So the semester is wrapping up quickly here. I can't believe that it's already the end of November and I will be home in a little over 2 weeks. While I'm very excited to be (very), I am really enjoying my last little bit of time here in Ghana.
Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, which made me very homesick, being so far away from friends and family. I explained to my Ghanaian roommate what I would be doing each day of the Thanksgiving weekend had I been home, and that sort of depressed me a little. HOwever, our group had the opportunity to celebrate a good AMerican-style Thanksgiving at the house of a Ghanaian Calvin student. His parents cooked us turkey, stuffing, cranberries, macaroni, collared greens. It was fantastic. Good food and good fellowship, making for a genuinely good holiday.
This THursday I leave for a week vacation in Togo, which should be pretty exciting. We're doing it vagabond-style, staying in cheap hotels and eating from foodstands on the sides of roads to keep things as cheap as possible, but I'm very excited to spend time in a new place (and I got a sweet stamp in my passport). Also, it will be my first time in a non-ENglish speaking country, so I'll have to brush up on my French skills, which will be a interesting and wonderful challenge.
Next Thursday I come back to Ghana and begin the "wrapping up" phase of the semester and then the following THursday I'm outta here. It's crazy how fast it's going, but I am looking forward to coming home and seeing all my friends and family again.
I hope that everyone finishing up projects, papers, and finals is doing well, working hard. So begins the holiday season. Christmas is only right around the corner, and I'm looking forward to seeing you all very soon.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Team USA?
So, I have a friend in some of my classes here a Jerusalem University College who used to play basketball for Arizona state. He went on a basketball ministry trip to the Middle East and some scouts from the PBF (Palestinian Basketball Federation) offered him a contract. He took it, so he is a professional basketball player for a team out of Bethlehem in the West Bank.
Well, every year Palestine gathers the best players from the PBF to play for their national team against other Middle Eastern countries. So this Palestinian national team organized a game against the Americans from the league. My friend said they didn't have enough players, and since I was an American I could play. So one night I crossed the security wall, went into Bethlehem, made my way to the nicest gym in Palestine, and played for Team USA against the Palestinian national team. It was absolutely ridiculous. We won.
This story sounds really good the way it stands, so I don't think I will go into detail about the quality of basketball in the PBF or the seriousness of the game (evident in our lack of uniforms and numbers). I think I'll probably tell this story the rest of my life without going into those annoying details.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Notes on Elmina Castle
If you're going to read any of my posts, it should be this one.
I had planned on blogging about my week experience in northern Ghana; however, this past weekend we went to Cape Coast where we visited two castles formerly used to hold Africans before they were transported to America as slaves via the Middle Passage. In light of this, there is nothing more I can write about than this experience. These are the notes out of my journal that I took after visiting Elmina Castle, the oldest slave fort in Ghana. This is not a continuous story; each paragraph is an individual observation.
Elmina Castle was built in 1482 by the Portuguese who retained control of it for about 150 years. The primary purpose of the fort, at this time, was for trade in commodities--natural resources, gold, etc. In the early 1600s, the Dutch took control. It was about this time that the "evil trade" started--trade in human beings.
When the Portuguese built Elmina Castle, they built a church for themselves. When the Dutch took over, this church remained within the walls of the fort, though it was soon converted into a room used for the auctioning of slaves.
For African Americans, this is returning to their roots, a part of their history. But it is just as much a part of my history as it is theirs. I feel as if I am often told that I, as a European, will never understand the suffering of those taken as salves to the New World. But to say that is to ignore half of the story, because there is not way for someone like me, someone who feels responsible for the actions of my ancestors, to go into a place like this and NOT feel a deep, intense sense of guilt. This is not something I can never understand. This is something that we share.
Places like this make me intensely aware of God's grace, because sometimes I wonder how He will ever forgive us.
We crouch through the doorway of the "room of no return". Our guide makes a joke, "Be careful! You aren't coming back!" I find it hard to laugh.
