Listening to Dr. King's Advice!

I helped Dr. Dorothy Height to her seat and stood around looking for a place to sit and see what was next. It was a special night and through some strange circumstance I was part of it. It was a small dinner get together at the office of Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyman Rawlings, the First Lady of the Republic of Ghana, the guests were Mrs. Coretta Scott King, the wife of the late slain American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Dr. Dorothy Height, a prominent leader of America's civil rights movement, Alexis Herman, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, amongst others. They were all in Ghana, to attend the 1999 African- African-American summit being held in Accra, Ghana. I was at this dinner because the US Ambassador to Ghana at the time, Katherine Dee Robinson, had asked some of us Peace Corps volunteers to help out during this summit. I was one of the chosen few! Ambassador Robinson, was from the American southern State of Tennessee. She possessed the southern hospitality, wonderful southern accent, and the diplomatic touch of connecting with people.

My main responsibility for that day was pushing Dr. Height’s wheelchair!  I took my place and after a few minutes dinner was served, which included some Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian dishes. I remember slices of Kenkey on a plate. Kenkey, a Ghanaian dish, is usually served in a ball form and eaten with your hand, but I guess because of the American guests, it was sliced and was eaten with a fork! I was the only one who ate the Kenkey.

I remember it being a quiet night, and Mrs. Rawlings doing most of the talking as she was trying to engage her guests and be a good host.

The other thing that stayed on my mind was the irony of history, that Mrs. King would be coming to Ghana and interacting with an American Ambassador that is from Tennessee, a state where, her husband, Dr. King, gave his last speech and was killed on the 4^th April, 1968.

I often listen to that speech, usually referred to as, “I have been to the Mountain Top” speech, which was given a day before his assassination. In the speech, Dr. King talks about history, man’s struggle for freedom, a bit about his life and his own eventual end. The reason he was in Tennessee was to support the strike of sanitation workers in the city of Memphis.

We live in a world where everyday we face crisis, whether it is diseases such as ebola or security issues related to terrorism, wars or the migration/refugee crisis. There is a global debate about how much the international community must do. Some say only those who are effected by these crisis must deal with it and there are those who believe that these crisis effect us all and we must work together to address them and final solutions to them. 

I decided to go back and revisit the speech of Dr. King given more than 45 years ago. In one part he talks about the time he and Mrs. King, drove from Jerusalem to Jericho and he was reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan, and ties it to helping the sanitation workers;

“…That's a dangerous road [the road from Jerusalem to Jericho]. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" That's the question before you tonight…The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question”.

And taking the advice from Dr. King, the international community needs to reverse the question from, “If I stop to help the communities in crisis,what will happen to me?" to "If I do not stop to help the victim of war, the ebola patient or the refugees, what will happen to them?"

He further admonished his audience, “Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge…”

Fifteen years after that dinner with all the shakers and movers of their time, here I am sitting  back in Accra, eating a  ball of Kenkey, fried fish with pepper and wondering whether the international community will be the Levite or the Good Samaritan!