Hooting at Hunger

Homowo Festival and Accra Orientation

Last Saturday, August 20, we visited the Homowo Festival in the Grand Rapids Sister City of Ga West, specifically Amasamadan. Homowo means “hooting at hunger” in the Ga language and is a festival that celebrates the end of a great famine. Every year, in the month of August (usually the last two weeks) this festival is celebrating with a tribal procession, led by the village or district chief. He sprinkles a ceremonial mixture of maize and oils around the village, signifying the end of hunger because now we may “spill food on the ground.” And this ceremonial sprinkling ends at the village cemetery where the ancestors are also fed this special mixture by placing it on their graves. You can see the excitement and joy in the procession in the photos.

One element that was wonderful about the procession is how the people of the village embraced us and became friends with us, holding our hands and teaching us to dance and to “hoot at hunger” with them.

After this, a shaman performs a ritual re-enactment of the famine story and then there is a second procession of the chief and queen mothers entering for a grand Durbar of speeches, ending in a feast.

And then, I just fell in love with this dress and hat ensemble! Splendid!

We met the chief and the mayor and the queen mothers and many more chiefs from surrounding villages. It was so much fun! One of my favorite moments is when we left to go visit the mayor, who was supposed to be speaking, and we found him still in his office, holding up the entire day's events! He welcomed us, gave us cokes and fantas to drink, sat with us, took a photograph and THEN he finally went to the Durbar to give his speech. It was quite the fiasco!

The following day, we toured the city of Accra: Makola Market, the Bus station, the National Museum, the Cultural Center, James Town, the Jaynii Beach Foundation which supports local homeless children in a shelter, and ended with a lovely group dinner in Labadi Beach. Here are some photos of that journey too!

Eating with one hand

“After suffering starvation, eat with only one hand.”

As I’ve mentioned before, Charles Prempeh, our graduate student assistant on the Ghana Semester, is full of so much knowledge about the culture here. We are extremely blessed by him. He doesn’t know the North of the country well, so we will take another Northern guide along with us on that trip. Anyway, Charles knows many Ghanaian proverbs, including the title of this blog entry:

“After suffering starvation, eat with only one hand.”

You think about the meaning of that for yourself, but I was thinking about it in terms of the spiritual retreat we just took the students on to the Akrofi Christaller Institute in Akropong, which is situated in the hills above Accra.

On our way to Akropong we stopped at the Aburi Botanical Gardens – learning about all of the incredible plant life that is in this country. These are just a few of the photos we took there (you can see all of them on our Facebook page Calvin Ghana Semester). My favorite plant of all was the nutmeg as seen here. Such an incredible piece of God’s creation! And so tasty in Apple pie! (I’ve promised the students I would eventually make Apple pie while we’re here).

It was a beautiful three day retreat where we spend the first evening learning about the Institute itself and the history of the Presbyterian missions in Ghana. The institute was founded by one of these missionaries who began a long legacy of Christianity in the country. Now the institute is a theology school, giving out masters and Ph.D. degrees focusing on the study of African Christianity. And it’s just a wonderful place to visit, so if you ever have the chance…..!

After our first night and a bit of a battle to get water in our hostel so that we could all bathe, we awoke the next morning to spend the day learning about Ghanaian customs and worship, Christian Islamic relations in Ghana, and many of the underlying ideas about the concept of indigenous worship mixing with Christianity, which is a major feature of African Christianity. We also watched this wonderful documentary about African Christianity by James Alt. It hasn’t been released yet, but I hope he does it soon so that the rest of the world can see what ‘s happening in Africa with the spread of the gospel! Such exciting stuff…wish everyone could see it!

On Friday we spent the entire day hiking and basking in Boti Falls where the students bravely swam in the water and took an incredibly strenuous hike up to Umbrella rock. Take a look at some of these wonderful photos!

We returned to Legon and spent the evening on our own.

One of the things we created on our journey is a group covenant. Each person’s hand is on the convenant, outlined there with personal symbols, and we committed together to things like taking risks together, supporting patience and piece, learning and developing our spiritual disciplines together, and making sure that we don’t allow technology to dominate our lives while we are in Ghana. Together we prayed over the covenant and dedicated ourselves to it and we ask for your prayers as we continue our journey together.

Here’s a picture of the covenant we created first back at my home in Grand Rapids last May and we finished it up in Akropong.

We are full of new life here, and trying to eat with only one hand, taking in this culture bit by bit because it can become overwhelming at times!