A black gate with iron bars is the last threshold in this place. Through this door, slaves were forced to turn their backs on their homes and board ships bringing them to a new life of suffering. The gate was once padlocked shut but, now broken off its hinges, merely rests against the doorway. Still the padlock hangs there, the word "VICTORY" impressed on its side.
When the Dutch took over the castle, they converted one of the rooms into a Dutch Reformed church. Above the doorway to this room is inscribed a verse from Psalms: "This is my resting place forever" (132:14). But God doesn't live here. The church overlooks a courtyard where female slaves would be displayed for the governor who would choose one to sleep with. It was required that the windows that faced the courtyard were locked during this...so God couldn't see.
From the roof of the castle, I look down on a place that looks like an advertisements for honeymooners. The white sand of the palm-lined beach meets the rhythmic crash of the ocean's deep blue waves on its shore. I look down from my window at the top of the castle. I am a part of this evil that obstructs paradise.
Beyond the outer wall of the castle, the busy fishing village is bustling. Fishermen untangle nets and scrub down the sides of their canoes, decorated with colorful paint and bright European flags--another reminder of the history of this place. The castle looms somberly in the background of the lives of these people who seem not to notice it anymore. Something that brings tourists. It's remarkable--this formidable presence of evil constantly in the background. The constant reminder of a history almost too difficult to understand. And the lives outside its walls carry on as if to say, "We must move forward. Life goes on. We will not be defeated."
I had planned on blogging about my week experience in northern Ghana; however, this past weekend we went to Cape Coast where we visited two castles formerly used to hold Africans before they were transported to America as slaves via the Middle Passage. In light of this, there is nothing more I can write about than this experience. These are the notes out of my journal that I took after visiting Elmina Castle, the oldest slave fort in Ghana. This is not a continuous story; each paragraph is an individual observation.
Elmina Castle was built in 1482 by the Portuguese who retained control of it for about 150 years. The primary purpose of the fort, at this time, was for trade in commodities--natural resources, gold, etc. In the early 1600s, the Dutch took control. It was about this time that the "evil trade" started--trade in human beings.
When the Portuguese built Elmina Castle, they built a church for themselves. When the Dutch took over, this church remained within the walls of the fort, though it was soon converted into a room used for the auctioning of slaves.
For African Americans, this is returning to their roots, a part of their history. But it is just as much a part of my history as it is theirs. I feel as if I am often told that I, as a European, will never understand the suffering of those taken as salves to the New World. But to say that is to ignore half of the story, because there is not way for someone like me, someone who feels responsible for the actions of my ancestors, to go into a place like this and NOT feel a deep, intense sense of guilt. This is not something I can never understand. This is something that we share.
Places like this make me intensely aware of God's grace, because sometimes I wonder how He will ever forgive us.
We crouch through the doorway of the "room of no return". Our guide makes a joke, "Be careful! You aren't coming back!" I find it hard to laugh.
A black gate with iron bars is the last threshold in this place. Through this door, slaves were forced to turn their backs on their homes and board ships bringing them to a new life of suffering. The gate was once padlocked shut but, now broken off its hinges, merely rests against the doorway. Still the padlock hangs there, the word "VICTORY" impressed on its side.
When the Dutch took over the castle, they converted one of the rooms into a Dutch Reformed church. Above the doorway to this room is inscribed a verse from Psalms: "This is my resting place forever" (132:14). But God doesn't live here. The church overlooks a courtyard where female slaves would be displayed for the governor who would choose one to sleep with. It was required that the windows that faced the courtyard were locked during this...so God couldn't see.
From the roof of the castle, I look down on a place that looks like an advertisements for honeymooners. The white sand of the palm-lined beach meets the rhythmic crash of the ocean's deep blue waves on its shore. I look down from my window at the top of the castle. I am a part of this evil that obstructs paradise.
