So, we know it's been a while since we last posted... The semester started a couple of weeks ago at ACI and we've been busy attending lectures and reading for classes. In addition, we have had quite a few power outages & internet troubles recently, so that has been a hindrance to our blogging as well...
Anyway, today is our very last day in Ghana - We are leaving from the Airport later tonight.
Even though we are ending our travels to Ghana (for now...), the Blog will not be done yet! There are still a few reflective (and fun) thoughts that we'd like to share, so stay tuned...
For now, here is one photo of us with Profs. Kwame & Gillian (Auntie Mary) Bediako - Directors of ACI:
I will never forget the smell in the room. By the time we arrived in Ouagadougou, it was actually feeling much cooler than it had during the day, but not in that room. It was stiflingly hot and the odor was strong in the heat and the stillness of the air. It was death.
On the bed lay our friend’s niece, an IV drip next to her, exhibiting the gaunt appearance that has grown familiar to me through my time at Leeway. The girl’s mother and aunt kept vigil in the room, their prayer mat lying just inside the door to the right. By the time all of us are in the room, there are ten of us, counting our friend’s niece in that tiny little room.
This is Burkina’s best AIDS facility, housed in the President’s own medical clinic, within sight of the President’s living quarters. This is not the typical face of AIDS in Africa. Perhaps we encountered something closer to that when we met with the Chaplain at the Presbyterian hospital in Bawku yesterday morning. In the whole district, the chaplain knew of only a handful of patients on ARVs. Most patients he was in contact with were being cared for in their homes, their care consisting primarily in eating two square meals a day—perhaps the first time in their lives they had access to such regular nourishment.
No, our friend’s niece is an exceptional case. She was a member of West Africa’s economic elite, a successful business woman whose success allowed her to build the gorgeous house in which we are staying. (It is the nicest place we have stayed in Africa thus far.) Her business and affluence brought her in contact with an Austrian man in the early nineties. He eventually asked her to marry him and went and paid the dowry to her tribe’s chief (even successful business women who live in European-style houses abide by the tribal rules). All was set; he just needed to go to Austria to inform his parents and then he would return and they would be married.
But he never came back.
A month or two later, word came that he had died back in Austria. His family invited our friend’s niece to Austria to attend his funeral. There, they told her that he had died of AIDS. She returned to Burkina to resume “normal life.” Afraid of the truth and of the potential stigma, she didn’t get tested for HIV until she fell extremely ill in 2002. It was then that it was confirmed she had AIDS. She began treatment, but in the last six months, she has lost hope. She was living with our friend and his wife in Akropong for a while, but eventually started refusing food. On an empty stomach, the ARVs did a number on her system.
Frustrated and disappointed, our friend let her go back to Burkina, where we came to meet her today. After trying to get her to respond for a while, our friend eventually just tells her he’s going to pray for her. Everyone in the room bows their head—even our friend’s Muslim relatives—and he prays fervently for his niece’s healing.
“Father we know You have the power to heal, but we also respect Your Will, and while we ask for healing—hear us Lord!—we submit to Your plan.” Amen.
P.S. Aug. 23 - Our friend ended up staying with his niece for a bit longer after we had returned to Ghana. We were informed later that our friend’s niece eventually started sitting up, talking, and eating again (which led to the removal of her feeding tube). She is currently being moved to an AIDS facility in Accra, Ghana. Signs of “recovery” are hopeful, but she is still in a serious condition and she and her family could still use many prayers.
Some Background: During our Trip to the North, we visited our friend John's village of Ninkogo, near Bawku (in the Northeast corner of Ghana). Before we visited his house, John mentioned that often his family will give their very last chicken to feed guests who come to their home. We didn't realize the extent of their hospitality...
August 4th, 2006, Hannah and Tiger Chicken, Part I:
August 5th, 2006, Hannah and Tiger Chicken, Part II:
P.S. It's not obvious from the video, but "Tiger Chicken" received its name because it had brown stripes along its neck. "Tiger Chicken" also lived up to its name - It was very feisty in the chicken coop when we brought it home, so we ended up eating it earlier than expected... P.P.S. Matt is feeling much better and we're on our way to Cape Coast tomorrow (before we even finished publishing our Notes from the North!), so who knows in terms of internet connections until Monday.
