Friday, August 15, 2008

Ghana Recap - Day Five

 Today started as the others have with breakfast at the hotel (scrambled eggs with some onions, and a slightly different, thicker, oddly tasting toast).

When we arrived at the worksite some of us wandered over to a few nearby villages different from the one we visited yesterday. More huts, children, animals, pictures taken. In the first village they told us we were the first white people to ever visit. We saw one villages' well, which is dry when there isn't enough rain. One village had a large corn harvest neatly stacked up, and some cucumber bushes (trees?) which I had never seen before and had the hugest leaves I think I'd ever seen.

Back at the work site we moved some bricks, but it was more of mostly being unneeded. We played with the kids - baseball, soccer, crafts. Rev. Clint organized a bit of a passion play in which AC got to play Jesus.

This was our last day on this worksite, so there were many tears and goodbyes as we headed back to the hotel for lunch (more of the same, but some good mango was a new addition). We cleaned up and got ready to head to the Keneshie Presbyterian Church for the first time. While we were waiting to leave it rained considerably and another group of Americans arrived at the hotel - "Engineers Without Borders" from Univ. Wisconsin Platteville. The electricity was out when they arrived, but their electrical engineer refused to get involved. 

It was an hour long ride to the church with their ridiculous traffic here, but it was interesting to see some other parts of the city. We passed a bad accident that had apparently involved a coke truck - there were hundreds of smashed coke bottles all over the ground.

The church is large, modern looking, and quite beautiful. The Manse is next door and also quite large and modern. We were fed a large dinner outside - there was green salad, some kind of potatoes which I decided was a version of potato salad, fish, some excellent chicken, the usual rices, some tomatoey beef, and a fish soup I didn't try. Dessert was an unexpected surprise - very rich vanilla ice cream with pound cake, watermelon, mango, pineapple, and papaya.

After a leisurely dinner we were brought into the sanctuary. I was a little unclear of what our purpose was. I thought we were going to be part of some regular youth service, but it was more of a presentation for our sakes. There was some great dancing and singing. The bulk of it was an hour long dramatic play, in English, but almost indecipherable due to the combination of accents and bad PA. I was tired which made it harder to focus on what was being said. After the play ended and there were a few more dances, AC was asked to come up and close in prayer. 

Tomorrow we're off for some sightseeing.

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