I originally wrote this post on my personal blog on February 1, 2008, but last weekend I realized I needed to relearn some of the lessons I learned in Africa. Aren’t you glad you get to revisit Africa with me??
So. When I last wrote, I gave you a rundown of the trip and told you how I felt before we left.
Anxious. That one word wraps up all of the emotions I felt preparing to leave for Ghana. I was frustrated because I didn’t know much about what would happen there. I didn’t have an itinerary, much less the names of places we would be staying. I didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing. I wasn’t even sure who was going on the trip. I didn’t know what to tell people when they asked about it. They always wanted to know what we would be doing. When asked, I usually laughed nervously and responded, “That’s a good question.” The feelings of anxiety didn’t stop when we flew away from Birmingham. They remained for three or four days after we arrived in Ghana as I wondered what in the world I was doing there.
When we arrived in Accra, I wanted to get back on the airplane and go back home. I got separated from the rest of the group. They all went ahead of me, and as I passed through the last security check at the airport, a Ghanaian man walked up to me and insisted that I needed another stamp on my passport. This stamp would cost me $20. I was already confused, because I had seen the man talking to Parker. I thought that he could have been with the seminary, someone sent to greet us. But as he continued to insist that I give him $20 for another stamp, I knew that he was just trying to scam me out of money. I asserted that if I had to get another stamp, I would ask one of the people wearing a nametag from the airport. He backed off at that point, but he didn’t go away until after I got out the door of the airport and met up with the rest of the group. The encounter rattled me. I was all alone and unprepared for the situation, immediately set on the defensive. At that point, I looked suspiciously at every Ghanaian I saw. I didn’t care if “helping” Americans at the airport was a good way for them to make some extra money. All I cared about was protecting myself, my money, and my bags from the hands of people who just wanted to take advantage of me.
It’s unfortunate that my experiences in Ghana began with such a strong negative image of the Ghanaian people. It took several days for me to get over my run-in with the con artist; I couldn’t imagine that anything good would come of the trip. All I wanted to do was criticize and withdraw from the culture, but after I had a little distance from the situation, I approached the Ghanaian culture with more openness. A little observation helped me realize that no one else I had met in Ghana acted in the same way as the man at the airport. Quite the contrary, in fact. All of the people we met were extremely kind and hospitable, and they welcomed us to their country with open arms. They were more than willing to help us in any way we needed, whether that meant giving rides, supplying cell phones, providing meals, or making hotel arrangements. Once I understood this, I began to relax, and my expectations for the trip took on a positive tone.
We spent the first several days of the trip studying at Trinity Theological Seminary in Accra. We heard several lectures from prominent Ghanaian theologians and learned a great deal about the intersection of African Traditional Religion and Christianity. That will be the subject of your next installment, which will come Monday. Until then…
Grace and peace.
This post originally appeared on my personal blog on January 30, 2008, but over the weekend I realized I needed to relearn some of the lessons I learned in Africa. Aren’t you glad you get to revisit Ghana with me?
OK – so last week I promised that I would write about my trip to Ghana. I’m going to do my best to be concise, but it was a 17-day trip, so I’m not sure how concise I can be.
I went with a group from school. Beeson requires us to complete three internships. One of them has to be have a cross-cultural component. You can either complete an entire semester-long internship, OR you can go on a two week trip to a foreign country and get your credit that way. Which one would you choose? I, obviously, went for the two-week trip.
Instead of giving you a blow-by-blow account of the trip, I think I’ll start by including part of a paper I wrote before we left:
Inevitably, when I tell people I’m going to Ghana, their reaction is one of anxious enthusiasm. They know that this is an amazing opportunity for me, but they also fear for my safety. The news is filled with riots and demonstrations in Kenya, and if Kenya is in turmoil, the rest of Africa must be as well. “You know, Africa isn’t known for its political stability,” they say. Even if I explain to them that Ghana is one of the more stable countries in the continent, I can tell they don’t believe me. “Don’t drink the water…or eat the food,” they caution me. I tell them that I have to eat something, and no matter how many granola bars or water bottles I stuff into my luggage, it won’t be sufficient. My mother, knowing that mosquitoes eat me up like crazy, points out that my chances of contracting malaria are higher than others. Thanks for the reminder, mom. These are just a handful of the concerns I hear. They range from the downright silly to the deadly serious. If I’m honest with myself, I will admit that these fears are not just the fears of my friends and family. They are my fears as well.
