::WARNING TO ALL READERS!::

This blog is long. Very long in fact. So much has happened and I had no time to write. Feel free to read in stages. Make a nightly reading assignment if you wish. I would. By golly I should have separated this one into volumes. Please enjoy!

Last Saturday I wrote about hearing the drummers off in the distance. African drumming is so amazing me to even more amazing is the dancing! On Sunday some of the kids, Aunty Barbra, and me went on a walk to a village that is a ways away from Rafiki. I was walking through with one little girl on one arm and another on the other. We walked through the entire village and talked to people, watched some people pound fufu, ground gari, fun stuff like that when all of a sudden my heart stopped. I heard drumming! I followed the sound until I came upon four men playing the drums and singing! There were children all around them dancing and singing. I held my camera up to ask if I could take a snap and/or film them. They more than agreed and so I did. I filmed for a little bit and took a snap. There were these two young ladies that kept jumping up in my videos. They were amazing dancers and seemed to be dying for some attention. As the rest of my group was watching the football match across the street I stayed and watched the drummers. I met the young ladies and there names are Regina and Christiana. It was amazing! Almost everything has been checked of my to do list in life and I am not even half way through here.

I was sick on Wednesday. I woke up vomiting and just plain not feeling well. I stayed home from school so they cancelled pre-school because there’s just no one to take my place, and you would have thought I had died! All the kids in the village picked flowers for me and sent them home with Susan. Susan said in every class she went in the kids wanted to pray for me because they missed me. This was really just one day that I was sick. On Thursday I walked up to school and was in the street talking to Barbra and this roar went up “Madam Sarah is here!” from every cottage. It was really funny. I told Barbra that they were acting like I had been gone from months or that I was lying in my death bed. When I walked to the flag pole kids, not just mine, came running up touching me, kissing me, telling me they prayed for me all night and wanted me back. It was really sweet. I guess I did not realize that they liked as much as I love them. It was a little upper got to admit it.

On Saturday we, Susan, Sarah (the new roommate), and me all went to Cape Coast. It was such a blast! We got picked up at 6:15 in the morning and started our journey. Our driver’s name was Patrick (he was born on March 17th) and he was fabulous! He even taught me a little Twi while we were driving. It was so funny, we listened to country music the entire time and not Dixie Chicks or Tim McGraw, it was Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson and Allen Jackson. So, it was real country. Finally we asked him, “Patrick, do you enjoy country music?” He told us that his father listens to country music and always has so that’s how he got into it. He said with their accents he does not hear all the words but he understands most of it but mostly he likes the music and the tone of the voices. It was so funny though, here we were driving through the hills of Ghana, driving in and out of small villages listening to country music!

Our journey to Cape Coast was just over three hours. Our first stop was the Cape Coast Slave Castle. It reminded me a bit of the Alamo. It was originally a fort for the British that turned into a monstrosity of human trade. But that’s not why it reminds me of the Alamo. It was just there in the middle of the city. No big deal really to the people that past it everyday. The thing that was different about this from the Alamo was that it did not seem to have that huge tourist feel to it. It seemed more real. The dungeons that the slaves were held in were not air conditioned for the comfort of the tourist or lit properly for the safety of the tourist, it was what it was in the 1700-1800s.

Words can not describe the emotions that I felt for this place. If anyone has been to the Killing Fields in Cambodia or to Rwanda or Concentration Camps I can imagine the feeling would be the same. It was pretty intense. We walked in the dungeon where the male slaves were held and it was complete darkness. The room was no bigger than an average master bedroom that was house to over 200 men. They were chained to the walls and to each other. No ventilation, no light, barley any food, just men. They urinated there, defecated there, vomited there (mostly out of fear), slept there, they lived in that room with all that. It was sobering to say the least. I believe the number that they gave was something close to 3 out of 10 did not survive five weeks in the dungeons. The women’s dungeon was just the same as the males but they had two rooms that held over 150 women each. I think the most barbaric thing was that over the male dungeon is where the first British Church in all of Africa was built. Right above where they were holding innocent people in conditions that now a days people would get arrested for keeping dogs in they were reading the same Bible that I read today. They were singing songs, praying, and listening to sermons of Jesus’ love while the people below them were literally killing themselves for freedom. The oppression was still very much in the air of that place. There was one room that the tour guide said no one is allowed to go in. The horror that occurred there they said it is beyond speakable and the feeling of the room is still so frightening that they stopped letting visitors in. All this below a church.

