Day 1

Hello from Sunny Africa!

Sorry for the delay in our blogging. We have been super busy since we have arrived in Ghana. However, I will rewind to when we first started our journey….Tuesday. So Tuesday was the day we drove to Buffalo Airport. We left around 3 pm from my house and made our journey across the boarder. Everything went smoothly. We checked in, ate, waited, and hopped on our first flight. It was a super tiny jet…like 10 aisles. 1 seat on one side and two on the other…very clasterphobic aha. Our flight from Buffalo to Washington was about an hour. Then we ran to our connecting flight in Washington and hopped on board a nice 767 plane. Then the almost 11 hour journey to Accra started. Most of us slept the whole way our we just watched movies. All I can say is we were all exausted once we got off that jet. Once we arrived in Accra we went through customs and were held up because of some boxes we were bringing so that brought us back a bit. However, we saw our enthusiastic host (our professor from our school…Professor Mary Ashun) and everything seemed to be better.

Then we started on our 4 hour bus ride to the town we are staying at called Asamenkese. On our bus trip we saw many things. We saw villages, mountains, streams, goats, chickens, dogs, and kids. Everyone saw us and either stared at us our waved with a big smile saying HELLO! They have a special name for white person here but I am not too sure how to spell it ahaha. Anyways to say the least we definitely felt like celebrities. We also saw some poor neighbourhoods or very nice neighbourhoods. Seems like there is no inbetween like in Canada. You are either rich or poor. Another thing we spotted was all the local businesses were Christian related…like for exaple a hair dresser would be called “God is good Beauty Parlor” or something like that. Our professor told us that the majority of Ghanians believe in God. All the radio stations are also Christian. It is so awesome to see them believe in God. However, hard to comprehend why they do when they have so little. Anyways all the people here are super friendly and kind to us. Not once have we had a problem. It was hard adjusting at first but now I feel like we are all pretty content and feel safe and happy.

After a 4 hour bumpy bus ride we arrived at our destination….Asamenkese. We arrived at our Guest House where we are staying. Half of us are staying at Auntie Joe’s which is right beside the guest house and the rest are in the guest house. They are basically just beside eachother but two different women own them. After having a yummy Ghanian dinner we had devos and went to sleep at around 7 pm. We were so tired from the two days of travelling and were just plain wiped. Then we got woken up at 6 am to get ready and have breakfast. Then we started our first day to work on the school. We took it very easy since it was our first day. First we learned a little about the vision of the school from our professor then some of us started to sand the walls to prepare for painting. The other half of us mixed mortar. After sanding some of us starting to paint the window frames and then the walls of the school while the other half started to put the mortar onto the floors of the other half of the school. I forgot to mention our awesome walk to get the school. Its about 20 mins to walk there and on our way lots of kids give us high fives and wave hello and people simple just smile and are super happy to see us. Definitely makes you feel good to a beginning of a work day. Now imagine that happening in Canada…pretty sure our Monday work days would not be so bad ahaha. Anyways back to the school we enjoyed connecting with the workers and hearing their stories and having them teach us their techniques to working. We also discovered Ghanians are very precise in their work and take their time. It is admirable because they do not rush. This is different to our culture in Canada where it is go go go no matter what. So we tried taking our time and finished work early around 2 pm. After working on the school for a bit we walked back to our Guest House and got picked up by taxis and were taken to the market. Our professor wanted all of us girls to get hand made tailored dresses so we had to go pick out fabric at the market (and of course Trevor got himself some fabric to get a shirt made). It was interesting driving through the market traffic and was kind of crazy aha. After that it almost seemed like all eyes were on us. It was quiet intimidating since there were so many people and we were the only White people aha. However, we safely made oue way to the fabric store and picked out some beautiful fabric.

After we came back to our Guest house (after crazy traffic getting back aha) and got measured for our dresses (and our shirt). Now we are sitting here relaxing, writing, going through what has happened these past days, and sit amazed at how God is soo good and how he has provided us with the opportunity to be able to come to this awesome Country. We are very much enjoying ourselves, we are all happy, and content and are very excited for the coming days.

Tomorrow and Saturday we continue working. Sunday we will go to Church and relax. Monday we are going Sigh seeing. Then Tuesday, Wed, and Thursday back to work again. Then Friday we come back home. Seems like time is going by so fast so we are trying to cherish every minute. Anyways I should go now. Hope all is well in Canada. Lets just say the weather here is much different…extreamly humid, about 35 degrees and bright and sunny. Aha quiet an adjustment I must say but now we all love it! Bye for now (we should be updating daily now hopefully so keep reading!) Thank you for all your prayers, love and support! We definitely feel it half way around the world!! LOVE YOU ALL!

Much Love,
From the Redeemer Ghana HANDS Team
(posted by Julia Misek)