As I decide what to entitle this blog I realize that the last 10 days or so have been quite full for various reasons. Where to start is the question? I guess from the beginning right J! OK so Monday 27th/28th June were horrible – I just couldn’t reconcile myself to any good reason why I had given up a wonderful life with great friends, my dogs and a beautiful home to move to Accra for a couple of years L. A phone call home on Monday night was probably a nightmare for one of my good friends in Wilmington, particularly since there was nothing she could say or do to change things – except help turn the tears into some form of laughter (I am sorry to say through the idea of obtaining a voodoo doll in Togo - where voodoo beliefs are still very popular – and causing a certain someone some pain!!) Not at all a Christian thought but I needed to have something to laugh about and we were both desperate!!! I am so blessed to have good friends I can call J.
Moving on fairly quickly from the early part of the week, I had promised myself that on return from the USA I would join the Caledonian Society J. Having made ‘the phone call’ the weekend I returned I met Mhairi, Gerry and their daughters at Esther’s Hotel at 7.20 pm on Wednesday (29th) evening to travel together to the Grasscutters Pub at one of the British High Commission ‘compounds’. What at incredible evening that was – I don’t think I have laughed or smiled as I did in the following two hours than I have my entire 4 + months in Accra!!! As anyone who knows me will appreciate, I am not the most agile these days and have also never participated in Scottish dancing – although I did complete two years of ‘Ballroom Dancing’ while at school so many years ago!!! Nothing like it, not even sure why I mention that!! And, I might add there was very little instruction on footwork, the emphasis was on where to dance and with whom. Mhairi is also currently the instructor(the ‘regular’ teacher who apparently is in her 70’s in spending her annual month vacation in the Shetland Isles) and her husband Gerry the “Chieftan of the Clan” here - praise the Lord for such wonderful friendly people and two brilliant daughters who are both visiting for the summer from Scotland. Having told me that I could watch the first dance ‘Mairi’s Wedding’, not a minute later they realized that they were one short so I was immediately initiated into my first experience of Scottish Dancing in Accra – all I can say is that after two hours I was very sore for about two days – my calves were killing me (all that ‘setting’ or whatever it was called was not anything I have been used to doing!) but I can’t wait to go back again this week. It was hilarious and so much fun.
There were about 20 or so in the group, some dancing, others just enjoying the social aspects of the Society. A very ‘mixed bunch’ in ages, nationalities – Mhairi informed me that the Society was “no longer too fussy as they even accepted the English” J I certainly didn’t share how two American friends (Kim and Lisa) and I probably desecrated the bagpipes by doing the Macarana to the Caledonian Heritage Pipes & Drums CD playing Flower of Scotland back in 1998 (?) or thereabouts on our last night at the cottage in Howsham – as you can tell the Caledonian Society also brought back some great memories J!!
The Scottish Dancing kept me on a ‘high’ through the end of the week……… Sunday morning I headed out of Accra (via the airport) to Lome, Togo. It is only about a 3 hour drive to the border between Ghana and Togo to the East, however since I really haven’t done any long distance driving yet I decided for my first visit to Lome I should fly – next time I will drive!! The flight to Lome was uneventful, just a short 25 minutes on a turbo prop plane and I was in Lome to meet our new partners for the program. The organization is a very small, virtual one with members of the team in Norway, USA, Spain and Togo so also quite interesting. I was met as I arrived in the customs hall by 3 out of the total 5 members of the team in Lome. They were so pleasant, particularly since I was arriving in the middle of the day on a Sunday; they still took the time to come and meet me. As I quickly realized Lome was about as small as I had imagined and hotel options were extremely limited – I was booked into the Hotel Ibis which wasn’t bad relatively speaking J. You quickly learn to have very different expectations when traveling between different parts of the world – the USA, Asia, Europe and Africa (all with varying degrees have different standards!) Of course in Asia and Africa the standards can vary considerably more widely than they do in Europe and the USA. But the hotel also looked out over the beach which always makes for a good view pretty much anywhere in the world, although later in the afternoon when I headed out towards the beach, the security at the hotel told me that it really wasn’t safe to walk on the beach on my own L so that blew that idea of some exercise.
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| Street in Lome |
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| An amazing team! |
While so many of my friends were enjoying the celebrations of the 4th July in the USA (yes, I was homesick – that is a fun day to be in the USA!) I was having a productive day learning more about the team in Togo and the work that they perform. What a great group of committed people who serve their fellow Togolese tirelessly!! It really was a great visit and finally gave me a tiny glimmer of what I wished I was doing more of!
Tuesday morning, having completed the work I was fortunate enough to have a couple of hours before my flight to see a little more of Lome visiting the main port for the fishing boats, the fruit market, ‘small’ fish market and walking across the beach to watch a group of Togolese (men, women and children) all helping to haul in the fishing nets from the Ocean. The entire process takes about two or three hours starting with two ‘rows’ of people starting to haul in the nets from the ocean across a width of about 100 yards, slowly as they pull the nets in they get closer, until near the end when they are only about 20 feet apart and still hauling……. It is quite humbling to think that probably 40 or so people are engaged in the process and yet their results will yield very little in the way of value…… all that effort and hard work day in day out in order to try to obtain a living on which to feed themselves and their families.
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| Fishing boats |
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| Fishing from the Beach |
For anyone interested Togo is a small country (almost shaped like a finger) between Ghana on the West, Benin on the East and Burkina Faso in the North. The population is approximately 6.7 million and at a guess is probably about the same size as Florida.
Leaving Lome in the afternoon, on the one flight per day to Accra was interesting. Having boarded the plane and then sat for almost an hour waiting for some passengers from another flight from Mali, we were told that we weren’t actually going back to Accra immediately but that we would be doing a detour to Cotonou, Benin (which as you may have noted from the above is to the East of Togo). Yes, we were going to fly away from the direction we needed to be going to stop off in another country because ????? who knows – the airline decided to!! Can you imagine the uproar if that happened in the USA or Europe – “sorry passengers we aren’t going where you thought we are making another stop (in another country) on the way home” ………… next time I am driving. It took me almost six hours to make what should have been a 25 minute flight or a three hour drive J But, that’s the way things happen here so everyone just sat on the plane, there were a couple of people that mumbled a complaint and that was it!
Tonight as I write this blog, I started listening to my ‘worship’ music on iTunes (my ipod crashed last weekend and is now dead to the world, along with my “Queen” wine glass and another piece of pottery – three things broke!) and the first two songs I heard were “Here I am” by Downhere and “Yours” by Steven Curtis Chapman. I heard these words from Here I am and knew that I need to be strong in my faith and remember daily why I came to Ghana ………. “Setbacks and failures and absent friends test my faith and leave me with empty hands. Are You not the closest when its hardest to stand. I know that You will finish what you began and these broken parts You will redeem to become a song that I can sing – here I am, Lord send me, all of my life I make an offering, here I am, Lord send me; somehow my story is part of your plan, here I am.” The words in both these songs reminded me why I am here and why I need to keep remembering that instead of feeling sorry for myself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thn4fgLvOfo An hour or so later, I have moved on to the Caledonian Pipes & Drums and can’t help sitting here smiling and thinking how ironic it is that I now have some brilliant memories of dancing to the bag pipes in England and Ghana and maybe Scotland in a couple of months time – who knows J
Wishing my fellow Americans a belated Happy 4th July (wishing I was celebrating with y’all) and commiserating with my fellow Brits on the loss of the ‘New World’ to the bloody Americans!!!! Hoping you all take that with the humor/humour it is meant with by a “dual citizen” J
