Ghana – a look at our trip… « littlemomentswithGodinabigworld

Hello,

So I am going to attempt to update what went on during my trip to Ghana. I am going to pretend that I haven’t told anyone anything so that I can type one basic concept and use it for several different updates, so please bear with me!

We arrived in Accra (uh-kraw), Ghana about 1 pm local time on Saturday, October 16, 2011 after approx. 20 hours of transit time. We made it through local customs and immigration with no problems or delays, it went very smoothly! Our biggest travel worry was making our flight from Houston, TX to Washington, DC as the flight was delayed and at one point they were telling us they were going to cancel it… but God pulled through for us and we not only made it, we made it on time to sit for a few minutes before boarding the next flight!

We are staying in the home of one of the founders of La Mansaamo Kpee (LMK) or La Town Development Association. The daughter of this particular founder is our hostess, her dad passed away a year ago and she has stepped in to fill his very large footsteps! She has lived in Canada for over 20 years now and yet La is still her hometown! It was great to see her passion and care for the area! However, she is not fully Westernized so we definitely had lessons on the art of indirect communication while there! Charity and I stayed on the lower floor of her home, and the guys all stayed 2 lots over in the home of a family member of hers (a cousin I believe, though they track cousins much further than we in North America do…)

The exterior of the House that Charity and I stayed in

Charity and I hung our mosquito netting over our bed from the center, we ended up have to string some rope between the 2 curtains on either side of the room to get it to stay up… but it worked, and to me ended up feeling like one of those little kid princess beds…

our bed covered in Mosquito netting.... Princess Bed!

On our first Sunday we attended church in a Presbyterian Church just a few blocks from the house, church was at 7 am in the morning! Each church has an English service and then a local language service following it – Flora took us to the English services both Sundays which was still pretty hard to understand a lot of the time… So on this Sunday we were in a smaller church and as guests were made to sit up front, so we kinda felt like we were on display, and we didn’t really get to witness the locals worshiping other than what was occurring up on the stage. However, it was still an amazing and different experience. The music was a mix of songs like we sing and songs that were adapted from local culture – they gave us a hymnal to follow along in, and we attempted to do so, though I spent quite a bit of time lost…oh well! The biggest difference that we had a hard time with was that they took the tithe, then passed an offering, and then they placed these buckets up front with the 7 days of the week on them and everyone filed passed and placed an offering in the day they were born… this was a problem for us as none of us knew what day we were born on… nor did we yet have any Ghanian Cedi’s to put in any of the plates so everyone was feeling guilty already…

We spent Sunday afternoon at the house with Flora and got to hear her history and the history of LMK which was a really good background to have for the rest of the week to know what was going on around us.

Sunday evening was the big excitement! We went to visit the King! We went to visit him, having been invited to have dinner with him, as our time to pay our respects to him, something that should be done in the culture there in order for him to not put any roadblocks up for the project. It was quite the experience with the co-founder of LMK being there, as well as the key patron, and several other executive members coming in and out, and then Flora us and the King.

The King is in the center front!

We had spicy Spaghetti for dinner, and since they “believe in the First Miracle” as they say we each got poured at least one glass of wine. When the Queen came around with Mango juice to go with dinner I asked for water instead, and she offered me a Coke, to which I replied yes and then Kevin (our team leader and full-time eMiC staff member) said “may I have a coke to please”, not exactly a typical phrase you say to a queen huh?!? It was a good time though, with great memories, and we learned alot about LMK and Ghana as a whole during our time there! It was a highlight for the whole team for the week, we had alot of fun, and some great memories out of it!

Monday was our first day on the site, we made a quick site visit on Saturday after we arrived in Accra but Monday we headed to the site and started working on the project!

our daily office at LMK

It was a day full of measuring the site and drawing up as-builts of the current building, as well as trying to come up with a basic program needs list for the new hospital we were designing.

Tuesday we visited La General Hospital and got to see how a maternity ward works in Ghana and talk to the head nurse and hear what worked and didnt work in their space and how she would design it if she could (aren’t you proud of us mom!), this was as close as we could get to talking to the staff of the future LMK hospital as the doctors and nurses that staff it will be applied for from the government pool of them after they building is constructed, and the doctors in Ghana were on strike while we were there. We also visited the VRA clinic on Tuesday which is a privately owned hospital/clinic like LMK will be and while they do not have maternity care they were on a similar sized lot and still had a lot to offer about hospital design in general and what does and doesnt work there in Ghana. These trips were very useful and very eye-opening about how great our standard of care is in North America! It was amazing to see what these nurses worked with on a daily basis and the number of people they saw each day!

On Tuesday evening we met with the LMK Executive council and got to hear their version of the history and vision of LMK and the history and vision for this hospital!

Randy Presenting to LMK Executive Board

We also got to show them what we had in mind for the kind of spaces and style of design and get their take on it, this was good because there ended up being spaces that we would not have included in early phases that they really wanted in there! It was a great meeting, and went well, and was big highlight to me for the week! The faith of these men and women was so amazing! They dream big because they believe in God and they believe in miracles!

On Wednesday, Randy (our Architect on the team who was very good at what he was doing and great to watch at work and learn from!) and I spent the day doing initial design work and getting the building drawn up by hand and in CAD, it was a full day of work, pretty much spent the day getting the existing building finished up and started placing the first phase on the new. On Wednesday evening, I started a sketch-up model of the existing building as it is going to look as it will be upon completion. Wednesday was a hard day for Randy and I as we were really struggling with feeling like up until this point we had not been pulling our weight on the trip so it was a day full of feeling like we had to accomplish so much in order to get our work done but also to pull our weight.

