Laughter in the Darkness

I have become very use to the darkness of Ghana since I have been here. Traveling in the dark, walking along side my fellow Ghanaian in a pitch black sky. No city lights, no moonlight, no distraction of illumination from a porch light from a local home. In Ghana, night is as dark as black can come. Last night, after my visit and teaching with the local town of Ho V/R, I had an experience of joy that I have become familiar with in all my trips to Ghana. My experience was being surrounded with the sounds of laughter of young girls and women. Just as the night had become late, and I was certain that we were all exhausted as we departed, two little girls reminded us all of what is the most important. It was the carefree simplicity of being a child. They reminded me of what it was like to be a girl and look at one another and giggle at absolutely nothing and being in the joy of your best of friends. You see, laughter is my favorite sound of all. It can create a new friendship or renew the day of an old friend. Laughter can overshadow everything and anything. You can be in laughter with another person and forget that there is a whole world around you that is happening. It can replace time as you get in the moment of hearing the laughter of another person. You can simply be in the joy of laughter with another person and create a carefree moment that will be in a capsule of the moment. Leaving last night, the Freedom Hotel van came to pick me up. As I saw those two little girls and all the women surrounding them, we offered them a ride to their road. In the van, all the seats were taken out of the back, so on the floor we went. I was in a van full of Ghanaian women, two girls, and I in the darkness of Ghana. Those two little girls would not stop giggling, and soon before I knew it we were all laughing. In the darkness of the night, I couldn't see their faces and they couldn't see mine, but we could hear each other in our sounds of laughter. I could hear their giggles and feel their joy. It was the best sound the world could offer me at the moment. Between English and Ewe, it was a mutual laughter of understanding. It wasn't laughter that was in the awkwardness of being crammed in the back of a van without seats with two cultures of Volta women and one American woman. It was a unity of laughter that expressed happiness of just being girls together sharing a ride, just being who we are. As much as I love laughter, they did as well. We shared that in common. Leaving them at the end of their road to take their walk home, they were still laughing, but waving good-bye. They were all laughing, jumping, and waving farewell. As we pulled away in the thick darkness, I could still hear their laughter.

A Killer In the Night

Malaria. It is the number one killer of children under 5 years of age in Ghana. On Thursday evening, Sam and I received a call to visit an Accra hospital because his neighbor's child was admitted to the hospital and in danger of losing her battle to malaria. We arrived at the Accra Legion Hospital Children's Ward to find 3 year old Matilda weak and lifeless. As we arrived, her father was also walking into the Children's Ward with a small cooler. I found this different, and assumed he had gone to get food for their family to bring to the hospital. (In Ghana, it is custom to bring your own bedding and food.) In my surprise, it was a cooler with a blood packet for Matilda's blood transfusion that she was in desperate need for. The shocking part of this mystery cooler with the life saving blood, was that it was her father that was the carrier of the cooler container. In Accra, if your child needs blood due to malaria, the child needs in right there, right now. It is the family that has the responsibility to go and search for the blood type of their child that is needed for the transfusion. The hospital will not and does not go and get the blood. They do not go and send a healthcare worker in search of it. They do not make any phone calls to track down the correct blood type. Matilda's father had walked into the Accra Legion hospital at 8pm Thursday evening with a cooler contianing the blood that would transfuse the malaria from her body. Here is the shocker: He walked and drove around Accra for 7 hours going from hopsital to hospital trying to find the right blood type. There is no courtesy call ahead to the next hospital, and the hospital will not allow him to call ahead to find out if there is blood available at a hospital. Its first come first serve, and at any time there could be blood ready. Imagine: You are a parent, you are in danger of losing your child to malaria, and you are sent on a wild goose chase to find the right blood type for her transfusion. I honestly can't imagine the desperation, the fear, and the panic. Here is the next thing: money. It cost a lot of money to treat malaria once you get to the hospital stay, and the transfusion. Not only did he have to go search for the blood, he needed the money to pay for the blood out of his pocket, and the money to pay for the transfusion. The money for blood, he had. The money for the transfusion, he did not. If Sam did not arrive with the money to give this man to pay for the transfusion, this little girl would be in danger. The cost for this little girl in the American dollar was $250. Most Ghanaian families do not have this kind of money. She received her transfusion. Before we left, I held her lifeless little body, her silence spoke volumes of words. According to Sam, a bednet for Malaria prevention cost $9.50 (US dollar). Most Ghanaian families cannot afford this. The Ghana Goverment has run out of subsidy since February 2009 to provide bednets to families. It is hopeful that the subsidy will return in September. This is the desperation of a family in Accra, where there is some chance of healthcare, even if you have to go for the chase for blood and money. Take a story like this to the Voltra Region and imagine how alarming the desperation would be. There would be absolutely no money for a bednet, little chance if any to go to a hospital for medical care. Essentially a child or a family member would die from this disease. This is a preventable and treatable disease.
From this story of Matlida, I am happy to report that as I ate my breakfast this morning, she walked in the door of the Dunya residents. She returned home from the hospital last night. She is going to make it from this round of malaria. She is still very week, but there is color back in her body

