A night in Ouaga

Our arrival in Ougadougou made me thoroughly glad to have funded Sofiatu's partnership. The central station was an all-out assault from a massive language barrier, and I'm not sure Sofiatu translated everything perfectly, but she got us into a taxi headed to the city-centre and that was perfect for me. Ouagadougou is a very unique place in that nothing signifies why this amazingly sprawling city is where it is. No infrastructure, no rivers, no defensively strategizing landscape. The approach into Ouaga is quite literally an instant transition from empty sand lands to sand lands with houses everywhere.

I had, in spite of this, planned it as one of my layovers for travel, and had found a rather nice hostel called La Pavillion Vert. I heard tales of a restaurant, and a nice courtyard and decent beds with fans for around 15 dollars a night. When I arrived, I was not disappointed. It was everything they had said it would be. A haven among the moto-filled craziness of central Ouaga. I was disappointed, however, when I went to the registry to see it all filled up. Not a bed in the house! After today, I was just ready to crash into a bed in a semi-hot room for a while, so when the taxi driver told Sofiatu he knew a place downtown I just agreed and we rolled away from the bless-ed La Pavillion Vert. We pulled up to this place:

This place might look bad from the street, but the street was really an alley behind some street vendors so not that many people really saw it. Besides, no matter what the facade was like it couldn't relate to the experience inside. We walked in to the register and the clerk, I think his name was Baba, stood looking like a slender Mr T. Gold chains and teeth abounded to show his obvious success as a hotel clerk. I must admit he scared me a bit at first, but tomorrow Baba becomes a friend and ally so I won't instill any wrong ideas in your imagination by further describing his appearance. He agreed to a lower price than I could have gotten at La Pavillion Vert, and that was perfect for a man of my traveling stature. I will say the concern on Sofiatu's face and her persistence in making sure my door locked properly troubled me a bit at first, but I'll just credit it to her motherly instinct to over-react. Now that I think about it, the door concerns may have been legit as they were made of steel and 3 or 4 of the vents had once been bent assumingly to the size of someone's arm and they did give me the only room with a large steel-barred bathroom window opening into the outside alley (only 1 of the vents had been bent open here). Nevermind, I just taped my passport and debit card to the back of the window box and went to sleep. A rough first day of travel, but tomorrow is a new day!

Ok, I wrote this extensive semi-daily journal of traveling from Ghana to Amsterdam. I'm no professional travel writer, but if I must say so myself, it wasn't bad. That journal with all its African and European content was left in a car in Madrid, Spain with two men not able to speak or read English. So, I suppose to record my travel before my mind resets the hard drive, I'll write down what I remember. Here goes, the 4 month post-travel reminiscence of the trip of my life.

I was supposed to visit Mama Laadi (Prince is one of Mama Laadi's kids pictured above) for 2 days just long enough to do a tour of the schools that received desks from The Desk Project and make sure our work was still holding together. I ended up staying for a week, just hanging out with kids I didn't really want to leave and helping Mama Laadi with some organization and form-filling. The last 2 days at Mama Laadi's I met and spoke with Sofiatu. Sofiatu is a friend of Mama Laadi's originally from Bolgatanga, but now living in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. She travelled to Bolga for a relative's funeral and ran out of money for the return trip to Ougadougou. She travelled with her daughter and grand-daughter and they needed fare and I needed someone who knew Ouagadougou and who could speak French. I agreed to pay the fare for Sofiatu and her crew in exchange for some guiding around Ouaga and some help getting situated. So we left Mama Laadi's around 7 in the morning and boarded a bush taxi (which once across the

Francophone border becomes a sept-place meaning seven places even when there are 9 adults and 2 kids) with way too many people and babies sitting in my lap for the 7 hour ride to Ouga. More later.

Sofiatu and grandchild pictured above in Ouagadougou

Personal blog=fail

Life has been a little packed to say the least, and finally something uber-productive has come of it- www.thedeskproject.org. I might not be blogging on here, but you can go to www.thedeskproject.org/the-blog-project.html for some updates on our obibini project.

Tongo desk project

Bolgatanga Trip


Vacation Trip to Volta Region

Urgency

Sometimes you just really want to take back about an hour of life and re-do. I arrived at Mama Laadi's place about 2 AM. As the gatekeeper opened the door to the house, I saw some feet lying in front of the door. Expecting to see Mama Laadi's smiling face waking up to greet me, it was a bit strange to see Grace, one of the girls here, waiting on me. She informed me that Mama Laadi was at the hospital with one of her sisters. Once Grace showed me into my room, I called Mama Laadi and she said that it was actually her god-mother that she was with at the hospital, she had malaria, but was now stable, and I went to sleep. I woke up almost 9 AM and walked outside to finally see Mama Laadi for the first time in a few months. She was just as joyful as always, but she asked me if I would be willing to give blood for her god-mother who was in the hospital. I told her I would, that I was O+ (the universal donor), but that they wouldn't allow me to give blood in the states because of malaria. "This is Ghana, everyone already has malaria" was the response. So after some time we loaded up on a motorcycle and headed to the hospital. Once we got there we went through some typical Ghanaian bureaucracy that took about an hour, then went to do the blood test to verify type and health. The nurse took a small blood sample, then asked if I had eaten. I had eaten some small biscuits (cookies for Americans) and some water just before, but that obviously was not the way to do it in Ghana. I told them I had given blood before and I would be just fine, but they insisted that we take the motorcycle back to Mama Laadi's to eat, then come to do the transfusion. So I came back to the house and had lunch with one of the nurses, mind you. After some hour and a half, we set back out for the hospital. As we pulled back up to the ward where the god-mother (her name was Mary) was being kept, we heard wailing and crying. It was Gifty, Ms. Mary's daughter. Ms. Mary had died while we were eating lunch. It was the worst feeling ever. Here I was, the guy who was going to give this girl's mother her very life blood, showing up a half hour too late. A do-over would be great.