Beyond the outer wall of the castle, the busy fishing village is bustling. Fishermen untangle nets and scrub down the sides of their canoes, decorated with colorful paint and bright European flags--another reminder of the history of this place. The castle looms somberly in the background of the lives of these people who seem not to notice it anymore. Something that brings tourists. It's remarkable--this formidable presence of evil constantly in the background. The constant reminder of a history almost too difficult to understand. And the lives outside its walls carry on as if to say, "We must move forward. Life goes on. We will not be defeated."
Monday, October 15, 2007
So life in Jerusalem is a lot of fun still. In my Physical Settings of the Bible class, we've been going on lots of field trips, which are great. Two weeks ago we went to Samaria, and here are pictures from that.
http://calvin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039267&l=ee64c&id=15301972
Last week we went down south to Philistia, the Negev, and the Dead Sea area, and here are some pictures from that trip.
http://calvin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039893&l=79720&id=15301972
Thursday we leave for a four day trek up to Galilee, which should be pretty exciting.
http://calvin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039267&l=ee64c&id=15301972
Last week we went down south to Philistia, the Negev, and the Dead Sea area, and here are some pictures from that trip.
http://calvin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039893&l=79720&id=15301972
Thursday we leave for a four day trek up to Galilee, which should be pretty exciting.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Last Wednesday our group travelled to the village of Akropong, about a hour and a half north of the University, for the annual Odwira festival. We arrived in Akropong on Wednesday and did nothing except wander around the little town, which is situated on top of a mountain, making for a nice change of pace from bustling, dirty Accra, not to mention some much-needed fresh mountain air.
Thursday was our first encounter with the Odwira festival, a week-long event meant to honor the ancestors and pray for blessings for the upcoming year (the years go by harvest schedules, not the typical calendar year). We were not briefed about the activities we would be watching apart from the purpose of the festival overall, though we were told there might be some things we would find disturbing. Still not knowing what to expect, we split into groups of 3 (me, Brad, and Kristen) and were brought to various stations on a long road where we were to observe the rituals of a long procession that would be travelling from one end of the town to a palatial construction near the center of town.
After about an hour of waiting and making friends with a group of beautiful old ladies next to us, the procession started to pass the station where we were sitting. I don't know if it caught me off guard simply because I'd had no idea what to expect in the first place, but what we saw was very unusual. Young girls (maybe in their late teens or twenties, some even younger), dressed in white and covered in decorative white body paint, were being led down the road as they carried baskets of food on their heads, which they were bringing to the a feast for the ancestors. Along the way (at our station, for example) designated people were offering libations, pouring water onto the girls' feet or pouring gin and schnapps onto the ground before them. Drummers, dancers, and bell-ringers were also part of the procession, as were several men firing shot guns full of air-soft pellets into the air.
The hardest part about the whole experience, the part that most unnerved me, was the fact that these girls were allegedly being possessed by the spirit of the ancestors. Some Ghanaians have told us that they are just pretending to be possessed; others truly believe that the spirits are possessing the girls. While some of the girls truly seemed to be pretending, others truly did seem depossessed of themselves. Some were violent, some making really furious grimacing faces, some would nearly faint , and most had to be restrained at some point. It was really weird and I don't really know what to make of it all or how to respond to it, except to take it as a cultural experience and try to understand the motivation behind everything involved.
Ghanaians who participate in this festival view the ancestral spirits who possess the girls as benevolent; they believe it is because of these spirits that they prosper, so the idea of being possessed by them is not a bad thing to them. To an outsider, particularly a Christian, the idea of possession comes with certain connotations and, especially with the girls who were acting violent, those connotations are not always good. We've been talking in our group a lot since then about reconciling these cultural practices with Christianity, etc. and it's made for some very good conversations.
Overall, a very good trip. We're back in Accra now for only a week and then we're venturing up to northern Ghana for an 8 day excursion. I'm very excited for that, as northern Ghana is very different from Accra...very rural and predominantly Muslim. In addition, several thousand Ghanaians have been displaced by the flooding of Lake Volta, so we may be volunteering at a World Vision IDP.
