Teacher Introduces Body Recall in Ghana

It is October 15^th, 2009 and I am biking on a rutted dirt road bordered by 7 foot stalks top-heavy with ripe grains of millet.  The equatorial sun of northern Ghana in West Africa impresses me with its warmth; the breeze brushing my cheeks is welcome as I skirt a few cows on the three miles to Kongo Health Center.  Before long I pass several patients walking toward the health center; a young mother with a feverish baby tied on her back, a middle-aged woman walking slowly due to swollen, arthritic knees, the third an older man using a stick for a cane and stooped forward with low back pain.  The baby will see clinic nurses for malaria treatment and antibiotics, the other two patients are coming to Body Recall class and chiropractic treatment of their joint, muscle and nerve ailments.

At 7:30 am, I am near enough to catch sight of the clinic building where a dozen or more Ghanaians wait for exercise class.  I am particularly interested to see whether my interpreter has arrived, a 19 year old village girl who has just completed high school.  Very rarely do people speak English. I am working in a remote agricultural community without physical therapists or orthopedic surgeons; a place without clocks, appointments and meetings.  Life here is governed by the immutable influences of sunrise and sunset, wet season and dry season, harvest and hunger, work and rest, health and sickness.

But, wait just a minute.  Don’t the people in rural Africa have perfect posture from carrying everything on their heads?  Aren’t they terrifically fit, flexible, and strong from walking, lifting, and farming?  Do they even need an exercise class?  Indeed, thanks to never-ending manual labor, obesity is nonexistent and cardiovascular problems are rare in this population.  However, wear and tear to the muscles, tendons and joints is relentless.  Rising at first light, the day begins with women and children bent double to sweep the family compound; then, 1-2 miles of walking to and from a borehole with 60 pounds of water balanced in a basin on the head.

And that is just the beginning of a day that will mostly consist of farming (cutting, hauling, and threshing millet in October), hand-washing clothes, cooking meals over a wood fire, and caring for goats and fowls, all without the benefit of electricity or mechanical devices.  The long days of bending, lifting, and long distance walking with heavy loads is the ideal set-up for muscle and joint pain.

Visualize yourself with a roomful of exercise students, most over 50 years old and with chronic conditions related to a lifetime of punishing labor; clients in desperate need of healthy movement for pain and stiffness in the back, knees, shoulders, and hands; some who have had polio or mild strokes. In a crowded cement block room, people sit 3 or 4 to a bench for a Body Recall class aimed at increasing head-to-toe range of motion and strength. The women wear colorful skirts that extend to the lower calf, everyone wears flip flops. There is no backrest on the benches and many are sitting with a slumped posture.  Class starts as I give careful instructions to the interpreter about sitting tall in A position.  The students respond immediately, imitating my posture and removing their sandals. We do toe rising, bent leg lifts, ankle circling, and grip. Due to the frequency of swollen and painful knees, we do exercises for knee flexibility (#11,12,13) in nearly every class. Chest lead forward with spine uncurl (#59) is my favorite exercise and soon the students are enjoying it also.  After a few meetings, students get far better at sitting tall. Women hike up their skirts a bit to allow for freer movement of the knees.  People often clap at the end of class and leave with grateful smiles.  Some bring fresh guinea fowl eggs to show their appreciation. As a Body Recall leader and a health care provider, seeing the effort and determination that patients put forth in exercise class is as rewarding as working with them during individual treatments.

My husband, David, and I plan a fourth volunteer trip to northern Ghana in January-March 2012.  In addition to our unpaid “day jobs” in Ghana (David teaching English and myself as a chiropractor and Body Recall teacher) we will continue with projects addressing childhood under-nutrition and access of rural youth to secondary and tertiary education.  An in depth blog with pictures and entries from our most recent trip in 2009 can be seen at www.gone2ghana.com.

This article provided to Body Recall by Body Recall teacher Lisa Revell, Portland, Oregon