Note: Matt wrote this yesterday (see date below). He's still feeling a bit sick today, so any prayers for his health would be appreciated... - H
August 13, 2006
Matt writes: We were supposed to go to church and to a wedding with Auntie Anna, the head cook in the cafeteria, but I was too sick (feeling better, I think; on antibiotics now). Instead, I did some reading. Here are some highlights:
In the beginning was Khmvoum (God) Today is Khmvoum, Tomorrow will be Khmvoum. Who can make an image of Khmvoum? He has no body. He is as a word which comes out of your mouth. That word! It is no more. It is past and still it lives! So is Khmvoum.
~Traditional (pre-Christian) saying of the Pygmies of Zaire (DR Congo) from John Mbiti, "Prayer and Spirituality in African Religion", p.14 in Theology and Identity, Kwame Bediako, p. 322.
“He [Jesus Christ] turned what was a physical life into a sacramental life, and He meant to leave nothing out. He challenged the whole man and all man’s activities: He came to reclaim the entire person, the total history of the whole person, the sum total of his activities and aspirations… and in practical terms this means the whole community, the whole society, the whole humanity, the whole creation. So, in effect, He came to make man so totally and absolutely religious that no department of man should be left untouched by His Lordship, no department should be left outside the relationship between creature and Creator, between man and God, between the child and the heavenly Father.”
~John Mbiti, “Christianity and East African Culture and Religion,” p. 4 in Theology and Identity, Kwame Bediako, p. 330.
Before we continue with our Notes from the North (catchy, huh?), I thought I’d drop in this post for the sake of providing background for our trip. Really, our trip North grew out of our interest in a set of dynamics we had never even heard about before we came to Ghana. So, why did we go to the North?
One of the main features of Ghanaian life that we’ve experienced that no one prepared us for is the North-South divide. There’s a long history between Northern and Southern peoples that goes back as far as the slave trade. It’s an all-too-familiar pattern, seen, for example, in Rwanda. The injustice of the slave trade didn’t just establish an unjust relationship between Ghanaians and their white oppressors, but also exploited and expanded divisions among the various ethnic groups within Ghana. See, the Southern tribes who interacted directly with the European slave traders on the coast were usually not the ones taken into captivity. Instead, the Southerners pillaged the North tribes in order to capture slaves to hand over to the traders. So, while Emancipation Day celebrations this past weekend addressed the black-white issues from the slave trade, there were a whole set of intra-national issues left lurking.
(A great irony in all this is that when African-American pilgrims come to visit slave-trade sites and experience indigenous African culture, they visit—and benefit economically—only sites in the South and experience the culture of the tribes that enslaved their ancestors. There is no justice even in remembrance.)
And the residue of these issues does a lot more than lurk. Even after the slave trade was ended, British colonizers continued to treat the North and South differently, developing the South and leaving the North more or less alone. The reasons given were varied: to leave the North as a pristine preserve of traditional Ghanaian culture or to allow Northerners to freely continue in their Muslim worship, but the net effect was that the North remained the ready supply of cheap labor—now, for the development of the South rather than for exportation to America. That is still more or less the situation today. Government spending on infrastructure for private investment—roads, electricity, water—goes almost entirely to the South. Literacy in the North is around 15%, while it is 70% in the South. Illiterate workers, often fleeing drought-induced famines in the far North (the North has only one rainy season, while the South has two), stream into the Southern cities like Kumasi and Accra in order to take low-wage, low-class jobs. Northerners, of course, speak different mother-tongue languages and many speak neither Twi (the most common Southern mother-tongue) nor English (the official language), which further limits their employment opportunities and prevents their participation in mainstream Southern culture. As a result, the Southern urban slums are essentially Northern ethnic ghettos.
All of this creates a situation where Southerners look down on Northerners and Northerners resent Southerners. Where is the church?
