Thomas Awiapo speaks to diocesan employees at St. Stephen Diocesan Center Oct. 21. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
An interview with Thomas Awiapo of Ghana, the CRS Global Solidarity Coordinator
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Thomas Awiapo’s conversation kept coming back to that “little snack,” as he fiddled with a little cardboard box, the well-known Catholic Relief Services Rice Bowl.
The CRS Global Solidarity Coordinator, who works in his home country of Ghana, was in Hawaii for 10 days last month speaking to a wide variety of Catholic groups.
In an interview Oct. 19 with the Hawaii Catholic Herald, he told his life’s story, speaking with passion and enthusiasm, often interrupting his own narrative with a loud delightful laugh when he found something funny or incongruous.
Awiapo is not sure how old he is. His village did not issue birth certificates. When he needed a birthdate to obtain a passport, he devised a system to choose a date and drew a reasonable-sounding year from the equivalent of a hat. The result places him in his mid 40s.
Awiapo’s parents died when he was about 10 years old leaving him and his three siblings to a life of hunger and poverty. Two of his brothers died of malnutrition, the youngest in Awaipo’s arms.
His own life was saved by that “little snack.”
“Catholic Relief Services had this school in my village,” he explained. “I didn’t like school but I liked their snack.”
“If you wanted a snack you were ‘sentenced’ to hours and hours of classes. But I kept coming to school just for that little snack.”
“I started to like school whether there was a snack or not. I also got help from other people like a priest who put me in a Catholic boarding high school. And then religious brothers and sisters helped me go to college in Ghana.”
He ended up with a post-graduate scholarship to a California State university.
“I kept going. Today I am joyful, happy, with a master’s in public administration.”
“I used to be miserable, angry with God, asking why did you take away my parents. Suddenly I realized that God didn’t take away my parents. They died. But in place of my parents, God put into my life wonderful people.”
“From that little snack, other people came into my life and helped me out, uncles and aunties, priests, religious, brothers, and all that made me who I am today.”
When Awiapo finished his studies, many people, both in the U.S. and Ghana, asked him why he was going back home.
“Because it’s home,” he said he told them. “And there is no place where you are more at peace with yourself than home. Plus, I just felt like God blessed me so much.”
Education as liberation
“He quite simply blessed me with grace beyond what I deserved. And I don’t think he blessed me to that point just for keeps. He blessed me so that I could pay it forward. And the best way to pay that forward was not to stay in this country. It was to go back to my little village, to my country, to my community, and to find ways and means to pay back just a little token of that which I have received from God through so many people.
“Working for Catholic Relief Services, it’s not just a job, it’s grace, it’s a great opportunity, an honor, given me to find ways and means to simply bless others. And so that makes me happy to find an opportunity to be in Ghana for 15 years, working in the community, letting parents and community members know the best gift to give to a child is education.
“For me I see education as liberation. It’s because of that little snack. I would not be sitting here if it were not for that little snack tricking me to like school. Today I am blessed with a wife and four children. And my children will never be hungry.”
“And they have to be in school whether they like it or not,” he said, laughing.
Awiapo’s oldest daughter is a pre-med student on scholarship in Seattle. His second oldest, a son, is studying petro-chemical engineering in Ghana. His third, a son, attends a boarding high school and his youngest, a daughter, lives at home.
“Education is one of the greatest tools that can break down the chains of poverty, hunger and injustice in our world,” he said.
“Sometimes we talk about justice, justice, justice, being a voice for those who are voiceless. But sometimes it is important to give a voice. I think about that little snack that sent me to school. That education actually gave me a voice, a voice for myself, my family, my community, and humanity to some extent.”
Need to see a face
Awiapo spends several months out of the year on speaking engagements in the United States, promoting CRS’s Operation Rice Bowl which raises money for such operations as the school in his little Ghana village.
“It’s really important because sometimes people need to see a face and to hear a story and to know that just a little act of kindness can make such a great difference in the world,” he said. “My story should not make people sad, it should be seen as a story of hope, a story that really demonstrates God’s power, God’s mercy, Gods love, God’s compassion.
“God can write straight on crooked lines. God’s human beings are God’s language of love, God’s language of hope and compassion.”
As he spoke, he assembled with one skillful hand the iconic cardboard “bowl” that has become ubiquitous in Catholic churches during Lent.
“I tell people when you are assembling this box what you are doing is assembling many broken lives around the world. It’s the gospel of love, it’s the gospel of compassion.”
“There is a lot of goodness happening around the world through this little box, through Catholic Relief Services. So it is important to come here and show a face and tell a story that is the story of many other people.”
“And to say thank you; it’s very important. So my traveling around is a mission of gratitude, a mission of thanksgiving.”
The rich and poor
In Ghana, he works in Catholic Relief Services senior management, administering educational, advocacy, government and other programs.
Knowing poverty and observing affluence, Awiapo sees the value of both.
“When you come to think about it, we are all poor — poor before God. We all stand poor before God, in need of his grace.
“But we are also, all of us, rich before God, created in his image and likeness and all of God’s personal traits and everything.”
“I have never prayed that God would create a world in which everybody’s rich,” he said. “A world in which everybody is rich would be a very boring world. And I also never prayed that God create a world in which everybody’s poor, because then it would be a miserable world.”
“God in his wisdom has created a world in which we, whether rich or poor, can live together in harmony, sharing our blessings, our God-given blessings. And blessings are not just money and material things. They are love, care, time, talent, all those things.
“God is so wise, he teaches us that we are interconnected, we are interdependent, and that, rich or poor, we really do need each other. Africa needs the U.S., the U.S. needs Africa. Our survival depends on you just as your survival depends on us.”
“And I see it in my village. I survived because in Africa it takes a village to raise a child. A child does not just belong to a mom and a dad, they belong to the whole village. It takes the uncles, the aunties, everybody.”
“And then conversely, I owe that community,” Awiapo said. “I owe humanity something, because I would not be who I am, where I am, but for the community, the people, everyone.”
“And God certainly has a purpose for everyone. And so my purpose depends on your purpose. It is all interconnected in God’s creation, in God’s plan.”
“We are relational. Solidarity is the key word. We need each other. I need you, you need me, and it is not about rich or poor. We are all rich and we are all poor. We need each other.”
