Ruth Reveal
Traveling down an uneven, dirt road carved out of corn fields, it finally dawned on me: I was in the middle of nowhere. In Africa. It has always been a long-standing dream of mine to see Africa, but I never would have imagined that I would make that journey at twenty years old, or it would consist of donning colorful costumes to present dance-dramas to Ghanaian students and villagers. Regardless, I had survived the nine-hour flight, successfully maneuvered my way through customs, and I had arrived. I had arrived in Accra, Ghana to do something I felt very passionately about: HIV/AIDS education.
The Sankofa Center for African Dance and Culture is an arts-based, HIV/AIDS education program through which volunteers learn traditional Ghanaian dances which are modified in order to express aspects of HIV: transmission, situations that could put one at risk, etc. The volunteers work with a professional dancing and drumming troupe and aid with the HIV 101 program, condom demonstration, and free rapid HIV testing. I learned about the program through a press release sent out to Agnes Scott College, where I was a sophomore, and for some reason I knew this was what I wanted to do for part of my summer. Surprisingly, my parents showed no signs of hesitancy when I asked them if I could do the program, and after months of fundraising, searching for the best flights, getting various vaccinations and applying for visas, I could finally feel the heat of Africa encasing me.
The people of Ghana are extraordinarily welcoming, and even though they would heartily laugh when we attempted to speak in their native tongue, Twi, they were always willing to open their hearts and their home to us. They opened their country unabashedly and without resistance, and it was these people that I so desperately wanted to help. I found, however, that although I could discuss the mechanisms of HIV/AIDS with a true scientist’s distance, when it came to the testing portion of the program I had to take a step back. Looking into the faces of mothers, sons, grandfathers–all of whom were taking this test, all of whom had the possibly of contracting this terrible virus, I was shocked at my reaction. As a person who had thought of medicine and research as her calling, a person who could outline the entire reproductive cycle of HIV, I finally realized the implications of the virus. I finally saw the potential of this terrible disease for real people. Real people that I talked with, touched and who touched me.
When I came back to Ohio to begin an internship with AIDS Resource Center of Ohio, my perspective had changed. On the other side of the state-mandated paperwork I filed were real people. I had become invested not in the science of HIV but in the effects it had on the lives of the people who contracted it and the lives of those who cared about them.
Sankofa is an Akan word that translates to “go back and take,” and symbolizes the looking back on one’s past and prior knowledge as a way to shape the future. I am beginning, after my experience in Ghana, to shape my future, incorporating all my knowledge, both the portion that understands the research and the portion that can finally see the people behind it.
*For more information about the Sankofa Center for African Dance and Culture, visit their website: www.thesankofacenter.org
