We hear the call of Mother Africa. Joyful voices sing out in spectacular harmony. We can imagine the laughs, the drums, the honking of minibuses. We prepare. This will be Beth’s first trip to Africa and Paul’s first trip to the sub-Saharan continent. We leave Friday, full of excitement, loaded with toys and activities for the local schools we will visit, and ready to help.

-Pete

 

We are on the road. Special thanks to Joanie Catlett for the lift to the airport. First flight to Washington DC, then the connection to Accra. Paul is slinging a djembe drum with a custom cover through the airport.  I invented the cover late late last night, using a tupperware tub lid, bungies, and foam.  What else?.

Cutting the malaria pill to 3/4ths dose for Paul, with a plastic knife :-)

(Emily’s Post)

So I’m sitting in bed, going in and out of stages of adrenaline-fed excitement and complete exhaustion, the computer resting on my rock-solid pillow. But hey, after today there is no doubt in my mind that I will sleep well tonight.

It’s hard to believe that about 30 hours ago I was blindly drifting through my last day of high school (wooo! Just one final exam and 2 papers left to go!… haha). With a half day of school on Friday and home by 12:30, I threw some clothes in my backpack and we headed to the airport. The fact that our family starts a prelim pack for Africa at midnight the night before and then finishes the bulk of it a couple hours from leaving the house is a pretty great picture of our travel mentality hah. So, after an uneventful flight to D.C., we enjoyed a scrumptious dinner at Potbelly’s and prepared to board the flight to Accra, Ghana. Of course the gate wasn’t too hard to find considering it was more than half Africans who were gathered, and I began to get excited just being around them. I know this is a pretty broad statement, but I love African people… there is just this relaxed, friendly, and fun atmosphere that is such a joy to be around.

I don’t think anyone would say that any flight over 9 hours is fun, but especially not when the plane is 100 degrees as you’re boarding (yes, that is a bit of an exaggeration hah), the plug for your earphones doesn’t work and the only good movie anyways is Finding Nemo, your brother has a migraine, and it is a redeye flight where they turn off the lights (and you feel bad turning on your personal light when everyone around you is trying to sleep) so all you can do is sit painfully in the same position for 11 hours straight, wishing you could sleep and nodding off every one in a while only to wake up in more pain than before. But now that I have you wondering if I even think its worth it to get to Africa, I would like to say that the moment the plane touches solid ground, I forget about the pain of the flight and am filled with joy for not only the fun experiences I know we will have, but for the work of God I will witness and the growth He will spur on in all of us through this trip.

So yes, there were some difficulties getting through customs, but being greeted by Jim, Michael, and the whole Mensah family as we stepped out into the humid (but surprisingly cool, considering our expectations) air, we quickly forgot our troubles. After a very bumpy ride to our guest apartments, they realized that our key was with a group who had gone to lunch about 2 hours ago and were still waiting for their food… oh African time ha. While waiting for them to return though, we had fun playing candy land, blowing bubbles, and playing our djembe with the Mensah kids—Joseph, age 5 and Essie (not quite sure on the spelling), age 9. Once the rest of the team arrived, along with some missionary friends of Michael who have a daughter about the same age as Hannah, we moved into our apartments living room just to hang out for a while. My mom was very excited to learn that the father in the missionary family went to the same high school has her and was a year ahead. The small world became even smaller as they realized they had lived one street away from each other.

With our stomachs starting to grumble since our last meal was the light airplane breakfast, the whole crew headed out to the mall where we had some chicken, french-fries, an interesting salad thing, and some rolls for dinner. Even though the name of the restaurant was different, it was exactly like a restaurant called Nando’s that our group ate at every day while in Botswana. After a bit of grocery shopping for breakfast foods for the week, we were half rocked to sleep, half jolted awake by the crazy road home. So, I guess it’s time for bed now and as my dad just said to me, “it’s nice to be here in Africa and feel so at home.” I couldn’t agree more. We go to bed excited for tomorrow’s church service and the incredible singing and dancing we know we will either eagerly jump into or unwillingly be pulled into :).

-emily

 

(from pete)

Wow, another great day.  We started the day with a Sunday morning church service.  The church does not yet have a building, so they are meeting in a hotel.  Women and men in brightly colored African fabrics streamed into the grand ball room where folding chairs were arranged and a powerful sound system set up.  This is Africa, and volume is an important part of worship.  We sensed the excitement as the keyboard and drummer started playing and the choir started swaying.  There is absolutely no way to describe an African church service, other than to say even no matter what your musical heritage, it’s impossible not to start smiling while you involuntarily clap and bob with the music.

African services are not short, but with the great music and interactive service, two hours flew by.  After the service we loaded up and head for an extended lunch.  Michael Thompson met up with some old friends and we cooled off with soda and then African pizzas — with spicy chicken, sausage of some sort, and veggie.  We also took the time to make some plans for the trip to the orphanage tomorrow.  I think Jim and I will be helping them with some IT and technical planning (but we shall see) and the rest of the gang will see if they can help out in other ways.

