WERS's Jack Casey visits African country of Ghana

Last summer, I was watching a PBS special on the troubled African region of Sudan/Darfur. The images and reports left me more than a little upset about the ongoing tragedy in that region. I kept wondering how to make a difference on the African continent, and somehow impact the violence and suffering that seems always present there.

Later that morning, when I checked my calendar, I remembered a meeting had been scheduled with William "Smitty" Smith, the head of the College's Center for Diversity. I had no idea why Smitty had called this meeting, but I was about to find out.

When I arrived at his office, along with WERS Operations Manager Howard Simpson, Smitty introduced us to Reginald Jackson, a professor emeritus in photography from Simmons College. Smitty and Professor Jackson explained that Emerson had been approached by President Kojo Yankah of the African University College of Communications (AUCC) in Ghana for help putting a radio station on the air at the new institution. Mr. Yankah considers Emerson a role model for the type of education he is committed to providing his students at AUCC. Without thinking I said, 'If they can pay my expenses, I'll go there myself and help with this project.'

Thanks to the generosity of the AUCC, and the efforts of Smitty and Professor Jackson, the next thing I knew I was outbound from JFK to Accra, a direct 11-hour flight.

The hospitality of my African hosts was amazing. They gave me a thorough tour of the capital city of Accra and the surrounding countryside, including the slave forts of Elmina, the Kakura rainforest and a truly extraordinary visit to Radio Ada, a community FM station which serves several coastal fishing villages. During the tour, I was accompanied by Absalom Mutere, the acting dean of journalism and communications at AUCC, and a highly respected print journalist from Kenya. With the help of Radio Ada's volunteer manager, Kofi Larweh, we spoke at length with a group of fishermen and their wives in a community with a way of life that has endured for thousands of years: thatched-roof mud huts, no electricity and no modern sanitation. As Professor Mutere wisely observed, "People from the city visit [a fishing village] and assume these people must be miserable...but, they're not."

I was honored to address a ceremony for matriculating freshmen at AUCC. I extended greetings from Emerson College and the USA, "where an extraordinary event has recently taken place: a young man of African heritage, Barack Obama, was just elected our next president." Their warm applause was a validation that we are all connected and, thanks to the art and science of communication, the world has become a much smaller place.