If you're looking for John Adams, you'll find him on a Ghanaian cocoa and coconut farm about 20 kilometers from the Ivory Coast in West Africa. There, in the midst of a deciduous rain forest, he lives in a concrete-and-thatch tin-roofed house, very much a part of his tiny community of a dozen people. "We don't have electricity or running water," he writes by e-mail, "but I have found the absence of these luxuries doesn't bother me until my rainwater barrel is empty, resulting in me having to carry water on my head from a spring."
He spends his days working with a nongovernmental agency focused on natural resource management around the virgin rain forest. Its core mission, he says, is to introduce alternative ways to make a living, rearing small animals, for instance, so that locals are less dependent on "practices that degrade the forest," such as poaching for meat in the bush and the illegal harvesting of cane. He also helps develop tree nurseries and improve farming methods.
A public policy major at Hamilton, Adams began considering a post-graduation move overseas during his junior year. He was yearning for an experience that would involve both service and the chance to experience another culture on a visceral level. "Looking back on the decision," he says, "I think I was ultimately seeking to learn more about myself through a drastic change in my environment."
And now Ghana is home. Adams immerses himself daily both in his work and in the relationships he has forged with his community. He is deeply reflective about what influence, if any, he is having, and how best to measure his strides. "There is always the knee-jerk impulse to think I must quantify the difference I am making by listing the changes in my community that I may have inspired or coordinated," he says. But lately he has found himself thinking in different terms: "Now I try to look for differences in how the community treats me as a sign of being integrated and accepted."
These differences are at once subtle and profound. When he first arrived, Adams was treated solely as a white foreigner, with locals referring to him using impersonal monikers such as "Kwesi Bruni" or simply "Obruni" ("white man"). The names were not insulting, but they did reflect a distance and, to him, symbolized a painful cultural divide.
"Then one day," he recalls, "all the kids who used to greet me with 'Obruni' were screaming 'Brother John' or 'Kwesi John.'... Even if none of our projects together produce the slightest long-term improvements, I would be absolutely content to know that the community genuinely wants me around for my unique personal qualities and not for the possibility that I may help them improve material aspects of their lives. I don't expect this could ever happen completely, but I continue to work toward it."
It's easy to assume that volunteers who transition from the Hill to the developing world are leaving one world and entering a completely separate, unrelated one. But for some, Adams included, the Hamilton educational experience serves as a natural springboard to the overseas journey. "I do feel Hamilton is at least partially responsible for my decision to volunteer," he writes. "The small size of Hamilton forces individuals to be held personally responsible. This extends to macro-issues, even those that in larger communities appear to be far beyond the reach of a single person to effect change.
"I largely credit Hamilton with empowering me with the strength of mind to trust that I can handle the responsibilities of my work here, and that the small impact I can make is meaningful."
PHOTO CREDIT:
John Adams '06
Comfort, host mother to Peace Corps volunteer John Adams '06, pumps water in Techiman in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana. She is known as "Mama Good-Stuff," a nickname given to her by a previous Peace Corps volunteer who raved about her cooking.
John Adams outside his home, Frenchman Farm, in the Jomoro District of the Western Region of Ghana. "We don't have electricity or running water," he says, "but I have found the absence of these luxuries doesn't bother me until my rainwater barrel is empty."
