Travels!

Here is the road in front of the school this past week.  They are "paving" it - it added lots of interesting obstacles to my morning bike ride!

This is at the Children of the Light ministry outside of Accra - it is led by the preschool teacher at AIS who is from New Zealand, Auntie Jean.   I rode up and around the mountain with another teacher from school and a canadian missionary couple who have a "clown" ministry.  The kids here loved the clown - but it kind of a bizarre situation to watch this clown performing for the Ghanaian kids, who had never seen a clown before.  After the performance, we turned on music and danced and played with balloons, I was asked to pray for the group, and we traveled back down the mountain to our homes.

Since today, Monday, is a national holiday because it is Nana Ankruma's birthday (the first president of Ghana) we had school off! It is also the end of Ramadam, so all the muslims were celebrating the end of their month of fasting.  I am so thankful it is over - it is so hard on the kids in school that aren't able to eat during the day.  So, sunday morning, we woke up early and headed to the bus station, to catch our bus to cape coast! We got there around noon, and headed for the castles on the beach.

The castles were beautiful, but touring them was humbling and surreal.  This is a picture from the Cape Coast Castle, which was built by the Swiss, and later taken over by the British.  Christopher Columbus actually came to this castle on a trip before he discovered America.  While the British were here, the Ashanti tribe (which is still present in Ghana, and still does not have much interest in human rights) captured other tribes in West Africa, and traded them as slaves to the British.  The typical trade was three guns for one male slave and one gun for one female slave.  The Ashanti would use the guns to continue terrorizing other tribes and capturing more slaves.  The slaves were brought to this castle to be traded.   We toured with people of all different nationalities and races, through this place that on the surface should divide us - but somehow seemed to bring us all together.  No human life should ever have a price.

We walked through the small rooms where thousands of slaves were packed in.  We were all led into one smaller room with no windows or ventilation, where they put/left anyone who was "defiant."  None of them were given a chance to live.  When the others were sold, they were branded on their faces, taken out this door, which reads "The Door of No Return," and put into boats to ship to England, Spain, India, and later to the Americas.

Being from America, and especially being from the South, we only hear parts of this story.  It was really enlightening to hear the story from an African perspective.  I always found it hard to believe that human beings were thought of as property, but I think that it would be even harder to be a Ghanaian and hear that your own people sold each other.  We still hear of slave trading here.  I have heard several stories, mostly of young boys, being sold by their own families into slavery, as workers or fishermen.  I can not even imagine.  Our guide at the castle brought the tour all together at the end - saying that we can all learn from this and never let anything like this happen again.

Everywhere I look in Ghana there is a huge culture contrast.  There are so many beautiful things and places, yet so much pain and poverty.  This castle is made from limestone from seashells, so it would be very bright white and reflect light, so that boats could see it from the ocean.  Now it is something that no one wants to know about - or at least no one wants to think about.  Heavy stuff.  So we left in a state of thoughtfulness and sorrow, to eat lunch at a local restaurant on the beach, watching the waves, and the children play in the water.

This is the first time that I have enjoyed the smell of Africa - it is far enough outside of the city to be polluted and so it actually smells like the beach.  For an even further contrast,  we pulled up to our hotel resort called "Coconut Grove."  It was great - the pool was nice, and we took a long walk on the beach.

The beach is beautiful.  We walked far enough that there were no people any way we looked - it felt surreal - like we were in an episode of Lost.  Another great thing we discovered about the beach is there are no mosquitoes there! So we ate dinner at the restaurant outside on the beach, and sat by a fire to keep warm!

This morning, we woke up early and headed to the Kakum National Forrest.  We missed all the Elephants - but loved the canopy walk!  The only wild life we saw were insects and lots of iguanas.  It was beautiful and it was so nice to be in nature - or in the "bush." I didn't realize how far we are living in the city, until we were out of it.  It was really relaxing to get out, even just for a day!

On the way home, we stopped to see some crocodiles.

Then, we got pulled over by the police.  Lots of Prayers.  Our taxi driver, apparently did not have a license, and the policemen were trying to get him to "dash" or bride them to let him go.  We had to get out and back in the car, and they miraculously just let us go and he didn't end up having to pay them.  But, that is just how corrupt the police and government are here.  Craziness.

We made it to our bus on time, and rode home packed in a "Ford"van - which the Ghanaians seemed to be excited about just because it is American.  When we got back, I had time to climb on the roof (my new favorite spot) and read in the sun for a while.  Then Madam Laurie served us all chicken and stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, fruit, and salad.  If that wasn't enough - we had cheese cake and mocha/cookie/ice cream cake for dessert - I felt like it was Sunday lunch at Deedee's!

It has been a delightful long weekend, and I am not ready to go back to school tomorrow!