Quick side note about George: When I had heard that we were going to have a Ghanaian on our team, I really didn't know what to expect. A big focus of our orientation week was how to prepare for cultural differences on our project trip. We talked about how different and difficult it might be to work with nationals, so as I prepared to work with George I tried to be ready for anything. When we met George and started working with him I was so pleasantly surprised. First off, he's just a really great guy! He and his wife Joyce were both great, so fun and a real picture of Ghanaian hospitality, so good to us the whole time we were there! Also though, during the project it was great to have George's insight and expertise on the trip. He was able to foresee problems we never would have thought of and was able to work with local officials comfortably in a way we never would have been able to as foreigners. Also, I've got a pretty sweet story about George's experience with heart change on our team over the week, look for that in the next post!
Anyway, during the day Monday our group split up for a little while-Nick and John went to see the construction of George's new house and test his water there while Becca and I hung out at a school that George's mother-in-law headmasters. After we hung out with Joyce's mom and enjoyed some fried plantain and peanuts (so good!) we visited a class of kids for a little while and sang with them. Becca was in her element as I tagged along and was honestly a little overwhelmed by so many kids, but she handled it like a champ. After we met back up with the guys we headed back into Accra for the evening for an info session for area engineers and architects to hear more about how they could get involved with EMI. George had set this up for us before we got to Ghana and we had announced in on the radio the first day we were in Ghana and again Monday morning. The session went so well! We were a little nervous about how much interest there was going to be, but by the end of the night we realized there was no reason to be nervous. The room that was reserved for the event was full and while we mingled with everyone after John gave a quick overview of EMI and answered all the questions people had, everyone we talked to seemed really excited about the potential to volunteer on upcoming projects like George did with us! (Up to date update: John has gotten so many call and emails from people who were at this meeting since we've gotten back! He said he will definitely have a couple of them on his next team this fall and many more in future projects.)
Tuesday morning we went with John to some meetings for his next project. A couple of the meetings were just outside Accra and then the other one was a while up the coast at a children's home. The home was very similar to what we designed for the Jesse Brooks Foundation, except on a much larger scale. It was really encouraging to see a children's home like the one Chris and Tammy envisioned for their own ministry done well, I hope that next time they come back to Ghana they can visit it.
After we walked around that children's home site, our work was officially done! Because the children's home that we had driven to was already pretty far up the coast, we decided not to go back to Accra for the night, but instead we drove a little longer to spend the evening in Cape Coast to relax for our last night in Ghana.
The next day (Wednesday) we planned to just sight see a little near Cape Coast and then head back to Accra to fly out that night. To start the day off we went to Elmina, just a couple minutes from Cape Coast, to visit St. George's Castle. The castle was built in 1482 and is the oldest European structure in Sub-Saharan Africa-sweet. The castle was also built as a trading post and used for most of its life as one of Africa's primary slave trading posts, not sweet, actually pretty heavy. I'm honestly a little unsure of what to say about this, it really was an amazing experience, but amazing in so many ways, very few of them being fun. The way the slaves were treated, the quarters they were forced into, and the conditions of torture and rape they dealt with daily were unimaginable. The whole time that Nick, Becca, and I were being led on a tour of the castle with a guide who worked there, I just kept thinking, "how does this guy give this tour every day?" Seriously, could you imagine being a Ghanaian, knowing that years ago if you lived in the same place you would be living in fear of foreign invaders who threaten every day to capture you and hold you as a prisoner in the worst conditions possible, before they ship you off on a crowded ship around the world, to a destination you may or may not live to see, to be traded like an animal as a slave to someone who is superior to you simply because of where they were born? But, really, the hardest part of this experience for me was the fact that the Christian church had so readily married itself to the practice. The Portuguese Church sat right in the middle of the castle's courtyard and doubled as the slave presentation/bargaining area, while the Dutch church was nestled conveniently above the female slaves' dungeons, and the missionaries' quarters were spread all over the second floor. I know the Church exists in a fallen world and as humans we mess up a lot, but how did fathers get this so wrong? I really am thankful for this experience, as challenging as it was, I know that in some small way it shaped me and I'm going to continue to process and learn from it.
Happily, our second destination of the day was a little less intense and a lot more fun. We went to a canopy walk at Kakum National Park. The canopy walk is a series of 7 rope bridges suspended between 8 trees, overlooking sweet jungle reserve! As you walk almost a quarter of a mile you are at times 40 meters (about 130 ft) above the ground. You can see tops over huge trees and walk between amazing Baobab trees! Sometimes you can see moneys (sadly we didn't), but it was soo cool anyway!
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| Becca, Nick and me chillin on one of the stops between bridges! |
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| Becca having fun on one of the bridges :) |
Also, because I can, while we were in the Atlanta airport waiting for our flight to Denver, I met Richard Blais! I know that means nothing to probably 90% of people reading, but he is my favorite, and realisitcally the best, chef to ever be on Top Chef (my favorite show!) and he won last season's "Top Chef: All-Stars" it was fun and I got a picture with him (huge shout-out to Miss Becca Agee for indulging me and taking this pic), so I'm sharing shamelessly :)
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