As I said, as far back as colonization, the assumption has been that all Northerners are Muslim—which is true to the extent that more Northerners are Muslim and Southerners, but Islam is hardly the dominant religion really anywhere other than Tamale. (The North doesn’t have a majority religion; Traditional beliefs, Christianity, and Islam are all about on equal footing.) However, because of the ghettoizing forces described above, Northerners who move South often have to seek out other Northerners and the mosques have often become the points of connection for these communities. (Perhaps because Northerners from Tamale, since they have the economic advantages of coming from the North’s biggest city have the biggest influence?) The result is that while the North itself is only 30% Muslim, Northern immigrant communities in the South are perhaps 80% Muslim (the rest are Traditionalists or Catholic).
The NOP (Northern Outreach Program) church we visited our first Sunday here is the Presbyterian Church’s response to this problem, a community that worships in Northern languages and addresses Northern issues—many Christians in NOP churches come from villages in the North whose governance is still very much intertwined with traditional religion. For example, in the NOP service we attended a couple of weeks ago, the pastor was teaching on marriage and took questions on what to do if the chief in your village required that you perform a sacrifice as part of the rite of marriage; as a Christian, could you participate to that extent in a pagan rite? All of the sudden, Paul’s advice about meat sacrificed to idols and Christian participation in the Greco-Roman cults seems much more immediate. Or what about a man who converts to Christianity and has more than one wife? what about a second or third wife who converts? Polygamy is not uncommon in the North, and was much more common just 20 years ago (our friend John’s father had more than one wife). These are just not issues that Southern churches are grappling with.
That said, often these churches are hosted and sponsored by a “parent” Southern church and occasionally have joint services, so it’s not like they are entirely isolated. However, even in the church we visited, which was hosted by a Southern Presbyterian church, it was not hard to see that there were still significant issues of prejudice and Southern-preference at play. The Southern church met in the huge main church building, while the Northern community met around back in a set of old Sunday school rooms. Solomon, our friend (from the North) who founded the NOP insists that this is simply because of practicalities: the Southern congregation is larger and the NOP church has to meet at the same time because many of the Northerners are servants in Southern households and only get off Sunday morning to go to church. (Though even in the explanation you can see the effects of injustice coming through.)
It is amazing to see the continued wave of injustice roll on—from slavery into the present. Pray for the people of Ghana; pray for the Church here. In the midst of burgeoning church rolls and a mainstream Christian culture here in the South, the voices from the margin are hard to take seriously—why risk stopping all this positive momentum? But as American Christians we know the terrible price there is to pay for a Church built on the shoddy foundation of ethnocentrism and injustice. There is hope here. The Gospel, the ministry of reconciliation is going forth, even on the raging sea of oppression—through the NOP and ministries like it. Reconciliation is a long, hard road, but the journey has begun and we have been blessed to be a part of it.
Here's a photographic example of the difference between a "Southern" church and a "Northern" (NOP) one: (click on photo to enlarge)
Top Picture: A Southern Ghanaian Church (Presbyterian Church in La - A Neighborhood in Accra): Bottom: A Northern (NOP) Church - This school house where the NOP congregation met was located right behind the the church above, in La):
Today we traveled from Akropong to Tamale. Tamale is the capital of the Northern Region, the first real outpost of what Ghanaians simply call “The North.” There is a considerable cultural difference here that you notice right away. Churches turn in to mosques. Cement walls turn into mud walls—and mud floors. Tin roofs turn into thatched roofs. As we drive north, our friends tell us that we are entering “the land of goats and bicycles”—and we saw plenty of each. The North is predominantly Muslim. Some of the taxis in Tamale are labeled in Arabic. The main buildings in town are the two big mosques—one is “traditional,” one “fundamentalist,” bank-rolled by Iran.
We are told all the way up here that Tamale is NGO Central. Every NGO seeking to do poverty reduction work wants to do so “in the North” (the poverty rate is as high as 90% in the northern regions), but they need Western infrastructure (internet, paved roads, etc.) and amenities (running water, pizza, etc.) to service their missions and their young twenty-something (mostly female) American and European workers. Tamale provides a reasonable balance. The result is that Tamale is something like Ghana’s equivalent of New Haven: the testing ground for every do-gooder’s good idea. Our friends from ACI—themselves Northerners—complain about the NGOs’ real effect on Tamale, which has more to do with the NGO workers than the NGOs’ work: higher prices (because NGO workers can afford to pay more), greater degree of Westernization, etc. As we pull into town, John points to a motorbike and says: “You see, the result of the NGOs! This used to be a bicycle town, now everyone rides motorbikes.” And it hits me: is this what “poverty reduction” eventually becomes?