More to come later. Hope you all are well.
Thursday was our first encounter with the Odwira festival, a week-long event meant to honor the ancestors and pray for blessings for the upcoming year (the years go by harvest schedules, not the typical calendar year). We were not briefed about the activities we would be watching apart from the purpose of the festival overall, though we were told there might be some things we would find disturbing. Still not knowing what to expect, we split into groups of 3 (me, Brad, and Kristen) and were brought to various stations on a long road where we were to observe the rituals of a long procession that would be travelling from one end of the town to a palatial construction near the center of town.
After about an hour of waiting and making friends with a group of beautiful old ladies next to us, the procession started to pass the station where we were sitting. I don't know if it caught me off guard simply because I'd had no idea what to expect in the first place, but what we saw was very unusual. Young girls (maybe in their late teens or twenties, some even younger), dressed in white and covered in decorative white body paint, were being led down the road as they carried baskets of food on their heads, which they were bringing to the a feast for the ancestors. Along the way (at our station, for example) designated people were offering libations, pouring water onto the girls' feet or pouring gin and schnapps onto the ground before them. Drummers, dancers, and bell-ringers were also part of the procession, as were several men firing shot guns full of air-soft pellets into the air.
The hardest part about the whole experience, the part that most unnerved me, was the fact that these girls were allegedly being possessed by the spirit of the ancestors. Some Ghanaians have told us that they are just pretending to be possessed; others truly believe that the spirits are possessing the girls. While some of the girls truly seemed to be pretending, others truly did seem depossessed of themselves. Some were violent, some making really furious grimacing faces, some would nearly faint , and most had to be restrained at some point. It was really weird and I don't really know what to make of it all or how to respond to it, except to take it as a cultural experience and try to understand the motivation behind everything involved.
Ghanaians who participate in this festival view the ancestral spirits who possess the girls as benevolent; they believe it is because of these spirits that they prosper, so the idea of being possessed by them is not a bad thing to them. To an outsider, particularly a Christian, the idea of possession comes with certain connotations and, especially with the girls who were acting violent, those connotations are not always good. We've been talking in our group a lot since then about reconciling these cultural practices with Christianity, etc. and it's made for some very good conversations.
Overall, a very good trip. We're back in Accra now for only a week and then we're venturing up to northern Ghana for an 8 day excursion. I'm very excited for that, as northern Ghana is very different from Accra...very rural and predominantly Muslim. In addition, several thousand Ghanaians have been displaced by the flooding of Lake Volta, so we may be volunteering at a World Vision IDP.
More to come later. Hope you all are well.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Africa, up close and personal
So, yesterday was my first real African adventure. We went to Anesema Waterfall, a couple miles north of Accra in the town of Adukrom. The falls actually weren't that impressive but it was such a nice change of pace from Accra that I think we all really needed.
It would take us 2 hours to get to the falls, so we decided to treat it Amazing Race-style by breaking into 3 groups and seeing who could get to the destination first. each group was required to have a cell phone, a guidebook, and a boy...a perfect travel kit. My group (Kristen, Emily, and Matt) got on a tro-tro* pretty quick and, as we drove off, saw the rest behind us. Off to a good start for us! :) Pretty impressive since travelling with 4 is actually a hindrance to tro-tro riding
We got to the falls and Matt and I climbed up onto this rock ledge behind the water, which was pretty sweet. Little did we know there was a MUCH easier way of climbing up, which everyone else took advantage of, but we hold ourselves as the true explorers, having done it first (as well as tackling the more difficult route).
Later in the day, Derek, Jordan, and I decided to find the source of the falls, which ended up involving blazing our own trail through 5-ft visibility grasses and pricker bushes up the side of a mountain. Unfortunately, Jordan's shoe broke and he ended up having to make the trek barefooted. But we eventually found the source, which was pretty sweet, but what we couldn't find was our way back down. I mean, we knew where we were, but we couldn't find a navigable path. At one point, Derek said to me, "So...we're hot, thirsty, in our bathing suits (and basketball shorts for me), and stuck in the middle of the bush in West Africa." ("in the bush"....Nate, you would've been proud). But what an adventure!