We walked through the door that countless slaves did when they were boarding the ships to start a whole new journey of pain and endless grief. They called the door “the door of no return” because obviously when someone exited that door they were never to return to the life that they had lead before this. Walking through wasn’t easy. All I could do was think to myself, “this is the door that was the gateway to so much pain for hundreds of years for these people.” The ship that they boarded was named “Good Ship Jesus.” It makes me so sad that these wonderful people’s first impression of Christianity was being chained, beaten, raped and ultimately killed. What's worse is that it was not the first time that impression was made around the world.

When we exited the door it lead of course to the ocean. There was a sea of faces and people there. I know I talked about the market having so many people but the market has nothing on the Cape Coast beach. I don’t know how they put their boats in the water or pulled them out, there was no where for them to go! There were fishermen knitting nets and women selling water and carrying fish to be sold. There were children running on the sandy beach playing football in the water. It was so much to take in. I felt I was in a movie. My mind still is having a hard time grasping the thought of all those people.

The tunnel that lead from the dungeons to the slave ships no longer exists because when the slave trade was abolished in 1844 the people of Ghana sealed it with stone so that it could never be used again! That made me proud. Proud that they would seal it so that not one person tourist or otherwise would have to walk that trail that lead to the demise of so many.

(Sorry about the change in mood, I thought for a long time how to transition here but just couldn’t come up with anything.)

Next we went to the rainforest. It was beautiful. I had never been in a rainforest before. The thing that I did not like about the rainforest so much was I had to watch the trail so close that all I really saw were my feet. That was until we walked above the canopy of the forest. They have a “bridge” thing that swings 30 meters above the ground over the trees. Looking down on the beauty was undescribable, but you know me, I’m going to try. Everything was fresh looking. Like the produce department of Central Market or Whole Foods. Everything was misted just enough to make it shine. The tops of the trees were impeccably lush. I felt like a was flying above God’s easel of green paint. There was dark green, lime green and everything that goes in between. Can you imagine God’s paint collection? What a thought. After the 15 minute hike in mid-air we hiked back down and that was even more incredible. The day was so bright but the canopy was so heavy that the ground was dark. There were pockets of light that shown down on the sea of green. The plants were so unusual and I am so sick that the batteries in my camera died while walking across the bridge. I think the camera was nervous that I was going to drop it when the bridge shook so it saved itself by dying. They say that they have elephants there but I didn’t see any. They also said that they had six different species of monkeys but I didn’t see any. They didn’t say anything about ants but that I saw in plenty.

It was about 3:00 when we packed in our Toyota Carola that started out silver but by this time was a nice shade of terra cotta. We were a little hungry by now. We had not eaten since around 5:45 or there about. Patrick took us to the most beautiful hotel to eat. We ate outside on the beach! It was flawless. The hotel was called Coconut Grove. The food was scrumptious beyond measure. I had snapper with paw paw sauce and sauteed potatoes with a tomato and onion salad. I ate and ate and ate! It was so delicious.

I had heard that Cape Coast had some of the best pineapple and kenkey around so you know I had to have some. The pineapple here is so amazing you can eat the core! That’s how good it is. And kenkey is my favorite Ghanaian food of all time! Patrick took me to the stand where he buys his kenkey and loaded me up. I bought eight balls of kenkey for 15,000 cedis. That’s just over $1.50. Then I bought six pineapples for 20,000 cedis! About .25 cents each. Isn’t that insane! Oh, how I love Ghana.

Well that is enough. Whew! I’m exhausted!

Love you tons!

Sarah

Prayer Request:
-We need mothers desperately!
-The children that they will be calm this next week and willing to learn.
-The health of everyone.