After 40 years away, Bellingham community minister returns to Ghana

| COURTESY

• GHANA TALKS
  
  When Barbara Gilday spoke to people in Ghana, this is what they wanted to share with Americans:

  • "Peace is a natural thing."
  • "When you have a problem, speak with your mouth. No fighting."
  • "The more you are at war, the more you get enemies."
  • "We are just in this world for a short time, so why shouldn't we be happy?"
  • "Respect your parents and elders and look after your families and each other."
  • "We sent you our people who helped you build your country. Now Mother Africa needs your help."

  
  FOR MORE INFO
  
  If you're interested in doing work in Africa, look into the Global Citizen Journey at www.globalcitizenjourney.org, with whom Gilday went to Ghana.

"We're not hearing each other's stories," she says.

In Gilday's story, the people of Ghana play a central and recurring role. Her relationship with the coastal African country began in 1966, when she went to Ghana for two years to teach. In 2006, she returned to oversee a 15-person group to work with Ghanians in the coastal town of Lower Axim, and in 2007 she returned again.

"Ghana is sort of book-marking my life right now," she says.

It was on her most recent trip that Gilday began to collect stories. She recorded the life stories of 31 people, from a fetish priest to a 100-year-old woman.

"I feel it's so important for us to hear each others' stories," she says. "When you read the story of a person and hear what they've overcome, that makes an impression and they're no longer strangers."

The questions she always asked were: what do you love about your country and what would you like to share? The people had inspiring things to say about peaceful living, Gilday said.

"Everyday life is pretty tough for most people," she says. "Life is very close to the bone in economic terms, but they've got their families around them. They've got the blessings of community and pride in their culture. They know who they are."

She spoke to a woman in her mid-40s who was trying to get her three children through school on 80 cents a day. The children's father had died and they were living in a 12-by-12-foot room after her husband abandoned them. This was her advice.

"Tell them to love each other," Gilday recalls.

In addition to the people she talked to, Gilday had a chance to reconnect with a few of the students she had taught when she was in her 20s. She got reacquainted with a student whose school fees she had paid so many years ago. He was successful and happy, and he still remembered the gesture.

"I had the gift of going back and hearing those stories," she says. "You never know when you plant a seed what it's going to do. We never know the power we have."