Our trip to Ghana is less than a week away.  When I close my eyes, the smiles and aromas of Africa slowly return.

Emily and Paul were with us on our last adventure, and oh how we wish this
was another family trip.  From our first day to the last evening in Ghana it was trip filled with joy.  Looking though the photo album, my pulse begins to quicken with anticipation. Africa!

Tempering my excitement is the very real work ahead for Beth and I.  We have but a few days to complete packing and preparing — audio recording equipment for the Komba villages we will be visiting, satellite maps to help aid in some of the navigation, camping supplies (food, stove, mosquito netting, etc.), software toolchains for editing the Komba praise songs and stories and loading them onto the solar-powered BIBLEplus units, planning field tests for the water filtration units, and of course preparing Emily and Paul for our absence.  We are naturally concerned about what could happen while Beth and I are on the other side of the planet, however, our preparations reveal two important lessons: our illusion of control is self-inflicted and God has blessed us with wonderful children.

So, we prepare both our hearts and our gear.  As is our custom, we have set up “the packing table” in our kitchen, and begin to slowly accumulate all the pieces… passports, visas, yellow-fever vaccination cards, camera gear, and of course my headlight :-)  Africa!  We hear your joyful songs and rumbling drums.  We are coming.

Wow…after so many months of planning and preparing for our trip to Ghana, the day has arrived! We pickup Emily after her last class today at Wheaton College, and head right from there to the airport.  We have an 8 1/2 hour flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany; 4 1/2 hour layover; and finally a 7 hour flight to Accra.  Unfortunately, the direct flight from Washington DC we took two years ago with our kids and the OneWay team has been discontinued :-(  We will arrive in Accra (the capital city which is in the south) at 7:40pm on Saturday night (That’s 1:40 PM Chicago time).  Ray has already driven the truck to Northern Ghana to do some training there before we arrive. So, Jeff Korum (OneWay Africa board member) will be picking us up at the airport, and then taking us back after church on Sunday to catch a flight to Tamale (one of the larger cities in the north).  Ray will pick us up in Tamale, and then the adventure begins…

Pete and I fell in love on a mission trip to Bolivia 29 years ago (1984)!  We still love mission trips and each other :-) Pete always manages to make an adventure of every trip we take. I love that!  In Bolivia we built playground equipment for the local children.  As you can imagine, it was great fun!

Pete also encourages a “rule of 3” as a general packing plan. That means you only need 3 of any piece of clothing:  one to wear, one to wash, one for backup. He uses this rule whether the trip is one week or one month. It comes in handy for backpacking trips where you carry all the weight on your back, but Emily finds the lack of variety of clothing somewhat confining. I like its simplicity, but I don’t have much fashion sense.

So, here we come Africa! We look forward to spending time with our dear friend Ray Mensah, as well as working with the Konkomba people to record Bible stories, worship songs, community health information and perhaps even the Gospel of Luke in the Komba language which was recently received from our friends at Lutheran Bible Translators! We are also setting up one of the inexpensive gravity-fed water filters in Ray’s house for testing.  Please pray for our health and safety, our kids while we are gone, and also for Ray as he prepares the schedule for the recordings taking place next week.

A note from Pete:

From the maps and information we have, we may be without Internet for 5 or 6 days.  I’ve once again borrowed Rick and Deb’s SPOT locator beacon.  When it gets satellite coverage, we can send short 41 character messages.  I’ve written a procmail and perl script that will post the SPOT messages directly here to the blog.  HOWEVER… the coverage map for Ghana is very very poor (possibly non-existent):

So, we hope to be blogging even from the remote villages, but with only 41 characters at a time.  Short and sweet. Of course, if the SPOT beacon can’t find a satellite, don’t worry, we will update everyone when we get back online.

Not much more to say right now….. Exhausted and taking a shower and heading to bed.  Almost 11pm here.  What a change, from cold toes and chapped lips to hot, sticky, and dizzy.   The Korums are fantastic hosts.  Tomorrow we get up early for African church… the best kind ever.  I’ll try and bring back some pictures.  More details then…

-Pete

A long day it way.  Successful in every way, but long.  Last night we collapsed on our bed under the chit chit chit of the ceiling fan. We slept well. The deep sleep of a destination accomplished.

In the morning we attended Church.  I apologize for not getting fantastic pictures from church, but I only had my SLR with me, and decided the service was not loud enough to cover my loud camera.  I promise I’ll get some in the villages. But you can use your imagination… brightly colored dresses, little kids with tightly braided hair, some of the men in what looks like batik PJs. I think Beth agrees I need some :-)

The flight just after noon to Tamale was mostly uneventful, but the rookie pilot had trouble with the landing.  Ray wore a fantasticly large grin as he picked us up with his new 4×4. He is excited to have us visiting for a week, and our schedule is packed in Ray-style sun-up to sun-down action.  I’m already looking forward to our day off in Lisbon on the way back home :-)

  This area of northern Ghana is hot and dry. Termite mounds and round mud huts dot the countryside. Ray explained that the weather was ideal right now, and would be hotter in two months. I get lightheaded just thinking about it.

