Ghana 2012: The big catch up

Last year, it took me a few weeks to catch up on my blog posts from Ghana—I came home on May 11 and finished writing about everything on June 3. This was in part because of our crazy back-to-back vacations to Phoenix, Calgary, and Nauvoo. Fortunately I was graded on the blog posts, since part of the Ghana class requirements was to keep a journal or travelogue about the trip and turn it in by June 3, which I totally did.

This year, the Ghana trip was seemingly busier, with the different TA responsibilities I had. I knew there was no way I’d be able to keep up with posting every day, but I figured that I’d be able to catch up when I got back. We were going to have a baby near the end of July and we only had one vacation planned (to Grover), so I had plenty of time. Loads of time.

Then Benjamin was born on June 3 (kind of ironic timing), and we started the 5 weeks of NICU hell. And my Ghana blog post drafts languished on my desktop. For the whole 5 weeks. Oops.

Church and an Actual Day of Rest (April 29)

Since we arrived in Ghana we’ve had crazy fully scheduled days full of appointments, touristy things, and hours of driving in a bus. Today was a nice counterpoint to the busyness of this trip—we finally got an actual day of rest… on a Sunday even. Bonus!

Perfect timing

Before Andrew left Ghana he sent me a quick email saying that there was a chance he'd be able to skip the JFK leg of his flight and fly straight from Atlanta to SLC, which meant he would land at 10:30 AM instead of 2:00 PM (which sounded like a good deal to me). He said he'd either call or email once he knew, which likely wouldn't be until he landed in Atlanta...at 6:00 the following morning.

I didn't realize until a while later that 6 AM in Georgia is only 4 AM in Utah. And then I wasn't too keen about his idea of calling home.

But at 4:30 AM, when Andrew was still stuck in customs, Miriam woke up feeling sad—so sad that she was crying uncontrollably. She must have had one of those weird dreams that just makes you feel...sad...but she couldn't remember what she had dreamt about so we just cuddled in bed for a while. Since I was up, I sent Andrew a text saying that he could call without worrying about waking me up. He never called (though he did call his dad who was not expecting a call that early and was a little disoriented).

About an hour later I turned on my computer to check on his flights. His plane had landed and his next flight was boarding. So I assumed he was on it and sent him a text message saying that I'd see him at 2:00.

He was still stuck in customs, however, and ended up missing that flight, which meant that he was able to get onto the Atlanta–SLC flight. He and his travelling companions had tried to change to this flight when they first checked in at the airport but the airline said it would be a $200+ charge per passenger to change tickets. However, when they landed, Andrew's professor's iPhone alerted them that they wouldn't have time to make their connection to JFK (apparently there's an app for that) and asked if they'd like the SLC flight instead. With one click of a button they were rebooked onto the SLC flight...for free...because they'd missed the JFK flight.

About ten minutes after I'd gotten back into bed, Andrew texted to tell me he'd be landing at 10:28 AM.

I texted back and said, "Sweet!"

He didn't get my earlier texts because his phone was turned off so he was pretty shocked that I was awake.

MTC and Playground-filled River Islands (April 28)

As I’ve probably mentioned several times already, BYU’s MPA program has really close connections to Empower Playgrounds (EPI), the organization that gives rural village schools special merry-go-rounds that generate electricity to charge electric lamps that kids can use to do their homework at night. Like, really close connections. Their executive director, Chris Owen, is a 1st year MPA student and is one of the students on our Ghana trip.

This morning we left Ho early to visit a couple of EPI’s installations in the Volta river. Half of our group came to Ghana a few days early to live on a tiny, poor island with one of the first merry-go-rounds, and EPI has since installed another more modern one on a neighboring island.

Waterfalls, flying monkeys, and misguided development (April 27)

Somewhere near the Togo–Ghana border, up near the bottom of Lake Volta, lies Wli Waterfall, the tallest waterfall in West Africa. Hiking up to it and is one of the perennial highlights of the MPA Ghana trip, and this year was no exception.

Embassies, paranoid surreptitious religious discussions, and beads (April 26)

Our first stop this morning was the Dutch embassy, since the Netherlands have recently pledged substantial money for sanitation issues in Ghana. We met with the main sanitation officer for the embassy (a Ghanaian lady) and the students did a fantastic job presenting Kweku’s Biofill and getting great feedback and research.