When I woke up this morning and turned on the news, images of burning churches in Kenya filled the screen. It’s not that far away from Ghana, just a hop, skip, and jump across the continent. Uneasiness filled the pit of my stomach as I packed the rest of my belongings. Surely, everything will be fine, at least I think it will. This is the biggest judgment of the country I will have to lay aside. The notion that it is dangerous for me to be there pervades my mind. Even if I take every precaution necessary, I am still afraid that someone will snatch my money in the market, rioters will burn down a church I am working in, or I’ll catch a disease from a loose chicken on an overstuffed tro-tro. I constantly have to remind myself that their way of life is not wrong, it’s just different. They are not uncivilized: their civilization simply looks different than mine. Aspects of Ghana that make me raise my eyebrows, like overcrowded cities and animals wandering around, are just part of their way of life. There is nothing wrong with it. Political riots break out in the United States, and there’s no guarantee of my safety here either. These are the things I try to remember.
So I went, and lo, and behold, I survived to tell about it. We spent the first half of the first week hearing lectures from various African theologians, church leaders and missionaries. Then we started the trek around the country. Hang on, let me get a map for you:
We started in Accra, down at the bottom of the map. Then we traveled to Ho, in the east. From there, we drove to Kumasi, in the middle of the country. We left Kumasi and went to Mole National Park, in the far north. After visiting the park, we drove to the small village of Carpenter, not on the map, but between Mole and Kumasi. Then, we traveled south to Cape Coast before heading back to Accra and flying out. How’s that for travel?
The country was beautiful, but impoverished. Most of the people there live on less than $1 a day. Don’t get the impression that all of Africa is mud huts and loin cloths. Accra is a city of 4 million people, and Kumasi has over 1 million people. There are definitely urban areas, but when we started driving around and visiting the rural areas, things started changing.
There is so much to say, and right now, I am just too tired to say it all. So let’s do this. In the coming weeks, I will write about my trip to Ghana in sections. Your next installment will come Friday.
Until then, grace and peace.
It’s late. There are a few things I should be doing. But I’m not doing any of them. Instead, I’ve been reading posts from a Compassion blogger who’s in Kenya right now. And it made my heart ache for Africa. And for my own Compassion child. So I got out a pen and paper and wrote him a letter.
Two years ago, I spent 17 days in Ghana. It changed my life. At least, it changed it for a little while. And then life got busy, and I became semi-obsessed with unimportant things, like how many people visit (or don’t visit) this site every day, reading blogs, and otherwise wasting time. I have allowed myself to be consumed by the mundane, and I have forgotten about the extraordinary grace that I have received.
It’s so easy to take things for granted.
But one look at Ryan’s pictures reminded me that because I have been given much, much is expected of me. I should write Emmanuel, my Compassion child, more often. I should encourage others to sponsor a child, and I should revisit the journal I kept while I was in Africa. Some lessons have to be learned more than once, you know.
When I returned from Ghana, I wrote a series of posts about the trip on my personal blog. I’d like to share some of those with you over the next few days. For some of you, these will be reruns, but maybe I’m not the only one who needs to be reminded of lessons that God has taught me in the past.
And someday, I hope to go to Ghana, and meet Emmanuel, and blog about it just like Ryan’s doing. That would change my life all over again.
As I turned on the news this morning, images of President Obama touring Cape Coast Castle in Ghana and speaking to the Ghanaian people greeted me. Just a year and a half ago, I walked through the same slave fortress and saw the same sights, and viewing them on TV brought the memories to the forefront of my mind. In honor of Obama’s Ghanaian visit, I thought I would post a journal entry I wrote shortly after returning home about my experience at Cape Coast. It was a sobering and powerful time, and I will never forget it.
For some background information, Cape Coast is just one of several slave fortresses along the African coast. It was a holding tank for Africans while their handlers waited for boats from the Americas to arrive and carry them out.
Over the past couple of years, I have realized how dangerous it is for me to be in seminary. I know, and am learning, an awful lot about the church, the Bible, and God, but none of that means anything if I do not know God Himself. My greatest temptation is to fool myself into thinking that my knowledge about God is the same thing as intimacy with God. It is not. Because of this, my constant prayer is that God will help me to know Him more, and Psalm 25:4-5 has become my daily prayer:
“Make Your ways known to me, LORD; teach me Your paths. Guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; I wait for You all day long.”
There is so far to go, but little by little, God is teaching me lessons about Himself. Knowing God will be a lifetime endeavor, but the more He reveals Himself to me, through His Word, the more humbled I am by my humanity.