After dropping off most of our gear at the guest house, we headed to a local radio station.  A very friendly man there named Thomas had some praise music in one of the local languages: Dagbani.  We will use it for the audio players, but really want the language Komba or Konkomba, which are the dialects used by the Konkomba people.  However, Ray has arranged for local singers, drummers, and everything once we make it up even further north and east.  Thomas promised to start looking for Konkomba music and will contact Ray if he finds any.

Here is a 1 minute sample of the music we received from Thomas:

dagbani worhip music

With our radio station visit such a quick and short success, we took the opportunity to drive and meet a couple of Ray’s friends, and evaluate some of the local accomodations if a large 20 person team were to some day head up here.  We also dropped in a small market and bought food supplies.  The local diet here consists of a lot of seasoned rice, sometimes with fish or chicken.  However, up here in Tamale, we see a lot of goats too… wandering the neighborhoods and along the streets.  We drove past a local sidewalk butcher was preparing a sale. No photos or descriptions supplied. I’m guessing before this trip is over we will be offered goat meat.  Hmmm, maybe the kababs we had for dinner were goat?

Anyway, a very full day.  Tomorrow we drive to Yendi.  Ray wanted us to be ready by 5:00am, but watching our shocked look, he offered 6:00. We countered with 7:00 :-) Tomorrow we dive into real recordings and video.  It will be a treat to hear their music and prepare the audio for loading up on the solar powered digital players that will eventually have songs, stories, and parts of the bible for the Komba people.  Once up at Ray’s house, I’ll spend some time working on the trial water filter, which we hope can be distributed in the same fashion to the Komba people.

We will (try) to keep you posted….

-Pete

I’m trying this text message first, and if it works, I hope to add some pictures later. We are on the very very edge of cell connectivity, north of Yendi. We a litte tree climbing, the MiFi can get a bit of signal. I’m on the ground with my laptop :-)

By 7:30 we were on the road, driving to Yendi. We shared the road with bicycles, motorbikes, and massive trucks straining at the load of people and goods. Villages along the way had erected their own speed bumps, made from rocks, logs, clay.

A few kilometers north of Yendi, we dropped off 1/2 of our gear at a small catholic training center and guest house that has been here more than 50 years. They were very friendly, and we explored the accomodations and met a group of about 20 local pastors on a training retreat. It could make a convenient base camp for visiting groups.

The blacktop ends here at Yendi. Clouds of red dust roll and swirl behind our 4×4 as we bump along the road north into Komba-land. Ray puts the Wheaton Gospel Choir into the CD. Small subsistence farms line the road. Yam fields are easily identified by the 1ft high mounds of dirt under which the yams grow. It is a vital staple here. Along-side the road, small stacks of the hard, dense tuber are for sale. In the small villages, extended families often live in small mud huts with thatched roofs arranged into a semi-circle, with chest-high walls connecting the huts.

Living here is hard work, and during the dry season, it appears to revolve around water. Many of the villages have wells, and women in colorful dresses or t-shirts and skirts are perpetually gathering water. 5 gallon buckets are hefted up to their heads and carried back to their homes. Sometimes tiny brown feet can be seen peeking out of bundles on their mom’s back. The smallest kids are toted around while mom works. Older kids entertain themselves if they are not in school. Toys can be invented from nearly anything. A small loop of barbed wire can be chased down the road with a stick; a cardboard box can be dragged while running; and old oil barrel can be used as a teeter-totter.

In Zamashegu we met Pastor Paul and cought a glimpse of Ray’s home. We also explored the building we will set up and use for recording. There is a small medical outpost run by a couple nurses who received two years of training in Tamale. They ride motorbikes to the surrounding villages vaccinating children. A recent measles outbreak in a nearby village had nurse Suzie particularly busy. The nurses have offered us a small unused building to use as our recording studio.

Without much delay, we hopped back into the truck and headed further north, toward a village whose name I forgot to write down. There, we visit a small group of pastors to make arrangements. They welcomed us for a minute or two, then Ray proclaimed “we come in peace; we have no bad news”. Ray noticed our puzzled look. He explained that it is tradition that after being welcomed, you clearly state your purpose. After some discussion, we agreed to return on Wednesday to record one of the pastors reading Luke in Komba. Excellent!

Before leaving the village, we pick up three other friends of Pastor Paul, who we will record singing and telling their stories. On the way back to Zamashegu, someone had to ride in the back of the truck, in the red dust. I volunteered, but they would have none of it. Instead, I took my turn driving as the sun slowly colored the grasses and huts a wonderful amber.

So… it is time to head to breakfast. I woke up to the sound of drums in the distance…. at about 3:30am. They continued until daybreak. Pray for a productive day.