Toilets and the temple (April 25)

BYU’s MPA study abroad to Ghana has three main purposes: (1) complete a consulting project for a nonprofit involved in some aspect of international development, (2) visit NGOs already working on various social issues, and (3) have fun doing touristy things. Last year we had two projects: research in price trends for vegetables sold in the open air markets, and research in the vocational and technical sectors of tertiary education for the Church’s PEF program (I worked on that one).

Jetlag, tour guides, and luggage (April 24)

We arrived in Accra without any problems (and without our luggage) and met up with the island goers at the incredible Alma House in Accra. This year, like last year, a group of students arrived in Ghana a few days before the rest of the group to live with village families on the island of Pediatorkope. It’s like camping, only with typhoid infested water, raw oysters and fish, malaria-bearing mosquitos, and extreme tropical heat. While it’s a great experience for them, I’m quite content with never, ever doing it. Six of the eight students on the trip went to the island this year (we actually have a relatively small group this year: 8 students, Aaron Miller (the faculty director), Dr. Rex Facer (a faculty member who’s coming later this week), and me).

Flying All Around the World (April 23-24)

This year, we totally lucked out on plane tickets to Ghana. In the past few years, they have typically cost $1,500–1,700. However, due to some crazy fire sale Delta was having, BYU was able to book my flight for an incredible $1,200 (which I didn’t have to pay, since I’m the TA… ). If only the price from last year’s trip could have been switched with this year!

This crazy cheap airfare only had one catch—all our flights had to somehow go through JFK in New York. This made for some crazy itinerary wrangling. Salt Lake City to Minneapolis to New York to Atlanta to Accra (and the same in reverse in a few weeks). It’s like a grand tour of the northern border and east coast. Woot.

Our flight from SLC left at the ungodly hour of 6:00 AM, and as a sign of the ungodliness of the hour, we (Aaron, the trip director; Sam, an MBA/engineering student; and me) stood in a completely empty airport from 3:30 until the first Delta employees started to trickle in at 4:45ish. So much for that whole “be at the airport 3 hours before your international flight” thing.

When we got to Minneapolis we rushed to our next gate for our one-hour layover, which turned into a 1.5 hour layover, which turned into 2 hours, which turned into an unknown amount of time. The plane was at the gate, but the crew never showed up. How does that even happen?

Because of our tight layover schedule at JFK and Atlanta, Delta decided to reroute us on a new flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta, completely skipping the extraneous JFK connection (and 4 hours of flying time!). We headed off to another gate to wait for a few more hours, fully assured that our luggage was rerouted with us.

Upon arrival in Atlanta, we discovered that the missing Minneapolis crew decided to show up and take our luggage to New York. It was never rerouted, and because the plane left so late, it wouldn’t make it to Atlanta to get on the trans-Atlantic flight with us. As big of a pain as it is to lose your luggage, it’s kind of nice to be pre warned that your luggage is lost. It wasn’t a surprise to not find it in Accra—we knew that we had to go make a lost luggage claim as soon as we landed (and they actually had started the paperwork and had rerouted our luggage on a KLM flight through Amsterdam, oddly enough).

The flight across the Atlantic rocked. Mostly because Delta had this in every seat:

Yep. A USB plug for iPads/Phones/Pods. Not that I used it much—the plane’s selection of movies was incredible (I finally got to watch Inception and The Dark Knight). Still, go Delta.

The flight was incredibly long and uneventful. Like this post. (Totally recycling the joke I used for last year’s Ghana flight blog post) :)

Things that are good to have and days that are good to spend

A wise old hobbit once said “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”[1] When things go well and fun, telling about them is boring; things that don’t go well or aren’t pleasant are what we like to hear.

And there’s my excuse for not posting any blog posts for the past week while I’ve been in Ghana. Everything has gone exceptionally well so far and has been incredibly fun. Nothing uncomfortable, palpitating, or even gruesome to report here.

Despite this apparent lack of excitement, I really will start posting pictures and stories in the coming hours. We’re heading off to an expat American family’s house for family home evening later, I’ll be writing like crazy once I get back. Then you can all bore yourselves with my “things that are good to have” and “days that are good to spend.” :)

Update: Apparently some have taken this quote to mean that it's been boring in Ghana. Not at all, my friends. :) It's just that everything has been normal, good, fun, and exciting, but not palpitating or gruesome (nobody's gotten incredibly sick, we haven't been robbed (knock on wood), etc.). All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth…

---

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Ray, 1937), 51. ↩