At the Rural Health Collaborative, we have always been working across oceans. With our team spanning Ghana and the U.S., we have navigated different time zones, challenging mobile service and internet reception, and different cultural norms—some of which we are aware of and some of which we surely are not.
A year and a half ago, Jason and I moved to Tanzania for a year and added a new time zone to the mix, joining our U.S. team meetings at 5am while skyping in from under a mosquito net. More recently we have been traveling through Asia, joining our monthly meeting from a rooftop near the Tsujiki Fish Market in Tokyo or from an AirBnB on Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam.
While we have been moving through different physical spaces, the RHC team saw two new small additions over the past two years as both Heidi and Heather had new babies. They gracefully navigate bedtimes and snack time while continuing their work with RHC. Steph has been transitioning jobs and Jess climbed a mountain. Over the same timeframe the team in Ghana has morphed as well, as one member moved to Accra for training and he was replaced with a new Communications Director, Alnice, in addition to a new Teaching Director, Comfort.
In August the Ghana and U.S. teams merged in the Volta Region, enjoying the benefits of shared time and space to reconnect and reenergize about the work we are all doing, during a team retreat. We played games that involved a blindfolded follower following the cues of the leader, which of course led to as much laughter as it did insight. We held meetings to reevaluate what we hold important as an organization and filled the warm starry nights with our dreams for RHC.
Our lives are filled with constant motion and change, through time and space and place. We are grounded, and bound together, in our shared belief that the work we are doing is meaningful. It is worth our time and attention and devotion. I am thankful to work with a passionate and dynamic group of people, shining some light into the world.