Orienting ourselves to Ghana

On our first day of orientation, some of the students were feeling overwhelmed by their first night. I believe that jet lag and culture shock were the largest factors in this. It’s frightening to move into a new place thousands of miles away from home. At our group breakfast this morning, I read from Jean Vanier’s Becoming Human, the following excerpt:

“An Individualism that manifests itself in doing things alone, in being concerned only with one’s own interests and glory, one’s own growth towards autonomy, competence, and power, is the antithesis of belonging Such an individualism can grow out of anger towards an oppressive belonging, a demand to conform within a too-rigid group. It can come from a desire to become more fully oneself and to develop one’s potential and personal consciousness. It is easy to forget that the sense of belonging is a necessary mediation between an individual and society. It is, above all, necessary to help us in our growth towards maturity and freedom. Belonging is the fulcrum point for the individual between asense of self and a sense of society. It is the rock on which we stand, in security, knowing who we are, capable of inner growth as we discover other realities born and developed in other groups and cultures.

Society is the place where we learn to develop our potential and become competent; where we work and receive a salary that allows us to live financially independently. It is the place where each can accomplish his or her mission, to work for justice, to struggle for peace, and to serve others.

Belonging, on the other hand, is the place where we can find a certain emotional security. It is the place where we learn a lot about ourselves, our fears, our blockages, and our violence, as well as our capacity to give life; it is the place where we grown to appreciate others, to live with them, to share and work together, discovering each one’s gifts and weaknesses.”

I asked the group to help one another and to lay burdens on one another. We prayed. We ate breakfast together. We went to the International Programs office, and while we were waiting for the ID man to arrive to take our pictures and administer our IDs, the computer lab was accessed by students to send emails and get on FACEBOOK.

We spent about an hour there and took this photo from the atrium of the beautiful International programs building.

Then we went through listening about health, safety, and etiquette issues as well as some ideas about cross-cultural commun-ication in Ghana. All of it was inform ative, interesting and sometimes entertaining.

We then went on a tour of campus where the male members of our group had a bit of a tree-climbing competition in the beautiful row of trees at the top of campus, overlooking the city of Accra. James wins the monkey of the day contest for climbing the highest. And yes, they got down just fine. My daughter Julia joined in the fun too, but in a smaller tree!

After this we went on a brief bus tour of Accra, and after I realized I need to get the students down there on foot, which I will do next week when we find the time.

So…all is well.

The most important fact I learned today – malaria mosquitoes bite during the day too! So…now we get to wear repellent all day every day! Yippee!!

Every Meat has a touch of bitterness

Driving in Ghana is one of the most difficult challenges I have experienced since moving here. What’s amazing is that I’m trying to do it AT ALL! Many of the Ghanaians I know just think I’m crazy for not hiring a driver. Honestly, there’s a kind of sketchy ebb and flow to traffic here that I don’t mind in usual circumstances. I just deal with it….not so different from driving around in Los Angeles to tell the truth.

HOWEVER, the other day we were having just a beautiful day when we drove to Cape Coast in order to make a reservation and payment for the Calvin students to stay there and spend time at the national park and in the city of Cape Coast to attend a large festival.

Charles Prempeh (our fantastic grad assistant) traveled with us and the conversation was lively as we observed the roadside sellers of Kenkey, melons, vegetables, pineapples, and wild game. We took care of the reservation and even visited the University of Cape Coast where I met some of the theatre faculty and discussed the possibility of doing a Fulbright there with them in their small theatre department.

Here are roadside pictures of us eating coconut -- it was so good!

On the return home, we hit rush hour in Accra, which is NEVER a good thing. So, here we were stuck in the Obetsebi roundabout. This is what it looked like from the drivers’ seat:

So, then we were just sitting there and waiting and waiting to get our way through the tangled web of traffic in front of us. All of a sudden this large city bus just came up the side of us and scratched our entire side of the car and the tro tro in front of us! Just pushed and scraped his way through this roundabout! Absolutely crazy! Never seen anything like it in my life!

We got his license and reported him to the bus company who told me that they would “get back to me.” I doubt it, but I guess I felt a little better reporting it.

Charles, on the way home from this debacle, said well “every meat has a touch of bitterness.” Meaning, my beautiful stay in Ghana was now tinged with that edge of bitterness by this accident.

I’m laughing about it now. So…no worries. Moving on to our next interesting moment! And yes, I am going to keep driving.

The sweetness came back as we celebrated Sam's 17th birthday with spaghetti/meatballs and homemade chocolate cake made by our dear cook Charles Quansah. And here is Charles Prempeh eating his first spaghetti EVER! Plus Sam with his birthday cake and a gift of fabric from Charles.

Visiting Adenkrebi --- Calvin's sister village

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.

