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Teaching, Healing, and Learning is a Two-way Street in Togo

By Sandra Sarr, University of Washington, Tacoma

After finishing her master of nursing degree from the University of Washington, Tacoma (UWT), Jana Glessner headed off to Togo to do a short term stint with ABWE’s Assistant Missionary Program (AMP). Jana is working at the ABWE hospital in Togo, training Togolese nurses, performing clinical work, and showing the love of Christ to all.

The following article about Jana’s work in Togo was printed in UWT’s newsletter, Terrain. It is republished here with permission.

A wave of hot air smelling of dirt and fire hit Jana Glessner, MN ’05, the first time she stepped off an airplane in Togo, a narrow strip of a country on West Africa’s coast where the people rarely live much past age 50. When Glessner crossed time zones, the Atlantic and the Tropic of Cancer to land in Togo a second time, the place felt strangely comfortable. Time slowed down, and she glimpsed how she could make a difference on a large scale.

In January, with a newly minted master of nursing degree from the UW Tacoma, Glessner returned to begin a year of training Togolese nurses who will work toward improving the health of Togo’s 5 million citizens through community organizing a mobile clinic, health education, disease prevention, and clinical work.

“I didn’t know I needed more education until I first went to Togo,” says Glessner, who worked in Tacoma as an R.N. in St. Joseph’s Hospital’s critical care unit. “I realized I needed leadership and organizational skills to be effective.”

She’ll use a tool she created for the hospital to evaluate whether its mobile clinic program is developing in a community-oriented manner with the Togolese, rather than through outsiders deciding what’s best for them. To guide her, she’ll ask questions such as: Are we allowing the Togolese to develop their own abilities to take action? They develop leadership skills when they brainstorm their own resources, she says.

“Equipping them with sustainable tools and the confidence to use them—that’s the beautiful thing,” she says.

With plans to authentically bond with the Togolese nursing students, she’ll take lots of time showing interest in their lives and their education. First, she spent three months in Paris learning to speak French, Togo’s official language.

Glessner’s nursing students are key to the Togolese gaining long-term ownership of their hospital and community health program. “They will be the ones who carry on the work, not us (American volunteers),” says Glessner, clinical coordinator for the nursing program at Karolyn Kempton Memorial Christian Hospital in Lome, Togo’s capitol.

Teaching people in rural villages about public health practices is more effective if the messages come from fellow villagers whom they see as having a realistic understanding of the living conditions, Glessner believes. The Togolese see Americans as rich, coming from a country with more resources and therefore out of touch with their daily realities.

“It’s really important to pay attention to how we come across as Americans,” she says.

“The Togolese nurses can say, ‘You need to use mosquito nets to help prevent disease. Here’s how,’ and they come across as credible.”           

Even with careful attention, cultural values and practices sometimes collide.           

During her 2004 nurse mentor stint, Glessner recalls seeing a Togolese nurse drop a container of pills on the floor, pick one up and put it in a medication cup for a patient. “She knew she shouldn’t use any of the tainted pills, but resources were so scarce that she weighed her options and risked potentially contaminating one person rather than all. In her mind, she avoided wasting all of the medication.”            

Glessner believes it’s important to be accepting of the culture. Yet some health-related practices, she says, are unacceptable, such as the family who came into the hospital and cut the face of their very sick relative and “bled” her in what they said was a healing ceremony. With high blood pressure and having just given birth, the woman in their care died.            

“If you saw the environment, with no technology, prenatal care, or good nutrition, you’d think no one could survive, but they do. We fed the baby girl and she grew and grew,” Glessner says of the baby in the photograph. “It’s a reminder of how hearty the human will to survive is. It goes beyond our explanation.”            

Some things don’t need explaining. The Togolese teach Glessner without trying.           

“They have such joy despite having so little material things. There’s such a stark contrast between Togo and the U.S., where we have so much stuff and busyness and not as much joy. The slower pace suits my personality,” says Glessner who has been fascinated with Togo since she was a teenager listening to a speaker at her church.           

Even amid an atmosphere of political unrest, Togo is community-oriented and its people are warm-hearted.           

“They will always stop to take the time to relate. It really strikes me that, for them, taking the time for relationships is most important over all other tasks. They always inquire about health and family,” she says.           

Her awareness of Africa began early—her father was raised in Ethiopia by her grandparents who taught there. And her parents frequently hosted missionaries.

As for her career path, Glessner’s professors have helped her to “think bigger” because of their breadth of experience, accomplishments, and community involvement.           

“The public views nursing as something that happens at the bedside, but that’s just a small representation of the field,” Glessner says. “Nurses address issues as wide-ranging as how to prepare for the bird flu and how to deal with the health implications of hurricanes.”           

Her goal is to plan programs that will improve the health of all. She says UWT’s nursing program widened her perspective beyond measure, with its focus on community assessment, planning, intervention evaluation, and research.           

“It gave me a broad foundation for what I want to do long-term,” she says. What keeps her connected to Togo? “I think it’s in my blood and that God has a plan for me.”