Later in the evening, talking with John’s cousin who is traveling with us to do research on Northern girls who migrate to the south to Accra to work hauling cargo from market to the truck depots, I ask him whether the 90% of Northerners whom the government labels as poor consider themselves poor and he smiles. “Poverty is relative. It depends on who you compare yourself to.” Among other things, the NGOs have succeeded in providing a higher standard for northerners to compare themselves to; they are the Jones’ with whom to keep up.
The fact is that many of the “poor” in Ghana often have what they need, especially here in Tamale. They make little money, but they need little money. They grow what they need and live simple lives (that is, materially simple). The government calls this poverty. Those who have moved up to motorbike living in Tamale do not have excess cash; they don’t turn a profit month to month. Nor do they really have an increase in quality of life. The bicycles got them where they needed to go, as do the motorbikes, and as we drove through the city tonight, as I breathed the air I wondered what the city smelled like before bicycles began being replaced by their gas-burning equivalents. Now the Tamalese make more and spend more. I suppose that’s the definition of economic health: higher wages and higher consumer spending, though you have to wonder whether it is spiritually healthy.
When the Christian missionaries came to Ghana in the 19th Century, they desired for Ghana to reap the benefits they had received from Christianity. What they didn’t realize was that the “Christian” ideal they envisioned for Ghana included a large chunk of Western culture in addition to the kernel—that is, Christ Himself. Consequently, when the Akhan began to accept Jesus and to worship Him as they saw fit, the missionaries complained that their faith was lacking something; it wasn’t proper Christianity.
I wonder whether all of us do-gooders (and I put Hannah and I in that category) are suffering from a similar failure of imagination when envisioning a post-poverty Africa, whether we don’t know how to establish economic viability without also sowing the seeds of the capitalist rat race, the quintessentially American desire for just a little more. Are we once again dooming Africa to designs for “advancement” that both: a) don’t fit their context and b) didn’t work perfectly in the Western context either?
P.S. (August 11) I have further thoughts about this you'll hear later, but for now I just wanted to clarify one thing: A few weeks ago in a discussion in our home group, we formulated the following definition of poverty (spiritual, material or otherwise): "that which impedes God-intended human flourishing." Material poverty, specifically, then, would be "material want that impedes God-intended human flourishing." If we were right, then the basic question here is: what does human flourishing look like? Our experience in Tamale then asks two further questions: Can we answer this question about human flourishing outside of culture? Can we answer it cross-culturally? Those are both independently open questions for me, though I have an instinct to answer the first negatively, both because (this is a truism these days, I suppose) we are immutably culturally situated ourselves and, more fundamentally, because we worship an incarnational God, a God who translates Himself into our space, into our culture. At the end of the day, it is truly an issue of imagination; can we imagine human flourishing without importing our culture and its attendant pitfalls?
We're back from our whirlwind tour of the North (and Burkina Faso, as it turns out). We'll be posting a lot more about the trip in the coming days. We'll post thoughts in chronological order from remarks we recorded more or less along the way, so we'll post the "actual" date in addition to the posting date.
For now, here's a brief summary of the itinerary and a map of our trip (click to enlarge):
8/2: Drive from Akropong to Tamale (red) 8/3: Visit Mole National Park (yellow)
8/4: Drive to Bawku, pass through Paga to see the crocodiles (green) 8/5: Tour the hospital in Bawku; visit development projects in Garu (turqoise) 8/6: Church in Bawku; drive to Ouagadougou (Burkina); visit John's niece (blue)
8/7: Tour Ougadougou (on motorbikes!) 8/8: Drive back to Bawku 8/9: Drive back to Akropong (deviation from previous route in purple)
Switching Gears from the Gulf Coast - So much has already happened in our first week or so here in Ghana! We're keeping a running commentary (partly in our heads, partly on the computer), but just haven't been able to post it yet... I promised to let Matt use the computer soon, so I won't go into long detail here...
