With a broken foot and casted leg, Calvin student Kallie needs a better way to get about. Crutches are too difficult thanks to uneven sidewalks, roads, and stairs. And, the Calvin program has a Friday field trip for which Kallie will need to be mobile.
The solution? A wheelchair!
But, where to find one? Tracy’s call to HealthLink clinic produced a lead to a medical supply store but confusing directions. To improve the chances of finding Rhemassed Ventures, an in-person visit to the clinic with a map was required. (The store is near Hotel Obama in East Legon.) With decent directions in hand, she was off.
But, the store was nowhere to be found. Tracy asked taxi drivers and pedestrians who finally directed her to the store that was, in fact, in plain sight right in front of her. Tracy had assumed the medical supply “store” would be located in a shopping center or mall. Instead, it was a small, free-standing building adjacent to a river, in the shade of a tree, and tucked behind an open-air bed store. Tracy purchased a 600-cedi wheelchair that will help Kallie tremendously.
How many times in life do we fail to see the obvious? In this case, Tracy couldn’t see the “store,” because it was very different from any medical supply store she had ever seen; it was so different from her expectations. The same is true of many things in Ghana. If you want to make the most of it, you need to recalibrate your expectations. And, I don’t think it too much of a stretch to say that expectations are an essential part of how we make sense of life.
Indeed, life is how you make it.
—Matt