 

Mama Laadi later explained to me that this Mary had been to Mama Laadi what Mama Laadi is to so many children now. Mama Laadi had been kicked out of her village as a child when she became a Christian. Mary was the one who found her on the street and took her in as her own. Mary took care of many children when she was young, then entered a convent. She was an active sister for some years before quitting to become a mother to a child of her own: Gifty. Mama Laadi had lost contact with Mary sometime before the convent period of her life, but then through "the dutch lady's" travels into some remote village, the two were reunited. Mary then fell sick about 3 years ago. She battled with illness for 2 years before coming to stay with Mama Laadi for the last year of her life. Mama Laadi simply said she was glad to be able to pay back a small amount of her debt to this woman before her death. She was 55 years old. I guess you could call this a celebratory obituary.

 

1 Cor. 7:29-31

What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. So, from now on those who have wives should act as if they have none, those who mourn as if they did not, those who are happy as if they were not, those who use things of this world as if not engrossed in them, those who buy things as if it was not theirs to keep for this world in its present form is passing away.

anne clair said update.

so here is my update. went to the mountain. made a jacuzzi out of a bucket of water. moved 350 pounds of sand. slept. superbowl sunday. didn't watch the game. went to work. now i will attempt to take a nap. the end.

frozen chocolate please.

Refreshment

So I'm writing this post from a different bedroom than the other two of this semester. Not that I'm shackin up with folks while in Ghana, but we've added a new member to our apartment family so we did some re-shuffling of bedrooms to accommodate. Ben McNeer has made a speedy return to Africa. He's doing well and just getting settled into the place and the school. We both are. I've been feeling a little too settled; meaning that for the past couple of weeks my little block of life (meaning that now my house, AIS, and Beacon House are quite literally on the same city block) has gotten a little monotonous. But Ben's return reminded me that there truly is something about this continent that's just a little addictive, so today I went searching. I got myself lost in the market where I was able to reconnect with eating meat pies full of onions and no meat out of a street cart, use every bit of the Twi language I know (this only takes about 30 seconds) as well as a little Fra Fra, walk some dirt streets, and just reconnect with this city on a real level. I do love it here. I do love the chaotic simplicity of every single thing from buying Tampico orange juice to catching tro tros (mini-buses) here. This is a beautiful place. These are beautiful people. All made by a wonderful creator.


On a serious note to all those who donated in some way. To those who sponsored orphanage kids: I have talked with Mama Laadi several times since my return, and will be sending money to her this week for all of your January commitments. Please pray for your children, and if I haven't e-mailed you about your child, it's because I don't have your e-mail address, so e-mail me @ benjaminstanton@live.com. For those who committed to educational sponsorship, I have great news! We've been updated by Ramonna, founder of the Beacon House and distributor of all the educational sponsorship funds that the 200 USD annual donation that you agreed to will stretch MUCH farther than expected for the children in normal public schools. This means that we will have enough to support more children! We have several attempting to go to trade school to become seamstresses, carpenters, etc. that will now receive help in addition to those you pledged to support! I'll be e-mailing you as soon as we know where the surplus will be going. And for the desk building support, pray for transportation. We can rent a truck in Kumasi to take the lumber north to the villages fairly inexpensively, but it would be much better if we had some sort of tra I'll be donkey hauling the lumber to these kids if I have to, but I'm still hoping for the generosity of some of our friends. I'll be going up March 26 and be there for 2 weeks, and it would appear that we're going to have quite a healthy team of builders coming along as well. Pray for this trip, that God would let us show that it's his hand that's helping.

Mi Dasi,
Ben (Kwasi)

Refreshment

Why am I here?

finally settled in

i'm back in accra at last. i mean i've been here for one week today, but my mind has just settled back in over the last 24 hours or so. mebre paa. 2 really lazy days this past weekend have finally cured me of any residual jet lag from 40 hours of transit. the laptop left on the sidewalk front of the airport in accra, the passport left in birmingham, the passport left in a taxi in accra, the cold-all seem to be fairly distant now as life in accra continues with the regular hussle. also, with the erasing of past anxieties comes the possibilities of the next semester. with the generosity of some people back home, there are storehouses of goods and blessings waiting to be poured over individual souls in ghana, and i praise his glory for allowing me to be even the fingernail of the hand that is bestowing. thank you, mississippi for being open, and thank you, jesus, for using the chief of sinners to do your work on earth.