Well, Praise God, I heard from my contacts in Ghana, and it looks like I’ll be spending some time there in the next two weeks volunteering with YFC (Youth For Christ) West Africa! I don’t know what that means in terms of my email connection, so you might not hear from me for a little while :( That also means I can’t hear from you!!! :,( but please keep sending emails, I will eventually be able to respond!
Oh yeah… ladylesley@hotmail.com
Right now We (being me and the Friesen family) are still waiting to hear if the Friesens have accommodations in Accra (the Capital City of Ghana) if everything works out; then I’ll be going to the YFC guest house on the 25th or 26th and staying through until the 5th of November. If they can’t find accommodations then I won’t be going until November 1st. Anyway, I know that’s all rather confusing. I hope that they have accommodations, because otherwise we’ll be staying in Lome (Togo)… and I’m not so interested in being there. ;)
Last week I went to put something in the freezer in the Kitchenette (There are two kitchenettes shared between the 26 rooms at the Centre) for some reason the shelves were full… and that didn’t make any sense to me because I KNEW I was the only person staying on that side of the centre… I opened up the bag to see what was inside… it was a goat’s head. ‘Cuz you know.. I like to keep a goat’s head in my freezer just in case of company? I guess someone forgot to take their leftovers home with them. I guess I missed the feast, turns out that I’m two months late for termite season too!
Harmatan just rolled in this week! There are two seasons in the northern part of Togo, there’s wet/rainy season or there’s the dry/dust season. No, not the “dusty” season, the DUST season. Kara, the town that I live in, and the area around it; is surrounded by mountains… not huge ones, but it’s like living in the bottom of a bowl. During the dry season, the dust (sand from the Sahara desert) blows over the mountain range and gets stuck in the bowl… a giant cloud of dust. Yesterday the wind picked up and the mountains to the south and the west DISSAPEARED! It’s like fog… but dirty… The kids said that soon we won’t be able to see the mountain directly behind the house.. I can’t even imagine it.. but then again I couldn’t imagine what I’ve already seen! Tonight the sunset is yellow.
I went out to one of the villages for church again on the weekend, I went with the Crocker Family (the church planters) To visit a church that they had planted last year before rainy season started. At first they were going to move the church to a slightly bigger village a few miles away, but then when the rains came they weren’t able to follow through with it. The roads got washed out and they couldn’t go back to check on how the church was doing until just last week. When John got to the village he asked the pastor there if they were still meeting in the same place, the pastor said yes. Then John asked if they wanted to move the church to the other village and the pastor said “we don’t need too, we planted a church there and it’s growing”.
On our way there we passed through a village getting ready for their market day… up to 15kms away we saw people carrying things to market… a STREAM of women going down the road, each with baskets piled to overflowing on their heads, their children tagging along beside them even the smallest had something to carry in their own basket. By the time we left church (we ended up staying quite awhile!) The women were trickling back out of the village into the countryside, nearly all their baskets were empty, and the children carried all the things their mommas had bought. It was very cute!
We ended up being at that church forever! We got there and did a communion service, with a loaf of bread and Coke (juice is expensive, so our other choice was millet beer or water) There was tons of dancing and singing. After the communion service we had a baptism service, there were 5 people who had been waiting for Pastor John to come back to baptize them.. we all trucked down to the nearest river and found a clear spot. The water was really shallow, so the people getting baptized sat in the water to get dunked… There was this little bridge over the water where some of us sat to watch… and where I was going to sit were these strange squashed berry things… I flicked them off without thinking… as soon as I sat down and looked at the tree above me I realized what they were… giant fruit bat droppings! YUCK
After the baptism the church invited us to a special lunch they had prepared for us, we had Pot and sauce… Pot is a lot like Ugandan Posho (Julie, your FAVORITE!) sort of like Italian Polenta… it’s made from corn meal, but more finely ground, and you eat it by the PILE… and it’s so heavy… kinda bland tasting on it’s own, but they add some hot peppers and other stuff to it, so it’s bland with a hot after-burn! Sauce is just anything cooked with water… we were fortunate enough that it was chicken!!!! I wasn’t so much looking forward to fish heads in water… though I’ve promised to be committed to culture and try not to grimace too much as I take it down. Yeah, so we had a great meal, no need for our packed lunch at all!
So tomorrow (Thursday) we are heading down to Lome, pray for safety on the roads.. it’s a 7+ hour drive depending on the road conditions… the mountain pass to get back down to Lome is WAY worse than the Northern one that we pass over to get to the village churches, there’s much more traffic too…. Pray that all the details of the trip get worked out soon, and that there are no problems crossing the boarder! Marv is flying back tonight, he should be here tomorrow night so long as none of the flights are delayed.
More later…
Les
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