The latest news is that Matt and I will be taking a trip to Northern Ghana! We are particularly excited about the chance to see more of the country, but also because we are learning more about the North/South divide within Ghana (More prosperous South, Poorer North, among other things). I don't know what our internet connection will be like up North (since we will be hopping from Guest House to Guest House), but we will definitely update the blog when we get back in a week or so...
Also, keep Matt in your thoughts and prayers - He's feeling a bit under the weather (sore throat, coughing, etc.) and we are hoping he'll feel a bit better, especially since we'll be travelling for 8 hours or so tomorrow!
If I get more time to write, stay tuned for roaming livestock, "godly" signs, and other random observations from our time so far in Ghana!
Hannah wrote: I originally meant this to be one long post, but I felt it was too long, so I cut it roughly in half... Sorry I'm so longwinded!
Though we toured New Orleans in a day, we actually did all of our work in Mississippi, mostly in the towns of Diamondhead and Bay St. Louis. Our Youth Group volunteered with a group called “Willing Hearts, Helping Hands” (WHHH), a non-profit based out of a Calvary Chapel Church in Uncasville, CT. (The InterVarsity Groups from Yale, Wesleyan, BC, and Georgetown volunteered with this group during their Spring Break).
Our work consisted of various different projects – Yardwork, “Mudding” (Spackling), and Street Clean-up... Time for more pics!
Tim working in Melba's House
Fun with Spackle!
House and Sailboat - Matt took this while street cleaning... Pay attention to the sign in the front...
A Close-Up of the Sign - A testament to endurance in the face of hardship.
Christina hauling trash during street cleaning in Bay St. Louis, MS
King of the Heap - Look how much yardwork was done at Jane's House!
Hauling Wood at Rhonda & Yuri's House
The main challenge in working was that it was brutally hot. On our first work day, the heat index was at 110 degrees! Honestly, I’ve probably been to places with hotter temperatures or other places with higher humidity, but the combination was absolutely atrocious. We were told to drink 1 Gallon of water a day just to keep hydrated!
In addition, pretty much our whole team got sick (it reminded me of the YCF Trip to Honduras in 1999… but not quite so awful) – I think most of our team was just dehydrated, or maybe it was the bug that was being passed around from our time in the Poconos the week before, but the combination of sickness and heat did not bode well for us while we were working.
Thus, the theme for our trip became “Flexibility”, “Endurance” and “Reliance on God”.
The first day we arrived, Mel (one of the coordinators from WHHH) emphasized that the most important attitude we need to have is Flexibility… and oh, was that helpful! Plans changed at a moments notice, sometimes we didn’t have rides or the materials we needed to do the work, and there were many moments that called for patience and “rolling with the punches” – This lesson of Flexibility has also come in very handy while we have been in Ghana – It might well be the lesson of the whole summer!
Many of our evening devotions focused on the theme of perseverance and letting God help us to serve others. The most memorable Bible Studies we did was one led by Laura on the nature of Servanthood, where we ended the study with a literal “foot-washing” which symbolized bringing the dirtiest parts of us to Jesus and allowing him to cleanse us as we ourselves are going out to take on the dirtiest (and chaotic) parts of these neighborhoods and the people we were serving. The other memorable Bible Study was led by Matt on “Finishing Well” – The idea that we didn’t just want to end our time in Mississippi saying “Whew, I’m glad we got that over with…”, but rather to “…run in such as way as to get the prize” (I Cor. 9:24) and finish the week with rejoicing rather than complaining. I think these are both principles that apply to our lives outside of MS as well.
One of the great joys of our Gulf Coast trip was meeting the people who were living in the neighborhoods we were working. Everyone we met were so appreciative of the work we were doing (even though it didn’t feel like that much to us), and we entered in plenty of great conversations – So many people wanted to tell us their stories about their experiences with the hurricanes. People came out of their houses and trailers just to thank us for our work and many of them offered us cold beverages and ice while we were working.