Evenings in Akatsi

Posting coming soon

Akwaaba!!!

I have arrived in Accra, Ghana. I'm on my fourth day and it has been a transition to adjust to the culture this time and walk the unknown territory of Accra. I will leave for Akatsi tomorrow and work 3 days with Emmanuel Lokoh before returning to Accra for a day of rest. I will then depart to Ho in the Volta Region where I will spend the week there working. The details have yet to be written, but I am looking forward to the revelation of my journey. I'm looking forward to being back in the Volta, which is where this adventure began 3 years ago. It will be like going home to visit old friends and seek out new faces for an opporunity to create new stories with them.

Todays Generosity Is Tomorrows Future

When I least expect it, friends from my first trip to Ghana, have given a gift to prosper the children of Ghana. A generous donation has been given to be used toward purchasing supplies specifically for children of Ghana. Immediately, I knew where this could be used.
In August, a Head Teacher for a village school approached me with a request. This came only a day after being given a responsibility of developer of another village. He came to me in desperation saying, "Please, please, you are different, you are here to develop our village." The word development stopped me in my tracks. It was a title that I was becoming familiar with. There seemed to be a theme in August, and it was that I was to be a developer, becoming a leader to grow villages of the Volta Region. Using the word, developer, he had my attention. It was this moment, I believed there were no accidents and there were no coincidences. He explained to me that his school had no funding, and he did not care that his salary was low, but that he was passionate and devoted to raising up the education of the village children. He said he had a list and knew what he needed. At the time, we were in the middle of medical clinic, and I wasn't sure exactly what I could do that day. I took my journal out of my backpack and had him write his name, address, and the list of supplies that he needed. Mostly books, chalk, and paper. He said he was worried about books, because he didn't have any teaching resource and the children didn't have any books to be taught from. This made learning to read and education difficult when the resources were not there. He explained that he would be able to lock the resources in his office for safe keeping if the supplies would become available. I could see in his eyes that this wasn't asking for a handout, or even trying to get more than what was necessary. He was a man with true passion and desperation to prosper the children of his village to learn, to grow, and be a growing number that could be the future of Ghana. He was on a mission to get help and he was drawn to my face to get results.
Getting the news today of the funding almost one year later, I knew that Mr. Yorfor would be the right place for this funding to go. My mind goes back to this village, which I will protect the name for now. I wonder if he has thought about the moment that we sat on the concrete slab and made a list together, talking about how to develop his school. I wonder if he thinks that I will ever come back to do something with that list that he gave me. I have thought about him, and the children, and its hard not to look back into my journal and see his list and not want to make that dream a reality for this teacher. It is tonight that I see the reason and purpose of this list in my journal and this teacher approaching me saying that I would be the one to do something about his school. It is almost as if he knew that I had a heart for Ghana and that eventually I would come back. Or even that eventually I would follow through with his address and ship him the materials that his children needed. It is with great honor, to answer the calling for a teacher who approached me and trusted me to do something about the needs of his community. Thank you to great friends, a husband and wife, with a passion for children. Akpe! (Thank you!) You have just changed the lives of multiple children and built the dreams of a school teacher's passion to educate a village. I will go and find Mr. Yorfor in the Volta Region, and we will travel to Ho V/R and purchase the supplies needed for the school...and perhaps a few new soccer balls for a little recess fun on me! Mr. Yorfor will be beside himself when he sees me coming down the path, and he will know what I am coming for. Thank you for transforming a village and building the future of Ghana!

When Social Justice Hits You In The Face

(This is an exert from my article, "Have a Coke and a Smile in a Third World Country.")

