Ghanaian Style of Welcome

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Breakfast is at 8:15 after a bucket shower. For those of you who have never traveled in Ghana, a bucket shower is used when the water is not running through pipes to your bathtub. Your host keeps a large container of fresh water nearby, perhaps 50 or more gallons. The bather takes a bucket, dips out some water, stands in the shower or bathtub, pours water over his/her head, lathers up and then pours the rest of the bucket over the topside to rinse. These steps are repeated as necessary. It can be an invigorating experience at times, but Ken’s family is a very kind bunch so the water is heated!

Omelets, oatmeal with sweetened condensed milk, sugar and dark honey, fat slices of Ghana bread and fresh fruit make up breakfast.

Mass at Kpando's Immaculate Conception Parish is scheduled for 9:00 but actually starts at 9:30 and is in the Ewe (À-way) dialect except for a few Latin parts and short English summaries. No respectable priest in Ghana would deliver less than a 45 minute homily and today was no exception. As I was tuning out of this very musical language and I'm sure very inspiring homily, my mind drifted to what I was going to say this afternoon at the ceremonies planned for our arrival in Adaklu Have where gifts from our container would be shared. Suddenly the priest switched to English to summarize the homily and I was reminded that the first reading was about Samuel (the only word I recognized the first time through) getting these calls from God and not knowing who it was or what to do. What am I doing here and what am I supposed to say to a group of town elders who don’t speak much English?

As I thought about it, Samuel was asleep each time he hear someone calling so tuning out of the homily in a language I didn’t understand probably wasn’t a bad idea. Then I remembered three different emails from three different people asking for assistance for their school that finally led me to this place. Hey, that’s where I can start and since God is definitely tech savvy, can I compare my emails to Samuel’s calls? I think so. Looking at the day’s schedule and the program at the village, the first thing protocol demands when meeting chiefs and village elders in Africa is to exchange welcomes and then state your mission and the rest of the program just flows from there. Ah ha! Is this what it means to “Pray Always and Pray All Ways?

Mass ends and we begin the trek over the eastern mountains to the City of Ho for some good old fashioned Ghanaian banku and bush meat stew. Banku is made from pounded cassava and ground corn, similar to fufu and the consistency of raw bread dough. Bush meat is a rodent which is captured this time of year by setting fire to the bush with a row of hunters standing at the opposite end to snatch up the 4 pound, over-sized rat-like creatures. This stew was made with a tomato base plus hot sauce and spinach. I ate two-thirds of it which Ken Wutoh, today’s host and a native Ghanaian, said was about what he could down the first few days he was in Ghana. Today however, he and his friend Polo downed two bags of banku and all the stew—Greg and I only had one bag to begin with! Guess we'll have to practice more.

Adaklu Have (Ha’ Vaye) is a small village off the beaten path being assisted by a community organization named Future Hope Foundation (FUHOF). My contact with them is through a young gentleman finishing his degree in Public Administration named Kodzi Courage Afenyo who also taught in Have for 5 years.

I cannot explain in words what Courage had arranged for our welcome! Those of you who visited Axim with me in 2004 know what welcome ceremonies are, and this one was similar, and yet somehow more traditional. We were dropped at the guest house where we would be staying and then were met by a band of drummers and singers walking down the road to greet us and bring us to the town square where the ceremonies would commence. Once there the welcoming protocol was followed very strictly. Welcomes, introductions, statement of missions, gifts given to guests, speeches by the chief and the visitors, dancing and music and a “vote of thanks” are a few of the elements. It was overwhelming and humbling and a lot of fun lasting over two hours under a big shade tree in the middle of the village. It surely beats Vikings football for a Sunday afternoon activity!

The program continued with all the FUHOF officers entering the chief’s house to exchange small gifts and then going on to our guest house to thank us for coming. The “Queen Mother’s” representatives had tied amulets around our wrists and douced them with baby powder earlier as part of a welcome ceremony and now they accompanied the men to visit us. Pleasantries were exchanged and soon they left us to enjoy our ice cold Star beer.

The evening meal was a heaping plate of white rice covered with a red sauce and a few chunks of bush meat with fresh watermelon and pineapple for dessert. Instead of bottled water we are enjoying chilled pouches of it—they are square little pillow-like plastic bags filled with filtered water. You simply bite off a corner and enjoy!

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