Miracles in Ghana
One week into my trip with Smiles For Speech, I experienced a meeting that made me feel that it was really meant for me to be on the trip.
When I arrived on the bus, Tuesday morning, our team leader, Sandy read through the consultations to be distributed among the team. She offered an 8-year-old with hearing impairment, a 6-year-old with autism, a 10-year-old with reading and writing difficulties and several other cases. At first, I sat quietly. I was a little tired after the intense days and thought to myself, I should keep a low profile this day. But then I started thinking that I should still take the consultation if it was centered reading and writing. Sandy lists the cases again and I said, “I'll take it. It will be fine. I have worked with alot of reading and writing difficulties in my work and I also teach it at the speech therapy program back home in Umea, Sweden.”
Like all of the other days, the experience joining the team to arrive for the school visit is intense and warm (in terms of temperature but also emotionally). After a mentoring and guiding the speech therapy students in the early part of the day, it was time for me to start the individual consultations.
I met the parent and child in a classroom. We greeted each other and sat down. The child went to pick up something and I started asking the parent what they needed help with and asked about background information to better provide advice and guidance. Mom said that they have tried to seek help in the past but that they have had challenges receiving support and contradictory advice about the child's language development because they are multilingual.
To my surprise, this is how the conversation went:
Mom: "Yes, we moved from Sweden when she was four."
Me: "From Sweden ??" (I was totally surprised)
Mom: "Yes"
Me: "But I am from Sweden?" (I respond with a big smile and here the conversation switches from English to Swedish)
Mom: "WHAT, are you kidding me - are you Swedish?" (She was even more surprised than me!)
Me: "Yes, I'm Swedish. The others are from the US but I'm from Sweden "
The parent started to laugh and shook her head in disbelief, "But, it can't be true, how can this be true?
The feeling was almost indescribable. We both gasped and could not believe that it was true. How could I be a Swedish speech- language pathologist, traveling with an American volunteer organization to Ghana by some kind of coincidence, meet a Swedish family that needed my advice and support.
Mom was astonished and amazed. She rushed to find the school principal and and she to ask if she knew about this.
Mom: "Did you set this up? Did you know she's Swedish?"
We continued our conversation still switching between Swedish and English. We spent time talking about holidays in Sweden and the schools in Sweden compared to the schools in Ghana. In between, I provided advice on continued reading training and compensatory aids for reading and writing.
The rest of the day was filled with wonder and joy each time I stopped to think about what just happened. No one really knew the whole story but deep down inside I knew it was meant to be.
