White Baby - May 2005

On my drive home from work the other day, I realized how differently I see the world now that I have a child.

There is a woman who is partially blind and probably mentally ill with two children who hangs out on a traffic median between my work and home. She and her kids have one set of clothes and no shoes. I estimate the kids to be around three and six, but they could be older and just look younger because of poor nutrition. One has a belly button that sticks out like a small tail. They all look like they haven’t had their hair brushed in months. Sometimes they sleep or are sharing a meal as rush-hour traffic whizzes by.

I must have driven past this woman and her kids a hundred times before I had a baby and never gave them a second look. My old rationalization was that there were so many people begging at my car window, how could I justify giving money to one person and not the other? So I gave nothing. Also, I figured my entire career has been focused on helping poor people, isn’t that enough?

But last week when I drove by and saw this woman and her kids playing with sticks and dirt in the ground while traffic zoomed dangerously by, I decided I had to do something. I wasn’t just going to give them a little change; I was going to give her and her babies what they earned in a week of begging. Maybe even a month. So I did. It temporarily eased my guilt, but I know better than anyone that this type of charity is far from a long-term solution. And yet, I just couldn’t bear to drive by anymore and not do something for her and her kids while, less than a mile away, my baby is happy and healthy in a huge air-conditioned house, surrounded by toys, hundreds of outfits and people who love and pamper him. It is just so unfair I can barely stand it.

Of course, nothing changed. A few days later, the woman was back on the traffic median with her kids. I figure she has no other way to make money, and her family doesn’t seem to be helping her. I keep giving her huge amounts of money when I pass by in the hopes she will get off the street. And for the first time in my life I can’t stop thinking about her circumstances. How did she end up on a traffic median? Where is the father of her children? Where is her family? Where does she go to at night? Does anyone help her? Would it be worse for her boys in the local orphanage? What a softie I’ve become.

I never really walked around my neighborhood before, but now when my husband and I take the baby for walks dodging traffic on weekends in the Baby Bjorn, fancy backpack or stroller, little Ghanaian kids yell “white baby!” and come running after us to touch him. I guess I should expect as much given how conspicuous we are. Here, people carry babies on their backs strapped in with fabric. Why do we insist on our fancy baby contraptions? Because we are crazy white people, that’s why! And the whole “don’t touch the baby” rule so popular in the U.S. to avoid passing colds and sickness is just not an option here. Everyone wants to touch the baby, and they always go for the hands. Accra is experiencing a mumps epidemic at the moment. Sigh.

One other big change is my identity at home. From day one, our nanny has called me “Mommy”. I used to be “Madame”, which made me uncomfortable enough, but now mommy? My husband, of course, is “Daddy”, or my favorite, “Mr. Chris”. Yesterday was my husband’s birthday and the nanny and cook got him a birthday card they titled, “Mr. Chris”. In it, they wished that he lived to be 100 years old. They also baked him a birthday cake decorated with “Happy Birthday Mr. Chris”. I love it.

What a bore this update must be for people without children. I’ll shift gears.

In Togo, the situation has thrown everyone for a loop. I mentioned in my last update how the country planned an election for the end of April. It took place as planned. Although the Economic Community of West African States (the 15-member West African regional organization) basically gave the election a “thumbs up”, the rest of the world reported widespread election fraud on both sides. I will never accept the apologist tendencies of African countries towards each other. Who is helped by everyone turning their backs on the truth? So the party that has been in power forever won again, and the President’s son is still President.

I think the West really screwed up in Togo. I imagine like good democracies, we insisted that Togo follow their constitution, and hold elections within 60 days. However, this is after 30 years of a dictator’s rule. When will we learn that paper and elections do not a democracy make? What serious opposition would be able to organize in 60 days? And if we were so damn concerned with the government in Togo and what would happen after the old guy kicked the bucket, why haven’t we been funding opposition groups there like we do in other places? So the election was crap, and Togo has basically the same leader as before. We had a chance to make a difference in Togo and we blew it. What opposition there is in Togo can’t be happy, but they don’t seem to have it together. As far as I can tell, they don’t have a message, they’re not organized, and they are definitely not politically savvy in terms of getting the West and the rest of Africa to support them. But perhaps scarier than maintaining the political status quo is what would have been, had one of the opposition candidates won the election. It’s not like anyone in Togo has experience running a country. What sort of country would Togo be now if someone else had won? So now we wait to see what the son of the former Dictator will do—follow in his Daddy’s footsteps, or start making Togo into a better place.

My French tutor is from Togo. I love language classes, because they always provide an excuse for me to discuss controversial subjects with people who I would normally never discuss such matters with. So I took the opportunity to ask him about the situation in his native country. He said that people from Togo were as scared of the former President as others were of strongmen like Saddam Hussein or Fidel Castro. He admitted that no one from Togo is comfortable speaking out about the leader of the country, even now. Just think about that for a minute. Imagine what it must be like to be from a country where you fear for your life because you express a negative opinion about your country’s leader. I’d be in a lot of trouble.

I heard on the radio a few days ago that of all the African leaders since the wave of independence in the 1950s, only eight have handed over their governments peacefully to winners of elections. Even if the statistic is wrong and if it’s more like twenty, isn’t that criminal? How do the democracies of the world sit by and allow countries to act like this in 2005?

I can’t think about how rotten things are in this part of the world, and how screwed Africa is by the world’s indifference. I can’t because I still have to spend another year on this continent. As it is, I’m constantly fighting the onset of depression and cynicism that comes with living here, and working in the U.S. government. Having a child forces me to be more optimistic about life and West Africa’s prospects. Otherwise how do I justify being here and bringing someone into this crappy world?

Things will get better for West Africa. They have to. But it will take a long time. And in the meantime, living here keeps me grounded in reality, and helps me never forget how fortunate I am every day because of something totally arbitrary; I was born in the U.S.