Its been four months since my awakening of the injustice and results of globalization of Third World Countries while reading reading N.T. Wright's, Evil and the Justice of God. The insights and thoughts of N.T. Wright opened my eyes to a concept that there is more to be done and to become a change agent and to cast vision for a leadership opportunity to get more assistance to the people of Ghana. After reading N.T. Wrights book, I started researching the Coca-Cola industry, reading about the economics that play into globilization, and lead me to a 20 page stategic plan to take to Global Coca-Cola on how they can take on the role of servant leadership in third world countries. It has lead me to seek out the right people within this industry. Perhaps it will be a dead end, but its worth trying to see if this can be another way to make a little piece of change in this world. It is the, "what if theories" that drive me. What if we partner with Coca-Cola of Ghana and it produces another 61 wells to the Volta? What if children grow to be healthier because of the partnership of clean water? What if all of these lead to less diseased deaths and more lives saved from disease ridden water? The following are my journal notes that sparked the full article and strategic plan to write, "Have A Coke and a Smile in a Third World Country." It is the fire that lead me to book my fifth trip to Ghana on my own to be able to walk the land and keep my eyes open for the loophole that I can bring home with me to make a business plan to profit the Volta Region of Ghana. It is only one of the many reasons that I will go back.

Journal Writing: March 2, 2009
N.T. Wright says that the state of affairs has led to three things that characterize the new problem of evil in this world. First, we ignore evil when it doesn't hit us in the face. Second, we are surprised by evil when it does. Third, we react in immature and dangerous ways as a result. What caught my attention was his first point in which draws me to my own passion for Ghana as part of the third world. Unloading his first point that we ignore evil until it hits us in the face, he states that philosophers and psychologist make out that evil is the shadow side of good, and that its part of the necessary balance in the world, and that we must avoid too much dualism, too much polarization between good and evil. When you pass beyond good and evil, you pass into the realm where might is right, and where anything that reminds you of old moral values, stands in your way and must be obliterated. His example: Nietzsche's philosophy of power and Hitler and Auschwitz…and what stood in the way…the Jewish Community. Continuing…and here is where it "hit me in the face." Wright continues, "But we don't need to look back sixty years to see this. Western politicians knew perfectly well that Al-Queda was a force to be reckoned with, but nobody really wanted to take it too seriously until it was too late. We all know that chronic national debt in many of the poorest countries of the globe is a massive sore on the conscience of the world, but our politicians-even our sympathetic ones-don't really want to take it too seriously because from our point of view the world is ticking on more or less all right, and we don't want to rock the economic boat. We want to trade, build up our economies. "Choice" is an absolute good for everyone; therefore if we offer Coca-Cola and Pepsi to starving AIDS-ridden Africa, exploiting a huge untapped market while adding tooth decay and its other chronic problems, we are furthering its well-being." (Wright, p24) Now, in four trips to Africa and looking ahead to the future, Wright has awaken me and put me on fire for one more area to be in concern for the social justice in Ghana. I'm the first to admit, that there is nothing like doing work in a village, and coming back at night to settle my mind and heart with a refreshing, cold, glass bottle of Coke or Orange Fanta. For one Ghana cedi (75 cents) it is a treat, and as Coca-Cola used to have their advertising slogan, I suppose it makes me smile. I guess the slogan is suppose to state that it gives some kind of comfort as you enjoy a Coke with a friend and share a smile with community and fellowship. I get that. What Wright just made me realize, for every night that I buy a Coke product and every cedi I spend in Ghana, I get to go into my room and brush my teeth with a tooth brush and toothpaste. Then, I go home to quality dental care and a regular check up every 6 months. What does a Ghanaian, or any part of Africa get from having a refreshing Coke in a bottle? A smile, refreshment, conversation and a smile with a friend…absoluetly. However, there may not be toothpaste or a dentist, or the insurance to pay for it when the added sugar that leads to tooth decay. And as I have witnessed in a few medical clinics in the villages, a dentist is well in need. I realize that I was fortunate to be born in the U.S., and that I was born into more opportunity than those who were born into poverty. That my clean shower water alone is cleaner than most Ghanaian villages of poverty will see in their lifetime. Now, I don't think that Wright is pointing out that giving a soda as a choice of purchase to the people in Africa is a mortal sin or purely the axis of evil. Or that it is unfair for Coca-Cola or Pepsi to sell and market their product into any third world community. It bigger and it goes deeper and it can lead us to explore all kind of economic problems and social justice for the third world. The question for Coca-Cola is how is marketing their product to a third world country doing good for the people? When we are talking about marketing to human beings, isn't there more to look at than just the economic profit for the company? People are starving, dying, struggling in poverty, and Coca-cola finds that this population is a market to take over. I could make a list of how many different directions I want to go with this, but for the sake of ranting…there is just one eye opener that I have had while reading Wright. There is Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the same country that there are people who don't have the one Ghana Cedi to purchase one bottle a Coke a year. In the same country where children are dying of Malaria and other chronic problems, young parents die and children are orphaned and hopefully are taken in by someone or they become street kids. Extreme slums, extreme poverty, starving children, water born illnesses, people who can't afford or have availability to medical care, villages without electricity, areas that don't have schools, schools that can't afford books, and this is just the short list of issues. But what alarms me to the top of the list when thinking about these products in the third world, is people that don't have clean water. Not just villages that don't have running water or wells, but HUMAN PEOPLE that don't have access to clean water. I know, I can state that, because I've been witness to the disease born water that fills the bodies of severe poverty. These people have better access to Coca-Cola than clean water. I recently just read an article from the United Nations that they have finally declared that there is a new humanitarian crisis: water. They stated that water needs to be a new humanitarian right to be fighting for. It is a right that every person should have the right to clean water. It is a necessity for living, for health, for a quality of life. I'm not going to go extreme and say that Coca-Cola should pull out of every third world country, and I'm sure they wouldn't dare pull out of a market that makes them profit in the urbanization of these third world countries. My mind thinks win/win situations, a partnership, or taking the bad and bringing good out of it. My drive in this is what should Coca-Cola do with some of these profits in these parts of the world…and should they be part of the effort to plant wells and provide safe water filtration to communities and village schools? The state of poverty in this world is such a vast situation, a major humanitarian crisis that it is going to take efforts from governments, NGO's, the UN, Christian missionaries, so why not Coca-Cola, Pepsi? Why not the rest of the consumer market that globilizes these countries. Now, I did look up Coca-Cola Global. They are joining forces in the UN and the Water Millennium Project…in Kenya. That is a happy start. In one place, Kenya, they are starting water filtration projects. It is amazing, and looks good on their website. One small country in a few village communities is just a dot on the map, and it isn't enough in my eyes. My thought and push is this to Coca-Cola: Why not do this in every third world country that they are selling their product??? Coca-Cola's new marketing slogan is: Happiness. Happiness to me while opening a bottle of Coke in Ghana would be if the people down the street had the choice to choose between a Coke and the filtration of clean water for everyone in that country…and the availability to have health promotion, medical and dental care to care for their bodies. I know we do not live in a perfect world, and it is true that we are broken people that live in a broken world, where there is good and evil, rich countries and poor countries. However, what I do know is that I can spend my time striving to reach justice in a world that is not perfect for what is good and right, serve the poor and be a voice for them to prosper for their basic humanitarian rights.

