I spent today in Accra, Ghana, in a place called Nima.  Some people call it a slum, with people, too many people, stacked on top of each other in a small space.  Hundreds of thousands of people. 

These people call it home, and it’s a busy place full of life.

Words have a different meaning in a slum.  Home can mean a piece of wood, pushed against a wall to cover from the rain.  A child’s bath is when your mother brings out a bucket of dirty water and washes you in the middle of the street.   A mosquito bite can mean death from malaria.

One nurse walking means help is on the way.  Debt cancellation means you get medicines that will save your life.

A nurse named Mary took me on a walk through and deep into Nima, down snaking paths and endless muddy alleys to get into the heart of the slum to visit with a local family to check on their son.   The cancellation of decades-old, unsustainable Ghanaian debts helped to pay for the clinic Mary works at in Nima, where kids get medicine for malaria and pregnant women get treatment so their babies are born healthy and safe.  She takes Bono around the clinic, showing us where they see and treat mothers every day.  Mary often walks 18 hours a day, from clinics to homes to churches to schools, visiting children and families to bring life-saving medicines and her most incredible gift, her care.    

Mary is at least 30 years older than me and could probably walk me into the ground without breaking a sweat.  She makes her way through the mud, and I’m amazed at how she keeps her nursing uniform and shoes so clean.  I think that she must look like some kind of angel when she knocks at the simple doors of Nima, all in white, with hope in her eyes and pills in her hand that might well save your child’s life.

We walk by businesses that have sprouted everywhere in Nima, people selling cell phones, equipment, food, water in bags as there’s no running water here at all, a room full of sewing machines where 10 women are earning a living.   People are working and not letting what surrounds them keep them from getting up and doing something.  People seem tireless in circumstances that would make anyone tired. 

Bono stops and speaks with Jessica, a woman who owns a stand where she sells cell phone cards.  She tells us about how she started her business, the challenges and her hopes for the future.  Bono says this looks familiar, it’s just like the American dream—but now it’s also a Ghanaian dream.  A dream of being able to have a good job and the opportunity to make a life for you and the ones you love.

We’ve walked a long way and I’m tired.  Mary’s not.  She’s ready to go to vaccinate some children for polio, measles, mumps, rubella, just like kids in the U.S. We go to a church down the street where the Nima clinic has setup a free vaccination day.  All the women waiting in front of this Episcopal church for shots for their babies are Muslim.  As we walk up, they remind me that we really can all be ONE.