to get to see so many different cases of cataract, pterygium, and many other pathologies of the eye. During my second week, I worked with Northwestern Eye Clinic, another clinic in Accra that is a partner of Unite For Sight. My daily activities with Northwestern were very similar to those I had with Crystal, except that the surgery was performed on Saturday, allowing for an extra day of outreach activities that week. For my last week in Ghana, I went with a small subset of the Crystal Eye Clinic staff and a few volunteers to New Edubiase, a smaller village in a very rural but beautiful part of Ghana, where I was stationed for 4 nights while doing outreach activities in the surrounding areas. These overnight outreaches, which are held by Crystal once a month, allow them to reach more of the villages and more patients who are not as close to Accra.
Throughout my trip, I had many opportunities to relax and spend time in Ghana. Every evening, after all UFS Ghana volunteers had returned to the hotel, we would all gather in the lobby and head to a local cook’s house for dinner. The cook’s name was Victoria, and she and her family were extremely sweet and showed fantastic hospitality to us, cooking us a number of different local dishes to try each night. Small groups of us would also head downtown to the local malls and markets on a regular basis to buy gifts and souvenirs. One very special opportunity I had while in Ghana was my first Saturday trip with Crystal Eye Clinic's staff to Cape Coast, where we toured an old castle that had been used during the days of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Reflecting on my experience, I firmly believe it to have been one of the most transformative and powerful experiences of my life. Everything from the Ghanaian hospitality to the immensely rewarding work I did everyday made the month of August one that I will always remember. Through this experience, I have come to understand much more about myself and my desires to be involved in global health programs like Unite For Sight in my future.