Last post - a video of pictures from our trip, and an interesting article on caskets in Ghana!

Here are a few last things that are interesting from our trip to Ghana... enjoy!

A big thanks to Kate on our trip for putting the following pictures to music in a video format for us to show at an assembly at our school where we talked about the trip to the student body. Make sure your speakers are turned on!  :)

Also, an interesting thing that we learned while on the trip is that casket-making is a serious business in Ghana.  Often Ghanaians are buried in caskets that are shaped and painted like what their career was in life - for example, a fisherman might be buried in a fish casket, a seamstress in a sewing machine casket, an electrician in a light bulb casket, etc.  We saw a few examples of shops that sold these kinds of unique caskets while driving around the country, but I found the following article on CNN.com when I returned home.  Make sure to click through the pictures in the article! Read article here: In Ghana, what you do defines you in life... and death.

Final day in Ghana - Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, Arts Center, final Ghanaian meals, and goodbye to Ghana...

On our final day in Ghana, we had the privilege of visiting the Kwame Nkrumah National Park.  Our flight home would leave that evening, so we had the better part of our final day in Ghana in the capital city of Accra to see a few different sites and various parts of the city.  As someone who really is interested in world history, I was happy to have the chance to go to this place that draws people from all over the world to learn more about the influential leader who led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957.  We started with a short tour of an inside museum (which was air conditioned... it felt wonderful) and got to see some furniture and outfits belonging to the leader, as well as many pictures and stories of his life. To learn more about Kwame Nkrumah and this very important era in Ghana's history click here.

This is the mausoleum that holds the final resting place for Kwame Nkrumah and is the beautiful focal point for this memorial park.

Dr. Nkrumah's final resting place.

A bronze statue of Kwame Nkrumah in the exact spot that he proclaimed independence for Ghana in 1957.  In Nkrumah's speech on that day, he famously said... "At long last Ghana, your beloved country is free forever… but the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up to the total liberation of the African continent.’’

Bronze sculptures blowing celebratory horns.

There were a lot of peacocks freely walking around the park.  I read on a plaque that peacocks were a favorite of Dr. Nkrumah and that's why they are a part of the his memorial park.

Dr. Nkrumah's Cadillac.  Stories that I read about the leader said that he loved this American car.

There were a few signs honoring important figures that had visited and contributed to the park, like this tree that was planted by Nelson Mandela.

Mr. Johnson, one of MA's faculty leaders for the trip - this guy is awesome!  The restaurant that we went to for lunch on our last day in Ghana is called Assase Paa and is a vegetarian/vegan/all natural cafe that our Project Okurase friends said they usually take their visiting groups to for a meal.  It is conveniently located very close to the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, so we were able to walk over to eat lunch after seeing the park.  They had really tasty and cold (cold is extra wonderful when it's so hot outside!) fresh squeezed fruit juice, so we all enjoyed some of that.  Yum!

This is a very typical Ghanaian meal called "red-red" - a stew made of black eyed beans, traditionally prepared with red palm oil and tomato paste, and often served with fried plantains.  It can be made with meat or without - we had it prepared for us both ways while on the trip. Our group ate red-red several times over the course of our trip and I really enjoyed it.  Parents, if you want to make a typical Ghanaian meal for your student to bring their taste buds and memories back to our special trip, this might be one to try - it is pretty family friendly (by which I mean that my young girls at home would eat it and most likely enjoy it).  :) I found several recipes online - I will definitely try and make it at home.  Here is a link to one of the recipes I looked at online:  Ghanaian Red-Red recipe!

After lunch we went to the nearby Accra Arts Centre for about 45 minutes of shopping before we had to depart for dinner before we went to the airport for our flights home.  It was a very large market with so many fun things to look at - many of us purchased souvenirs to bring home to family.  Several of us learned the art of bargaining (which is not always as easy as it seems!), and it was a bit crazy at times being approached to buy anything and everything that was sold in the many, many stalls.  I was too busy shopping to get any pictures myself, so the following four photos are taken from google images.

Here is a picture of our last dinner in Ghana, at a restaurant called Abajo - this was the meal that I ordered. If you order fish in Ghana, this is very typical of what you will get - the entire fish, extremely fresh!  I realized while eating my fish that I ordered a few times on the trip, it took me quite a bit longer to eat than it would at home because you were really picking the meat off of the bones carefully.  At home I would order fish and it would be a nice fillet cut with no bones - a bit easier to eat and definitely different than ordering fish at home!  The rice to the left of the fish is a popular Ghana staple dish called Joloff rice.  The flavors of Joloff rice are very tasty, and it can be prepared with or without vegetables and meat.  I will attempt to make this one at home too - yum! Here is a link to a Joloff rice recipe online: click here.