During the season of Lent, I gave up Diet Coke (and all soda for that matter). In this 40 days of fasting from the refreshing beverage that is suppose to be a can of "happiness" for me in the states, and a glass bottle of "happiness" for me in Ghana, I'm prayed on the social ustice for Ghana and all countries of the third world that there is a strategic solution that can bring the clean water that I have seen bring so many Ghanaians happiness with the gift of new water well. Also, I focussed on how to approach Coca-Cola and Pepsi and bring the questions to them, and ask for help for donation or a movement for them to do their part and start planting wells and filtration systems in Ghana, and encourage them not to stop there, but go to all third world countries that they are marketing and selling their products. The problem is so big, it is going to take us all, and maybe a better part of our own lifetimes to make a contribution to turn around poverty. Our churches, our communities are doing our small part in this world, so why not ask a big, marketable company to join in and come into a servant leadership community and do mission where it is needed the most. This is just day one stuff, and one thought for today. This is just one approach to my mission of saving the world, starting with one person at a time.

Saving the World One Person At A Time

On my first trip to Ghana in September 2006, I met my friend April. We became Ghana roomates at the Freedom Hotel in the Volta Region. While we have our memories and giggles of meeting for the first time and being roomates far away from Iowa, there is one phrase that I take with me everytime I go back to Ghana. Its now apart of my life, and I work to live it everyday. Waking up each day was a new experience, an awakening to do something great, and a fire to be apart of the change that is needed in this world. We would leave our room each morning on a mission shouting out, "We're going to save the world, one person at a time!"

