It is a world away. Africa. This will be our 4th trip to Ghana, and while I feel pretty comfortable traveling to Africa, the preparations for this trip have been staggering. High quality microphones, lithium batteries, food, first aid kits, software, cameras, tripods, mosquito nets, soccer balls, kick balls, toys, and the list goes on. We have spent months preparing, and suddenly, later today we will be on flights to Accra.

Of course, the trip started with a pre-adventure. I can’t think of any other trip I’ve led that started with an adventure before the adventure. We were initially scheduled to depart in January. But on January 2nd I was admitted to the hospital with a rather serious blood infection, and despite my careful and detailed instructions to the doctors and nurses that I needed to be on a plane in two weeks, our plans changed. My African shirt brought smiles to the cardiac ward, but didn’t seem to adjust the speed of my antibiotic drip.

The USA Team:

Before we dive into plans, agendas, and goals, we should stop and take a break for introductions (oldest to youngest :-)

Beth Beckman: Beth works for OWM as the Africa partner coordinator. She works with Ray Mensah, a Ghanaian who lives in Accra. He is the director of the African work. Beth has been working for years leading the effort to develop and distribute the Kamba-Language Bible audio players and coordinate the deployment of clean water filters.

Pete Beckman: I’m the team lead, responsible for health and safety, technology, crazy 4×4 driving, perl scripts, lead photographer, and cooking. For this trip, I’m known mostly as Beth’s husband. I occasionally smuggle botfly larvae back to the USA.

Laura Van Huis: Chief Fun Officer. Laura lived in Ghana for two years — but that was 20 years ago. This will be her first time back, and I’m guessing it will be hard to recognize Accra. Laura is the mom to five kids, two of whom attend NCA, where Laura also helps teach occasionally.

Emily Van Huis: Emily is a Junior in high school at NCA. She spends leads the children’s choir at church and teaches them to sing with gusto and hand motions, plays in piano in competitions, and runs the sound board and video system during church services. She will be helping me with the recordings.

The Plan:

We depart Thursday, arrive Friday afternoon in Accra, Ghana, and on Saturday morning we jet off to the northernmost regions of Ghana. So after almost 3 days of travel we will be in Tamale, where Ray will meet us. We will crowd into his silver pickup truck, and within moments it will be covered in red dust and mud as we drive unpaved roads to destinations even further north, where we will have eight days.

The northern regions of Ghana are home to many different tribes and languages. We have been working with a group known as the Komba. If you want to see some pictures of the beautiful and friendly Komba people, here are some from the last trip: Photo-1, Photo-2. My favorite from the previous trip is this one.

In addition to just spending time with our Komba friends, checking up on the clean water filters, and checking on how the solar-powered audio players are holding up, we will be recording more audio. The solar-powered audio players that Ray distributes in the remote villages has a Komba version of the New Testament, Bible stories, local choirs, and community health information. Recording the local African choirs has been a highlight for me on these trips. The choirs generally write their own lyrics, and use the caller/response form of singing, with the director singing a verse, and then the choir jumping in and responding. The choir from Kpatinga was simply spectacular. The recording had a fantastic natural reverb from being inside an cement-floor church with a corrugated steel roof. Here is one of their songs:

The two new languages that we will start recording are Mampruli, which is spoken by the Mamprusi people, and Dagbani, which is spoken by the Dagomba people. These languages are similar, but distinct from Komba.

Logistics:

While we are in the remote northern regions of Ghana, we will be staying in “guest houses”. Some are more equipped than others, but we hope that we are close enough to a larger city at times during the trip that we can get Internet and share blog posts and pictures. However, if you don’t hear from us, please don’t despair. Tech in that part of the world is fragile, and sometimes, even when I drive aimless around in the dark holding a cell modem on the roof of the truck, I can’t find a signal.

We have brought some food along for the trip. Beth dehydrated some backpacking food (green curry (yum!)), spaghetti sauce, etc. My camping stove should see some action. While the northern regions are quite fertile and have plenty of locally grown food, preparing food safely so weak-stomached white people can avoid illness can be a challenge. One of the guest houses has a cook, and on our last trip I spent some time helping the cook understand our extraordinarily poor constitutions, and how food needed to be peeled, boiled or fried. We can’t eat greens washed in their local water. When we are staying at the guest house in Walewale, we will be cooking our own meals.

My Kryptonite is extreme heat. What more can I say. The heat will challenge me.

-Pete