The Challenge of Committment

One of our greatest challenges here in Sunyani is that of committment.  It is very difficult to teach the members the concept of committment when their culture really isn't committed to anything.  Take the family unit for example.  Very few of the people in Sunyani live in traditional family units as we know them.  Everyone lives with everyone--extended aunts and uncles or grandparents raise the children of perhaps a distant cousin or relative somewhere down the line.  In the entire district we can think of only one family living together in a primary family unit as we know it and even they are raising a niece along with their own children.

Car David lives with a grandmother who is actually a second aunt.  Gate David is struggling just to feed his family (wife and 2 kids) and then we find out his senior brother's teenage son has been living with them for four years.  Robert lives with his aunt.  Gary's counselor in the District, Alfred Mintah, is divorced (actually just separated) and his mother is raising their son in some town about four hours from here.  Owusu and Lucy are raising their grandson Chris.  Sister Agartha, the Relief Society President in Nkwabeng, lives with her sister and is raising two little children as well as a teenage boy.  We're not sure how he fits in.  Auntie Mary, our neighbor at Nkwabeng, lives in a wood hut with her senior sister and has Ernestina (27), Ellen (11), and Abena (6) living there but we're not sure whose children any of them are.  She also has several young men who pop in and out every now and then.  All in all, it is amazing how they will care for any member of extended family, but there is not much immediate parental committment to offspring.  hIf things get tough, they just figure someone down the line will raise the kids--and they do.

Employment is another huge issue.  Statistics show Ghana has a very hig employment rate.   They all claim to have jobs, but the job often times involves laying a few tomatoes or bananas on a table at the side of the road and selling a few to passersby.  If they're tired, they stretch out and take a nap on their bench.  No one has a watch or cares about time.  They open their little shop when they get around to it and close when they're tired or out of "stuff' or if something that they want to do comes along.  Ghanaians generally take life at a relaxed pace, viewing time as a series of events rather than a matter of hours and minutes.

Sacrament Meeting begins in all four branches at 9:00 a.m.  Usually 2 or 3 people are there when it begins.  Many trail in about 30 minutes late and by the end of the meeting, most have showed up.  They're not embarrassed or apologetic about it at all.  It's just the way it is.

We're trying desperately to figure out a way to teach committment to a people whose culture is non-committed to just about anything and who place no value on time.  It has opened our eyes to the fact that we are way too stressed the other way and place much too much emphasis on things that don't really matter.  Somewhere in the middle would be nice!