Bonnie Dalzell
When I went to Ghana for the first time in 2007, I walked a mile or two each day to teach in a school with no electricity or running water. I traveled to nearby villages in a battered school bus with 313,439 km on the odometer. I ate rice at every meal. And at the harvest festival, I danced with a fetish priest.
I went back again in 2010, at age 73. This time, I took a girl with malaria to a hospital where 200 people waited on benches to be seen by the doctor. I witnessed the installation of a new village chief. And I mourned with a woman whose mother had just died.
I wouldn’t trade either travel experience for the most luxurious safari in all of Africa. And all because of the children at Heritage Academy. They get up every day before dawn to fetch water for their families before The Magic Bus comes rumbling along the dirt road. They sing on the way to school. They run to their classrooms and vie for their places on the rough-cut benches. They stand and chorus “Good Morning” when I enter the room, and their thirst for knowledge shines in their eyes. When the bell rings, they don’t leave their seats till they’ve finished writing in their marbleized copy books. Sometimes they linger in hopes of talking alone with me.
I wipe away my tears. I am wordless at the interior change in the way I now see the world. And it is all because of these children.
