This past Sunday, we had the wonderful opportunity to visit the village of Adenkrebi, meet the chief and discuss possibilities for future projects together. The Calvin College students will be spending one week of their lives in Ghana living in the village and learning about the life of the people there.
The village is situated high above the city of Accra, as you can see in this picture here with Accra in the distance. That's Charles Prempeh (my grad assistant), Julia, Sam and Daniel Okwbi in the photo. Daniel is the liaison to our relationship with the village of Adenkrebi where there are some 30 households living together in community. It is a Christian village with the people attending different churches, but this church was built by Presbyterian missionaries and it still stands and is still used, although now the pastor of this church is a Ghanaian man. I didn't have the chance to meet him on this visit, but hope to in the future. We did have the chance to meet many of the people in the village and see the beauty of the community.
Adenkrebi is a village situated in the Ga district are of Accra and reveals just how rural living in the city can actually be. The road to Adenkrebi is a tiny dirt road pitted with loads of holes, so travel there is difficult, but the Calvin students will be able to be a part of the community because of the generosity of spirit of Daniel Okwbi who is working very hard on building our relationship with this village. We are also hopeful that we will be able to install some safe water filters in the thirty some homes in the village as part of the Safe Water Ghana project that two of the students will be working on this fall.
We had the chance to meet with the acting chief of the village who allowed/asked for my picture to be taken with him. He offered us his welcome and asked that we continue to carefully develop our relationship with the village so that the students would have a chance to both learn and serve in the community. As a gesture of good will, he invited me to come and sit next to him, which was fascinating and I enjoyed listening to his knowledge and wisdom of his community.
This photo is of me with the chief, discussing our the Calvin College relationship with the village.
Below are a few of the beautiful children of the village who asked me to take their picture and then posed theatrically for me, much to my delighted surprise!
And here are me and my daughter Julia just enjoying our time at this beautiful village above the city. Up there the air is temperate and cool and you can see the the pure joy of the Ghanaian people in their way of life.
Adenkrebi is a very peaceful village. I had the opportunity to visit the place, fell in love with the village and promised to go there again - this time, with a purpose!!!
ReplyDeleteI beg to disagree with the above comments. Yes Adenkrebi used to be a peaceful place until they murdered Nii Kwartei Quartey, a prominent person from that village. As a matter of fact the man I supposed Dr. Sandberg is sitting with in the photograph and few others were accused of his murder and spent sometime in police jail with the other accused persons. My heart bleeds to see you innocently sit down and take pictures with such a person.
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