Sorry it has taken me SO long to finally get on and finish blogging about Ghana. Life has been a whirlwind of busyness upon returning to the States, which is not quite what I expected!!
About Sunday, June 12:
John, Randi, Nick, and I went to George's church in the morning. Everyone else slept in and packed up their stuff since they were leaving Sunday evening. The church service was interesting...very different from the church in Aflao! You could see the affluence comparatively to Aflao through the clothing, the actual church building, and even the lovely smells of perfume and cologne rather than B.O. The majority of the service was also in English, but they'd switch back and forth into their native tongue (different language than in Aflao) fairly frequently without translation. It was actually a special children's service and not a normal Sunday, so it was hard to really know for sure other differences in the service. The whole service was over 3 hours long, which I've heard is very typical for African church services.
After church, we checked out of our beach-front hotel because they were ridiculously trying to make us pay for every little thing. (John, Randi, Nick, & I had planned on staying there the rest of our trip) Samuel and his wife had us over for lunch. They made us 2 options of Ghanaian dishes: one which consisted of okra and goat intestine soup with banku (similar to fufu):
and the other dish I have no idea of the name, but it's the one I ate. It is hard to describe, so here is a picture:
(at the top is boiled plantains-not ripe yet, on the right is yams...you dip both the plantains and yams into the fresh tuna/cooked leefy green stuff on the left. And yes that is a hard boiled egg at the bottom too.) SO delicious!! This comes in close 2nd of favorite meals and definitely rivals for first! Yum!
After lunch, we drove to the new hotel where John, Randi, Nick, and I would stay for our extra nights. It was not nearly as nice (me and Randi's room was about the size of our double bed!), but it was much cheaper, and we were in Africa after all and didn't really care.
A bunch of us played one last round of "7 up" as a team in the hotel lobby, then it was off to the airport to tell 9 of our team, plus Chris and Tammy, goodbye. :-( So sad!
The reason John, Randi, Nick, and I stayed was to gather together some Ghanaian engineers/architects for possible helping at the West Africa office John will be starting up hopefully in a couple years...probably right there in Accra!! We also stayed to meet up with the ministry partner for John's next eMi trip to Ghana in September of this year.
That night, the four of us hung out in John and Nick's room playing Hearts to not be too sad or lonely. When Randi and I went back to our room to try to go to sleep, we kept hearing really creepy noises (like footsteps walking right next to our room back and forth) and had to pray together before we were able to fall asleep. I wouldn't doubt that this was an attack of some sort, but I'm so glad God provided us each other and kept us safe!
Monday morning, we got up bright and early to go to the radio station with George. All four of us actually got to speak on the radio, sharing about eMi and our experiences in Aflao with the children. First time ever on the radio...epic!! Our purpose was to invite Ghanaian architects/engineers to our meeting about eMi that evening.
On Sunday after church, George (the Ghanaian electrical engineer on our team) had excitingly informed us that his mother-in-law runs an elementary school in Accra, and wanted me to go visit and help out there the next day. So after the radio, our team of four headed to visit this school, Bekdan Academy. Upon arriving, George's mother-in-law wanted us to drive over to her new site for the school and take a look at it. They were only a little ways through construction, but Nick, John, and Randi were able to look it over and offer a few suggestions. We then went back to the school, and Randi stayed with me to help with the kids while Nick and John went to take a look at George's new house project. George's mother-in-law gave us a tour of the school...here there were actual classrooms! It was pretty small, as it was only infant through 3rd grade, but was the nicest school we had visited so far in Ghana. However, instead of having us jump in and help out immediately, she took us back to her office where she had a DELICIOUS snack prepared for us...fresh ground nuts (their name for peanuts) and fried plantains!! It was an absolutely delicious combination. Fried plantains have the consistency of sweet potato fries, but taste like really, really sweet bananas.
I also drank a "Malta" with my snack, which is really popular in Ghana. It is basically non-alcoholic beer, made by Guinness.
After we finished eating, we were able to go out and lead some fun songs with a group of kids (probably pre-K and Kindergarten age) she had gathered together for us. We only did this for about 15-20 minutes though, before Nick and John returned to pick us up so we could leave to get ready for the eMi meeting.
We had the eMi meeting in this fancy conference center building that George had rented out for us. About 20 Ghanaian design professionals showed up, which was really exciting!! John shared about the vision of eMi and the hopes of building an office there sometime in the near future. They were all really excited and also had lots of good questions about eMi and how they could best help. It was really neat to see the beginnings of a partnership with these locals, who could be so influential for eMi in the future! It did raise some questions in my mind though...just involving the difficulties to get a proper balance between coming in and doing things for them, rather than letting them do it or working alongside them. It really is hard to know when what you're doing is helping, and when it is actually hurting.
After the meeting, everyone just mingled. I actually had a guy come up and start talking to me about teaching. He just graduated from college too, in Ghana as a civil engineer, but has taught Sunday school for many years and loves it. We had a great conversation about kids and teaching which was really fun and unexpected! :-)
Tuesday, we left Accra to drive west toward Cape Town. We made several stops on our way, one at a Christian college campus where John's team in September will be helping to design a few new buildings. Then we went to this place called Village of Hope, where John's September eMi team will also be helping with some design. Going to Village of Hope was an awesome experience! Started and funded by the Church of Christ in the States, they have about 50 acres of land which includes a Children's Home, medical clinic, and school-elementary through high school! If you'd like to read more about it, check out their website: http://www.thevillageofhope.com/. One thing that was SO cool about touring the Village of Hope is that their children's home is basically exactly what Chris and Tammy's vision is for the home in Aflao! It was so neat to see what it can look like when it is finished and still growing years later. It was just another great testament of God's faithfulness and a reminder that He will provide and carry through!