In the evening we had a fantastic treat… Ray’s family cooked us a wonderful Ghanaian feast.  We had dinner outside, under the nearly full moon with misty clouds  glowing overhead.  We enjoyed Fufu (made of the cassava root beat into a sticky white starch that is combined with a fish soup), fried yams and plantains, and rice with a spicy sauce.  For desert we enjoyed some local ice cream with watermelon and pineapple.  Wow.  A most wonderful feast.

Back our guest house we finished off the evening with our own little worship and prayer session.  Hannah played guitar and Paul djembe.  It’s 1:00am, and time for bed, we will have another full day tomorrow at the orphanage.

-Pete

Hey this is Paul, I’m kind of the amateur blogger in this family, but you’re just going to have to deal with it. So yeah, we got up this morning and headed to check out the place where the choir is going to be staying. It. Was. Hot. Like really hot. Like swimming in salsa hot. Like the middle of summer in Africa hot. Oh wait. That doesn’t really work :p . Anyway, it was hot.  And after checking out the guest house we went to the Agape orphanage.  We brought some soccer balls, which was possibly the best idea in the history of the universe. Starting with 3 kids outside, bringing out the soccer balls quickly grew the group to about 30 kids, who of course really enjoyed our games. I played hard for about an hour. Some of these kids were super intense. I had some serious trouble keeping up. Some kids introduced themselves, but the only one I remember is Jeff (its a lot easier to remember Jeff than Ouagadougou. But I still felt really bad that I was totally clueless). Some kids taught me the game ‘ya-so’ (which basically consisted of them pummeling me in the goal). And I learned that juggling in soccer is called ‘tatis’ (the spellings are approximate from what I heard them say, so don’t quote me on it). After an hour of craziness, Hannah whipped out the guitar and we did some songs. One kid came over and basically took the drum from me, but he was pretty good. The kids doing the crazy hand motions was pretty much priceless to watch. Way too soon it was time to go, and I can’t wait for Friday when we go back to the same orphanage. We went to get some lunch then came back to the hotel. Greeeeeeeaaaaattttt day.

-Paul

(From Emily)

Day two and we are starting to get into the rhythm of Ghana: wake up around 7:30 (or 5 on the a village visit day…. Yay! hah), take a quick, semi-cold shower that seems almost pointless as you begin to sweat just trying to get your clothes on after, eat some cereal from the smallest little tupperware bowl you’ve ever seen, be outside and ready to hop on the bus about 15 minutes after the appointed time, drive (most likely… Since I think we made about 3 unplanned stops today) to the planned destination through a maze of bumpy, muddy paths, cleanly paved roads, and plenty of traffic, step out of the van into some pretty blazing heat, only to wish we had brought more water for the day, smile until you forget about the suffocating heat as you play with the little kids, realize it is way past lunch time and start thinking about maybe getting something to eat, have some kind of dish including chicken, along with a coke, visit the mall sometime in the day.. either for groceries or a meal, do a bit of planning, prayer, and worship back at the apartments, write and post a blog, and around 12….or 1…finally head to our saggy mattresses and hard pillows (but oh how inviting they are!).

Well I hope you made it alright through that huge run-on sentence haha :]. We are excited for our first real, planned (well.. The age and number of kids is unknown, but spontaneity is our middle name ;] ) visit to help at a school tomorrow!… hopefully including a Daniel in the lion’s den story with paper plate lion masks they will make, gospel bead bracelets, plenty of songs with crazy hand motions, sharks and minnows but with lions and antelopes, and no doubt lots and lots of pictures.

-Emily

(From Pete)

One of the classrooms at the orphanage that we visited was the second grade class.  They were fantastic!  The recited this wonderfully long poem for us.  They work hard on math, and every year the best kid in the class is crowned “King Zero” for being the absolute best in math.  I asked the class who would be King Zero this year, and each one of them shot up their hands accompanied by a big smile.  It is exciting to think about the possibilities these orphans have here.  Later, on the soccer field, we caught up with last year’s King Zero, or I guess, the reigning King of 2nd grade math.  Fun!

Jim and I were shown the Computer Room.  There were 8 computers and gear, none of it plugged in, and much of it reported to not work.  They wanted to see what we could do :-)  Oh my… Windows95, WindowsXP, and IDE CDROMs that don’t work and need better drivers.  Jim and I decided some triage was required.  We matched up cables computers and tried to test every unit.  Three generations of keyboard connector was represented… old style original IBM PC (the round plug the size of your thumb), the PS/2 keyboard (round, the size of a pencil), and USB.  We scrounged through things, with the triage yielding 4 that were seriously wounded or dead.  One had a note taped to it reading “spoiled motherboard”.  We packed all the broken ones into the van and they are sitting next to me, begging for attention.  But it’s 12:15am, and we have an early start — so Paul and I will disassemble tomorrow.

-Pete