Our Ghana Refrigerator Adventure!

Since we’ve arrived in Ghana (me, Sam and Julia), we’ve had a few driving adventures – getting completely lost and ended up on the road to Tema by mistake, taking wrong turns every which way. But we have always ended up getting back on the right track. We have maps, of course, but in Ghana, maps don’t go far considering that street names are not posted ANYWHERE and you have to navigate completely by direction and landmarks. We are learning. Slowly. Slowly.

We have been incredibly blessed by the presence and friendship of my graduate assistant Charles Prempeh who is a masters student at the Institute of African Studies. The Calvin students will love this guy – he is so friendly. He calls himself a “Zanga boy” which basically means, as far as I can tell, that he has no fear and fights for justice wherever he sees injustice. He is my guide to Ghana and I really couldn’t have made it here without him so far. He’s taken me into parts of the city that I would never ordinarily see and he knows the city intimately, so when there’s traffic, he knows a shortcut. Thank God for him! We are truly blessed.

We experienced Charles Prempeh’s sense of adventure firsthand when he took us to buy a refrigerator on Wednesday. Now, when we arrived, the Calvin refrigerator was “finished” as the electrician told me because it should’ve been hooked up to a 2000 watt transistor to stabilize the power. SO, I told Charles about this and he said he would find out the best way to purchase me a new one.

On Wednesday morning he asked me if I was ready for a “tro tro” adventure. Tro Tro’s are the wacky mini-van public transportation system in Ghana where there is a driver and a mate who helps to navigate and gather passengers, collecting a small payment from each passenger. I must admit that I’ve never driven in a tro tro in Ghana, but I was ready! Sam, Julia, myself and Charles made our way by tro tro down to “37” which is a public transportation mecca and there we met a friend of his who owns a large taxi (large enough to transport a refrigerator) and his friend Naida who lives in the same community which Charles and is his childhood friend.

Naida and Charles have completely different faith backgrounds (she is Islamic and he is Christian) and yet they are the best of friends. They are a testament to the kind of religious tolerance that exists in this country.

Anyway, we then hopped on this taxi and drove down to the Accra Central Market where we could not find a parking place. So, the taxi would just circle, while we went to the electronics stores to buy a fridge. We checked prices and in a matter of twenty minutes had purchased a nice new fridge at a good price of about 1000 cedis, plus we bought a transistor to regulate the power. Now, the problem is that we had to find a way to transport the thing back to where the taxi would be waiting.

Charles tried to hire some guys with a cart, but they wanted to charge us 10 cedis to pull the refrigerator four blocks. Charles and Naida said this was outrageous, but I totally would’ve paid it. He refused and instead hired a girl to carry it on her head the four blocks. Yes, on her head. Charles, Sam and Naida lifted it up and she placed it on her head and started walking. We made it to the taxi rendezvous point, but NO TAXI anywhere to be found. We let the girl set the refrigerator down. We waited. We called, we texted (the preferred method of communication in Ghana), but the taxi driver could not find us. Finally, after drinking water sachets in the parking lot and searching, Charles found the taxi and we negotiated a fee of only 5 cedis (about $3.50) for the girl carrying the refrigerator. Julia gave her another cedi for good measure.

I couldn’t believe the entire scenario. With the refrigerator in the back of the taxi, there was not enough room for the rest of us, so we walked to Accra Centra, drank coconut water in the parking lot (which was completely refreshing – if you’ve never tried coconut water after exercising or hard work, you should. It replenishes electrolytes faster than anything else). It was such a hot hot day and we hopped back on the tro tro to the University of Ghana, arrived, met the taxi with Naida and installed the refrigerator in our flat on the University campus.

Whew! What a great adventure!

We feel extremely blessed in so many ways! Not the least of which is the fact that we now have a place to store our food!

Arrival in Ghana

Good morning to Ghana!

The trip has already been quite eventful in that we have set up our home (mostly) and are planning the logistics of the semester, which will be FULL to the brim with study, travel and learning of all kinds. This morning I met with a representative from our adoptive village of Adenklebi which is in the Ga district, Grand Rapids Sister City. We will be introduced to that community, to the chief sometime early in our stay. We are hopeful that our students will be able to do their homestays with families in that village and we are working on doing several service projects there. They truly want for Calvin College to have a home with them, and we want this to happen as well.

Pray for us as we make a home away from home in the beautiful land of Ghana.

This morning I read this prayer and I hope for it to be in your heart today:

God our provider, all good gifts come from you. Make us so thankful for your gifts that we cannot help but share them with others. Own us as your fools as we abandon the stuff of this world for the treasures of your kingdom. Amen.