The people that stuck out to me in particular were Lori (or Laurie?), Jane, and Rhonda & Yuri (Uri)? On my first workday, my team was assigned to so street cleaning duty on a street with virtually no shade, no breeze and I was still recovering from a fever. I think we barely made it 100 feet before we collectively collapsed as a group in front of a house with a large swimming pool out back. In the pool, there were 3 children, and one of them was particularly friendly and wanted to know if we could jump into his pool… We were kind of reluctant to do so, but we started talking to him, and he asked if we wanted to see the inside of his house, and started yelling to his Mom (Lori) that the “church group wanted to visit the house!” Lori was more than willing invite us in, and we saw the places where the storm damaged her house (sorry, no pics – I didn’t have the camera that day!), and she told us all about what happened on the day of the storm (I think this was Katrina), and the fears that she and her family had throughout the storm. Fortunately, even though the parts of the roof were torn off her house, she was now well on her way to recovery, though Lori did mention that if another storm of this magnitude came through this year, she would probably leave for good. (This was the prevailing attitude among many people in the area).
The day after meeting Lori, we were assigned on a special project to do yardwork at the home of Jane, an elderly lady in Diamondhead, who was described as “despondent” and in need of ministry and prayer. “Despondent” wasn’t quite the word that I’d use to describe Jane when we first met her… I think “Angry” or “Bitter” might have been more applicable. Jane was perfectly sweet to us, but one could sense an underlying current of bitterness at the hand that life had dealt to her. Her husband had died 3 years ago, and though her house didn’t sustain much damage in the hurricanes (though her yard was a mess…), the experience clearly rocked her. She was also afraid of being taken advantage of as a widow, and when asked about her relationship to the Church and God, she was very dismissive, mostly because the Church couldn’t find her another husband (She spoke with me a number of times about looking for a boyfriend… this was clearly very important to her). However, she was very appreciative of our group coming to work on her lawn, and I think she liked the teens a lot. At the end of our first day, we asked if she would like prayer, but she declined.
The next day, Matt took a team down to work at Jane’s house as well (just look at the number of trash bags full of leaves, brush, and twigs that we collected!) and she was even more appreciative The morning’s work wasn’t terrible, but we were really losing energy in the afternoon… Fortunately, part of our group (and then eventually our whole group) was called to help a couple down the street (Rhonda & Yuri) to help move some stuff into the house they were rebuilding from scratch (… see what I mean about Flexibility… you never know what’s going to come up!) I say “Fortunately” because while we did help Rhonda & Yuri, they actually really served us! Rhonda made sure that we got plenty of water and Gatorade to drink, gave us snacks, and even insisted we take a seedless watermelon back home with us! They were so friendly and nice, and we were able to work in their nice, breezy, and shaded basement, rather than picking up trash in the hot, hot sun! We were also inspired by all the work that they did to build their home again – Yuri is a carpenter, and the story of their house-building was really a collaborative effort. They had a connection to someone in the municipal government who let them use their equipment to clear out the 6-8 feet of debris that were the remnants of their old home; a group of Amish came to help frame their house and put up the walls (gotta love the Amish!), and various other group and family members helped with setting the concrete foundation, etc. Through it all, they just had the most amazing attitude, not bitter or angry at all, and I just loved how Rhonda called each one of us “Babydoll” (it’s one word when she says it..)! Being at their house was probably the best way to end our work week!
Anyway, there is SO much more that I want to talk about, but this blog entry is too long as it is… and I didn’t mention Melba (Matt’s group mainly worked at her home), or the other volunteer groups we were working with (we got to know the Calvary Chapel group from Casa Grande, AZ, pretty well), Dairy Queen, Birthday Celebrations for Lauren & Josh, and so, so much more! I really wish I started this blog while we were in the Gulf Coast, but there really wasn’t any time at all!
I just hope you got a little taste of what our week was like in the Gulf Coast, and now I think I feel free to finally switch gears to our time in Ghana… another blog entry for another time…
OK - One more pic before I sign off...
Sunset at Sonic... Featuring the New Haven & Hartford Vineyard Youth Groups!