Each day the team was going out on an unknown adventure: We were a combination of human beings coming together to heal sick bodies by producing medical clinics in empty schoolrooms in rural villages and Christian Missionaries coming into idolatry filled villages to heal sick hearts by bringing the hope and love of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately we would learn that each mission day had to come to an end. Hours filled with medical intake and sharing the biblical word, hoping not only to mission to a healthier community, but to plant a church for new believers. Our schoolroom medical clinics is the setting where we saw everyone that we could together as a team. Unfortunately there were never enough hours in they day to give medicine to every person that stood in line. Together we would leave a village, driving away and looking back as we became witnesses to a medical waiting line long enough not to be able to see every person. Its heartbreaking, and you have to walk away knowing that you can't save them all. At the same time as medical clinic, together we are witnessing and sharing God's word that brings hope and prosperity to a village of people who may or may not have heard that God exist. Villages that put their false hope in idolatry, we witness their surrender to a promised hope to become Christians. Yet, in one day, we depart a village, knowing that our work is not done, we still have more Christianity to spread, more people in that one village still need to be reached. Yet, at the end of they day, we have to surrender our job for the day and know the seeds have been planted. We have done what we can do and we must push forward.

To take on the mission that we can save the world all in one day, in one week, in one mission trip, or even in years of mission is overwhelming. To take on poverty and disease of this world is a tremendous job. The overwhelming amount of people in this world that have never heard of Jesus Christ is a vast missional task. When you hear the numbers, the statistics, and see the faces of those that need outreached, the idea of saving the world can seem so impossible. However when God puts in your heart the desire to reach out your able hands to people that shouldn't be dying of preventable diseases because of their birth into a severly poverty stricken country, and then God moves your feet to walk on a ground to where people haven't heard His name, the task of being missional doesn't seem so impossible. We become challenged to save the world. With God leading and walking by our side, He gives us a task and breaks our hearts for His people so that we might reach out to those around us. He gives us a mission, and it isn't one to overwhelm us. He gives us what we can handle just at the right place at the right moment. He gives us enough strength and endurance to handle for that one day and that one mission that has been assigned to us. He gives us the eyes to see the one person we are suppose to draw our attention to, and the ears to listen for the one person who might be calling out to us to be saved. Today, if we can be obedient and listen to the One that calls us and draws us near to the one person we need to save today, and be the hands and feet to them, we have done one missional task in itself. Just taking the time to mission to one person and see them as the face of God, love them, serve them, and be missional to make them physically healthy and spiritually abundant, then we are taking on the task of saving the world...one person at a time.

I have found that while doing mission in Ghana, that each day we go together as a team, but we all return at night with a story that happened that day that we all witnessed or know about. However, as we talk and share our sights and sounds of each day, and on each trip, we have all been drawn to someone...maybe it was a mother who brought their child to medical clinic suffering from malaria, or maybe it was a little girl that danced her way to someones heart, or maybe it was witnessing a group of people becoming believers for the first time. That fact is that while on mission in Ghana, we have all been spoken to by God to pay attention to the details of someone else's life, to see someone's face, to hear somone's voice. We all have a story of that one person each missional day that draws us to change the lives of someone else and transform our own story. If we can all just be in tune to that one person, and transform that one life, we are making changes in the world everyday, and together, "We can save the world, one person at a time!"

(Pictured: April and I, with Margaret from Adidome, Ghana)

Round Five

It was just less than 3 years ago that I was departing on my first trip to Ghana, West Africa with Lutheran Church of Hope. After 4 short term trips, Ghana never escapses my mind once I return back home. Next month I will depart on a different adventure to Ghana, on my own, to partner with Globeserve Ministries before joining the group to finish this mission. I will be working with 3 townships and branching out from there to work with several villages. It has been a dream to venture out and become closer to the living experience of the local Ghanaians, and now I have the courage to step out and make this dream come to life. I will depart July 12th and will return in August. I created this blog to share an adventure: To share the travels of Trip 5, to reflect back and share the stories of the lives of Ghanaians whom I have met, and the stories that have forever changed my life and my heart for the people of Ghana.