A new generation of altruism?

These children were caught playing near the Volta River in Ghana. Nichelle Rich and Megan Lazzar volunteered through the Cross-Cultural Solutions program in Arcata. photo courtesy of Megan Lazzar

by John Estey

Today’s teens are known for spending the wee hours at raves, taking ecstasy and listening to hip-hop or techno music. The girls balance their time neatly between hanging out at the mall and chatting with friends for hours, on-line or via telephone. Or, so I thought.

That is, until I heard that the teenage daughter of my friend Francis Rich had just returned from doing charity work in a poverty-stricken town in West Africa – far away from the mall- where the only chat room is a tent. Francis and her daughter, Nichelle, suggested I meet with Nichelle’s school mate and travel partner, Megan Lazzar, since it was Megan’s idea to venture to the huge, distant continent in the first place.

“Hi, come on in,” said Megan. She was a bright-eyed, slender girl. I wanted to know what inspired this 17-year-old Arcata resident to do volunteer work for the Cross-Cultural Solutions Program in Africa instead of having a typical summer of fun.

It turns out she heard about it from a the daughter of a rabbi who lives in Ashland, Ore. She knew right away that she wanted to go to Africa.

She got accepted to the program.

“And then I talked my parents into it,” she said with a laugh. “It took a long time, but I think it helped when my friend Nichelle said she would go with me. But well, I was kind of amazed they agreed.”

So was I. How does a teenager convince her parents to let her spend the summer doing volunteer work in Ghana, Africa? When I was that age I couldn’t even convince mine to let me borrow the car.

“I thought the whole thing was an impossibility,” her mother said. “I mean, go to Africa? But, Megan’s very persistent when she gets her mind set on something. She kept saying ‘I’m going to Ghana, I’m going to Ghana.’ I think her father was the first to give it up and say, ‘Okay.’ I was probably a little bit harder because I worried a lot about her traveling and her health. Rachel’s (the other girl’s) father was very reassuring, telling us how safe she was there. How she would be inoculated for typhoid, yellow fever, hepatitis and meningitis. Those were my big concerns-that she would be exposed to all those different diseases.”

Once the girls got their mandatory vaccines, they were on their way to becoming the youngest school-teaching volunteers in the Cross-Cultural Solutions program. They were stationed in the poor town of Akatsi with a population about that of Arcata’s. Akatsi is located in the Volta region of Ghana and is roughly the size of Oregon. Although the native language in Akatsi is a dialect called ‘ewe’ English is commonly spoken.

The girls were assigned to a childhood-preparatory school(nursery school to third grade level). Nichelle got the older kids, and Megan was assigned to teach kindergarten. She thought she would be observing for a while before she had to take charge of the class. But she was caught by surprise when the teacher greeted Megan by handing over a piece of chalk with the words, “OK, teach.”

“I asked him, ‘Is math all right?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah!’ So there I am. I don’t know what these kids know. I don’t know what they’re supposed to be learning. But I have a piece of chalk and a blackboard-all my supplies. So I just started writing numbers up on the board, and we went from there.”

She taught in an open-air classroom, two walls, a roof and open on the sides. Every once in a while chickens and sometimes a duck would walk into the classroom. This would happen especially at lunch when the children would be at their desks trying to eat. Usually three boys in class would band together. One boy would be at each of the two doorways, while the third boy would chase the chicken through the classroom trying to flush it toward the door so they could catch it. Try as they may, they never did catch them.

Megan Lazzar

Megan was especially impressed with how friendly the people were in the village. It was a frequent occurrence for strangers to say “hello” and want to know about her culture and life back home – whether she had brothers and sisters. They were sincerely interested in her life. Some were a little too interested, however.

“The main thing for single guys my age and older, is they want to marry you. I had numerous marriage offers. Basically, it’s kind of a joke,” Megan said, “They’ve been asking everyone for who knows how long. Most women just say, ‘No, of course not. I’m not going to marry you!’”

“Well I’m too young!”

“Oh no, you’re not too young- you’re just at the right time for marriage. If you are any older, no one will want to marry you,” she said, giggling hard. “Over here that type of thing would be very creepy, but over there you could laugh and have fun with it. ‘No I don’t want to marry you, but thanks for asking!’”

Megan didn’t get a chance to make any close relationships with the women because the local women spent most of their time getting water, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. There wasn’t much time left over for the luxury of hanging out with the girls.

“I got the feeling sometimes that the women felt we were silly white girls because they would often just laugh at us. I know being there doing what we were doing with the program is something in their culture they wouldn’t probably ever consider doing,” she said.

The girls didn’t feel very silly, though, when Nichelle got sick.

“We thought at the time it was food poisoning, I don’t know what we think it was now. We both got diagnosed with a case of malaria. It was kind of scary, but on our first day in Akatsi the doctor at the clinic there gave us the big speech on malaria and what he told us was, ‘If you get diagnosed with malaria, don’t call home and say you have malaria’. He said it usually isn’t that bad,” said Megan. “You might have one or two parasites in your blood sample, but they give you the medication and in a couple of days you won’t have any. You might need an IV and a week or two of medication if you get it bad, but most people, the doctor said, don’t even show the symptoms. I didn’t even feel sick.”

After their weekly finger-prick blood test, they did test positive for malaria. Nichelle spent a day throwing up and then a day sleeping off a fever. They took their medication, and no, they didn’t call home. Personally, I would have immediately called Stanford Medical Center for an emergency helicopter transport ride back to California and my mommy. But when I was 17, I wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

One of the determining factors for Megan in choosing the Cross-Cultural Solutions volunteer program were testimonials from past participants who claimed they had received so much more than they gave during their foreign cultural experiences.

Well, I thought, if this young woman is any indication of America’s future generation, the outlook is looking pretty good. I was curious about one more thing. How did Megan feel about herself and her future, after this incredible experience?

“It has made me realize how much I love and want to see other people and places, and see them in a way of not just being a tourist, but actually getting into their culture and being a part of those people’s everyday life. It also has made me realize how much I enjoy teaching and helping others,” she said. “I feel like this is exactly what I want to do now. I know.”