We just found out yesterday morning that our dear friend, YOP suffered a brutal attack this past weekend (I won’t go into details…), so it is hard for me to even write this entry, but I figured that if he has internet access in the hospital (or even when he goes home), then he’ll want something to read, so here goes… YOP: We dedicate this blog entry to you – Get well soon! :)
So, to backtrack a little bit… Before Matt and I came to Ghana we were fresh (and I mean “fresh”) off a trip we had taken with our church’s youth group to the Gulf Coast to help with hurricane relief efforts there. It was definitely a challenging, but ultimately rewarding, experience.
First of all, it was amazing to see how much devastation was still left – even 10 months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. To give you some perspective, we were told that in Kenner, LA, when they had a Category 3 storm (which is plenty destructive enough) it usually takes them about 5 months to get completely back to normal. Katrina was a Category 5, and as you can see from the pictures below, things are far from “normal”.
As you drive along the highway between New Orleans, LA and Diamondhead, MS (about an hour away), there were very few gas stations or even places to eat, so you had to be careful where you got off, and had to make sure you had enough gas to get where you’re going, because you might not have the opportunity to get anything along the way.
Whole Shopping Malls were left empty, and even the few stores that were open usually closed early because there were not enough people to hire to keep the stores open. (Margaret, one of our contacts down in Mississippi told us that about 40% of the population in Mississippi left after the hurricanes and probably will never return…)
Our first weekend in the Gulf Coast – We did a day trip to New Orleans. We met up with people from the Kenner Vineyard (Kenner is the town right next to New Orleans, and where the NO Int’l Airport is located), which is the base camp of the Vineyard Mercy Response Team, where volunteers from the Vineyard Churches can go to volunteer with Hurricane Relief efforts. (We couldn’t work with them because they only take volunteers over 18 years of age, but they were more than happy to show us around, so that was nice :)
The Mercy Response Coordinators from the Kenner Vineyard showed us around the Ninth Ward (Upper and Lower Ninth wards), and the spot where the barge broke through the levee. Here are some pictures of what we saw:
This is an example of the markings used for houses that were checked by FEMA - The "NY" means that the team was from New York. The "9-9" meant that they checked the house on September 7th. The Left Side of the X were how many dead animals were found, the Bottom the X marked the number of people. (Fortunately, they found no dead animals or people in this house.)
These are a couple of severely damaged houses in the Lower Ninth Ward.
Barney in Debris
A Semi-Flattened Truck
Stairs leading to Nowhere: This was the most haunting image for us. This picture was taken at the site where the barge broke through the Levee. Whole Houses were washed away, leaving nothing but the concrete front steps. We saw this everywhere.
If you are wondering why the houses have not been rebuilt, I could go into a long exposition on how the hurricane has exacerbated the effects of poverty in this region, but instead, let’s just say that people here are very angry at Insurance companies and FEMA. (I don’t want to make this entry too political, but we can definitely talk about it sometime…)
After the tour of the Ninth Ward, we had a delicious Cajun lunch at the Kenner Vineyard and then we were off to the French Quarter for some “touristy” fun… It was a jarring experience to go from the devastation of the hurricane to the liveliness of the French Quarter, but we made the best of it…
Marc... need I say more?
Matt in Cafe Du Monde - Famous for their Beignets (French Doughnuts covered in Powdered Sugar)
Hannah on on the Waterfront
Members of the Youth Group hanging out in the French Quarter
We just put up some pics from the beginning of our Trip to Ghana - These should tide you over for the weekend. Enjoy!
We've Arrived in Africa!
This is a pic taken from our window seat on the airplane. Matt thinks it's somewhere near the Sahara Desert in North Africa.
Sunset from the Airplane
Tro-Tro in Accra
The green mini-bus is a "tro-tro" which is a (chaotic) form of transportation in Ghana.
Matt & Kodjo (Esi's Brother)
You have no idea how happy we were to see Kodjo the first night we were in Accra... BTW, Esi's family is such a joyful and hospitable family... we see where she gets it. :)
Our Room in ACI - Yep, this is where we are staying
...and these are our beds...
More posts should be coming soon... (Hannah has a big one planned about our Gulf Coast Trip)... We don't have internet access on the weekends, so you probably won't hear from us until Monday or so...