Workin' Hard

On Thursday, I spent the bulk of the morning working in Sketch-up and the afternoon in CAD so that by days end we had 3/4 of the design in CAD and the existing building in Sketch-up in full 3D format. I was beginning to feel like a CAD monkey, but even still there is so much more meaning to doing that work when you are sitting on site of where this is going to be built with the people it is going to make such a difference for right there around you! Also on Thursday we were able to see some of the people from another eMi team from the Colorado office that was in Ghana at the same time we were! It was great to get to see the team leader John whom I had gotten to know during orientation, and Elena who is one of the interns in the Colorado office!

On Friday it was cram and stress day, this was our last day to do design and to get everything pulled together for the presentation the next day. It was a stressful day for me!

But we did it! I got the existing building and the newly designed ones put into CAD and a generalized site drawn around them so that the LMK members would be able to have a 3D image the next day of what we had designed, as well as got everything completed in CAD.

What does a 3rd World Copy machine look like? An intern with a camera!

Randy got the CAD drawings all formated correctly for the presentation and in place in the powerpoint and color coded all the phases in them, as well as drew a site plan by hand that was a great visual to have, and a great visual to be able to leave with LMK. Everyone got everything completed though and we got it all pulled together in time for dinner! Friday evening we were able to have some time as a team with Irene and Annon, who were hosting all the men in their home, and listen to them sing (they having amazing voices!) and then to hear a bit about them and then practice our presentation on them (and as everyone knows it is always good to have a practice run and work out the kinks!), it was also good because Irene is an estimator and was able to correct our cost projection numbers since the only data we had been able to find was several years old.

Saturday morning we gave our presentation, we presented in front of a larger group than we had been able to speak with yet while there in Accra, we had the opportunity to have the majority of the LMK membership there.

LMK membership ready to see our presentation

It went really well, we were able to have Flora translate pieces of it to Ga (the local tribe and is also the name of their language), even through everyone spoke English fluently as it is the uniting language between tribes, but they didnt always understand our English… They asked some great questions and had great input as the people who would be using the hospital.

Randy presenting the Sketch-up model I created

The best part for me, as the one person who didnt talk at all through the presentation, was getting the opportunity to be further back in with the people of LMK and seeing their faces and body language as we presented. There were 3 women in the crowd and just seeing their excitement and joy over the design of this maternal hospital was an amazing experience and was definitely one of the highlights of the week for me! After the presentation the LMK members had a reception for us where they presented clothing to us that was made at the Vo-tech school that they run – it was custom made for each of us,

The lady who made the wonderful outfit I am wearing!

and all the dressmakers did was look at us! It was so special to receive this blessing from them!

LMK executive board and team in LMK clothes

Saturday afternoon we drove up into the mountains of the Eastern Region and were able to have a small amount of time to spend some time in a more western setting with the co-foun

der of LMK at a nice lunch at a resort restaurant there in the mountains, we were able to watch the fog roll in and back out – it was a beautiful site that God gave us for the afternoon! It was a great time of decompressing and getting to see the countryside of Ghana. We also were able to go visit the Botanical Gardens in the eastern region and see so many beautiful plans that are in Ghana while there! It was amazing – though the strangling tree was definitely a favorite of ours!

Standing inside the Strangling Tree

Sunday we were off to 7am English service church again, this time at a Pentacostal church a few blocks in the opposite direction. This service was a little longer than the one the previous week lasting about 2 hours, and was definitely much more of an exciting service than the Presbyterian one, with lively music, some dancing and a lively and active sermon! In the afternoon we headed off on another road trip in the countryside of Ghana to visit the hospital in Adidome, in the Volta region of Ghana, where 44 years ago Kevin’s Dad, Rubin, (who was on our trip) worked as a Pharmacist with the Canadian version of the Peace Corps. It was a very special moment for him to see the place where he lived and worked for 2 years so long ago. On our way back to Ghana we were able to stop at the beach house of the same man who took us for lunch the day before and briefly get in the Atlantic Ocean (though it was after dark so we didnt quite get to see the amazing view)

In the Atlantic Ocean - who cares that its dark!

on the Africa side as well as see the marker marking the closest land point to the (0,0) mark of the Equator and Prime Meridian crossing off the coast.

Monday was one more road trip to yet another region of Ghana where we visited Elmina Castle and saw the place where the slaves from all over Western Africa were held in before being shipped to the America’s. This was a heart wrenching site to see, as well as to hear about this from

Fishing Boat in Elmina

the perspective of an African. This was also along the coast, so while we did not get to get in the Ocean on this trip we had some amazing views of it, and Elmina as a community is a fishing community so we were able to see the boats out in the water at work and on the shore as well! It looked like I have always imagined fishing in Christ’s time did…

After this road trip we headed back to Accra where we gained an appreciation for the traffic in North America after spending almost 3 hours crossing the city that without traffic would take maybe 20 minutes to cross… at this point we headed to the airport and our flight home – it was another approximately 20 hours of travel home, and I was definitely ready to get home yesterday but it was an amazing time, and I hope that this has shown you a bit of how amazing God was there in La Town, Accra, Ghana this last week!

Feeling Blessed,

Stephanie Anne

PS. I have many more pictures but here are just a few more!