All this to say, we found our way out without too much trouble, though we did have to tackle an obstacle worthy of a youth group team-building retreat, which was to boulder our way across a short rock face to get to clearer ground (in retrospect, we could've probably just jumped down, but this was a little more extreme...Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible style...). And the boys were pretty heroic, I have to say. I think Derek has a shoe imprint on his shoulder still from letting me step on my back and lowering me to the ground.
We also had to cross the river to get to the path that would bring us back to the foot of the falls (well....it was really more like a creek at the point we chose...like, 2.5 ft across and about 8 inches deep...but river sounds so much better), and unfotunately, I had twisted my already-bad ankle while we were hiking so when I put too much weight on it in the water, I basically wiped out (not my most graceful moment) and got soaking wet.
But we made it back safe and sound with the best story of the trip so far and only a few minor injuries to speak of....Jordan's feet are a little raw, Derek's back is pretty scratched (he was our trail-blazer), and I have a bit of a raspberry on my leg from my nice (read: embarrassing) fall in the water. But this is what I came to Africa for....excitement and adventure and sundry humorous stories that will keep me laughing for a long time.
It would take us 2 hours to get to the falls, so we decided to treat it Amazing Race-style by breaking into 3 groups and seeing who could get to the destination first. each group was required to have a cell phone, a guidebook, and a boy...a perfect travel kit. My group (Kristen, Emily, and Matt) got on a tro-tro* pretty quick and, as we drove off, saw the rest behind us. Off to a good start for us! :) Pretty impressive since travelling with 4 is actually a hindrance to tro-tro riding
We got to the falls and Matt and I climbed up onto this rock ledge behind the water, which was pretty sweet. Little did we know there was a MUCH easier way of climbing up, which everyone else took advantage of, but we hold ourselves as the true explorers, having done it first (as well as tackling the more difficult route).
Later in the day, Derek, Jordan, and I decided to find the source of the falls, which ended up involving blazing our own trail through 5-ft visibility grasses and pricker bushes up the side of a mountain. Unfortunately, Jordan's shoe broke and he ended up having to make the trek barefooted. But we eventually found the source, which was pretty sweet, but what we couldn't find was our way back down. I mean, we knew where we were, but we couldn't find a navigable path. At one point, Derek said to me, "So...we're hot, thirsty, in our bathing suits (and basketball shorts for me), and stuck in the middle of the bush in West Africa." ("in the bush"....Nate, you would've been proud). But what an adventure!
All this to say, we found our way out without too much trouble, though we did have to tackle an obstacle worthy of a youth group team-building retreat, which was to boulder our way across a short rock face to get to clearer ground (in retrospect, we could've probably just jumped down, but this was a little more extreme...Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible style...). And the boys were pretty heroic, I have to say. I think Derek has a shoe imprint on his shoulder still from letting me step on my back and lowering me to the ground.
We also had to cross the river to get to the path that would bring us back to the foot of the falls (well....it was really more like a creek at the point we chose...like, 2.5 ft across and about 8 inches deep...but river sounds so much better), and unfotunately, I had twisted my already-bad ankle while we were hiking so when I put too much weight on it in the water, I basically wiped out (not my most graceful moment) and got soaking wet.
But we made it back safe and sound with the best story of the trip so far and only a few minor injuries to speak of....Jordan's feet are a little raw, Derek's back is pretty scratched (he was our trail-blazer), and I have a bit of a raspberry on my leg from my nice (read: embarrassing) fall in the water. But this is what I came to Africa for....excitement and adventure and sundry humorous stories that will keep me laughing for a long time.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Pictures
Here's a link to some pictures I posted on facebook:
http://calvin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037832&l=3e26b&id=15301972
http://calvin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037832&l=3e26b&id=15301972
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