From Village of Hope, we drove on to Cape Coast. Cape Coast is a touristy town right on the coast (obviously...), about 3 hours west of Accra. It was exciting to have the opportunity to see a different part of the country! We checked into our hotel (instantly upon walking into the room I found a twitching cockroach!! eew! But don't worry, I squished it and kicked it into the hall!), then drove around to see the town a little. (I keep forgetting to mention our awesome driver, Kofi, who was driving us around thru this and being wonderful enough to jam out to my country music!!)
We stopped to get out and walk to the ocean...which ended up turning into a much more confusing moment than I expected. We were almost instantly bombarded by a group of street children, who were obviously starved for attention, but you could tell all they wanted from us was money. Hanging around them caused a huge internal battle for me. They kept wanting their pictures taken with us, but I was wary the whole time with my hand on my purse so they wouldn't somehow steal my money. I hated the fact that these kids were so lost and needy and yet all I could think about was my uncomfortableness and the safety of my money. It was so encouraging and also convicting when I looked over and saw Nick stooped down to their level, conversing with them about anything he could, seemingly without a care in the world. It was weighing on my mind the whole rest of the evening...was it right for me to be cautious and hold back? Should I have given them money? They kept asking for it, saying they needed food...it's just such a hard situation, and it feels so hopeless and like what good would it do anyway? Definitely a difficult situation for sure. I still don't really know what would have been right...
We got back to the hotel around 7:30, starving and ready for dinner! The "restaurant" at the hotel provided yet another adventure for us, however! There was another American group sitting in there who informed us they had just gotten done waiting 2 hours for there food..and their orders weren't even made correctly! That should have been a pretty big red flag but we decided to try to push forward regardless. We started to order, Randi and Nick first ordering burgers, only to be informed that they had no burgers! We all finally decided on the tuna and avacado sandwich. We were on the coast after all, so the tuna would have to be really fresh, right? Wrong! Well first of all...the waitress told us they had no avacado! She said they could make the sandwich with just tuna...we decided to try to find something else. Well, nothing else really sounded good and our fellow Americans informed us that they didn't have most anything on the menu. So we decided to settle for the plain tuna sandwich anyway. John actually had to go upstairs to nap cuz he was feeling really sick and told us to let him know when the food arrived.
Well....an hour later it arrived....and it was just a 3-layer tuna salad sandwich...with little shreds of lettuce and carrot mixed in! The ratio was about 75% vegetables and 25% tuna. George had specifically warned us to not eat the vegetables in Cape Coast, because you never know about the water. And we had all heard many times that you should NEVER eat lettuce in a country that has questionable water, cuz it soaks up everything it's watered with. We proceeded to spend the next half hour trying to pick out minuscule bites of tuna around all the lettuce. I think I probably ate about one normal size bite of tuna total, the whole meal! I did eat all of my french fries, though! We finally gave up and just ate clif bars and hung out outside on the veranda for a little bit chatting. John never did come down and ended up just sleeping the rest of the night. Turns out he was really sick for the rest of our trip. :-(
Well, I don't want to bore you anymore with drawn-out tuna fish stories....so moving right along! ;-)
Wednesday morning dawned, our last day in Ghana! I was kinda sad and just trying not to think about it the whole day. We did get to do some exciting sight-seeing stuff though! We toured King George's Castle, where the Portuguese, Dutch, and British all used to trade slaves. :-( It was very sad to hear the history, but so interesting at the same time! I had never been in a real castle before, and this one was right on the ocean, and had a mote and drawbridge!! It was also over 500 years old...built in 1482!! Before Columbus even discovered America! That's pretty crazy to think about. I guess Obama and his wife had visited there just a few months ago, which all of the Ghanaians seemed pretty excited about! lol.
After the castle, we got to go on a canopy walk through the jungle, which was just about one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life!!! At some points, we were as much as 40 meters above the jungle floor! I was hoping to see a monkey, but that didn't happen. :-( Here's a picture of the awesomeness though!
Going through customs in Accra went really smoothly. Our flight back to Atlanta was actually 12 hours long!! But luckily this time I was able to sleep much more, thanks to advil pm. :-) It was bittersweet to be leaving. I didn't want to leave the team and the kids and the fun times and new experiences, but was excited to see everyone back home again. There were also some things I was returning to back home that I was quite scared and apprehensive to return to. (mostly the lack of a job...)
Well, that's about all I've got for now....and it's so long the chances of you reading the whole thing are pretty slim! But I guess if you're here, thank you for putting up with the novel, and traveling with me on my adventures in Ghana!! I am so thankful to you for your support. I hope to write more in the next few days about my process of reflecting upon arriving back to the States.
In the mean time, here are some praises/prayer requests:
Praises:
*Safe travels
*Good health
*New friendships formed
*Changed perspective
Prayer Requests:
*Continue to see how God wants to grow me through this experience
*Guidance in setting up a sharing night and that God would give me the words He wants me to share!
*For continual connections in Ghana for eMi, and for John to find a few more volunteers to help set up the West Africa office
*Boldness in sharing the gospel when people ask me about my experiences in Ghana
Love the "novel," probably not what you were going for, but I laughed nearly the whole time, still can't get over our first night in Joska lodge...
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