Our journey started with jubilant Ghanaian drumming and it ended with the same.  Our guests at Project Okurase were wonderful in making sure we truly experienced as much of the culture as we could while in Ghana.  Our host Powerful is drumming in this picture - he is the second one in from the right with the striped shirt.

Powerful also brought in a dance troupe to dance to the drumming while we ate.  What a memorable way to spend our last evening in Ghana!

Our table - eating, talking, and watching the drumming and dancing show.  It was an interesting meal for me because the atmosphere with the drumming and dancing was joyful, but knowing that we would be leaving Ghana in just a few short hours was making me think back over our wonderful trip and feeling sad to be leaving.

Powerful and I saying goodbye outside our bus, just before we walked into the airport terminal.  I can't say enough wonderful things about how Powerful led this trip, and the impact he made on me and the others from our group.  He radiates peace and happiness and has an awesome, magnetic personality.

The two happy MA leaders (Julie & Matt J.) and Powerful.  Saying goodbye was sad and I can only hope to be back to Ghana in the future to visit our new Ghanaian friends again!

On our first flight home, from Ghana to Amsterdam.  Everyone was tired and several of the students weren't feeling well - tummy issues, etc.  Even though it is sometimes difficult to really rest on these long flights, I think everyone was thankful for our wonderful trip and the flight time ahead to relax and reflect.

We missed these two sweeties while we were gone, our daughters!  Here is a photo of them just a few minutes after we returned home from the MSP airport and got out the gifts we had gotten for them in Ghana - dresses, dolls, jewelry, and drums.  The smaller red drum is ours to keep at home, and we brought the slightly bigger brown drum to our church praise team to use in worship.  And our fluffy white dog jumped in the picture too... she might look like a stuffed animal, but she is real.  :)  They loved their gifts and were happy to see us home, healthy and full of stories from our wonderful trip.

If you've been following this blog and reading along through the stories and viewing the pictures, I'm not sure what else I can possibly say to convey the wonderful and thought-provoking time that we had on this amazing journey.  I have traveled all over the world, and being in Ghana was truly unlike anything I had ever experienced before.  The people were so kind and welcoming, always being thankful to us for our visit, happy to talk with us and learn more about who we are and what we thought of Ghana (although we really came seeking to learn more about them and their country... we all ended up learning from each other).  I would be willing to bet that each and every person on this trip from MA would say that it changed their perspectives on many things and really made a huge impact on their lives in very deep and profound ways.

I would encourage everyone reading this to really explore the world, as you're able, to learn more about each other and other places - to learn more about different cultures, different histories, different landscapes, different joys and sorrows than your own.  You can do this global exploration right in your own city, in your own country, and all over the world.  Is it always comfortable?  No way.  Will you often be stretched outside of your own personal comfort zone and challenged to really look at people, places, and culture in very different and eye-opening ways?  Absolutely!  I always tell my 11th and 12th grade students at school that I highly recommend trying to study abroad during college - travel and learning new things in a different setting overseas is never something that one will regret.

It is interesting how many of my viewpoints and definitions, if you will, were stretched and changed.  For example, if you were to ask me before this trip what it meant to be rich, I would most likely answer you this way: someone who is rich has a lot of money, they are wealthy.  Now by American standards, I am not rich by any means - but in comparison to the rest of the world (outside of mainly North America and Europe), my family would be considered upper class.  Did you know that the majority of the world, well over 50% of the global population, live in poverty and subside on less than $2 per day?  Some of you, like I did, when asked to think of extreme poverty, may think of a picture from a Save the Children commercial of a starving African child, crying with tears running down their face and flies around them.  While the situation depicted in a photo like this is certainly true in many areas around the globe, do you know that this too happens in places closer to home, places in the U.S.?  Income equality and poverty affect so many children and adults each day, both at home and abroad, and that trickles down to penetrate so many other areas of life - including but not limited to: healthcare, growth and malnutrition, housing, education, access to clean water and food, jobs, safety, injustice, crime, hatred... and the list goes on.  Don't be afraid to ask yourself what you can do to engage in any or all of the above stated issues.  You may feel that you only have one lone voice, but it only takes one proactive, brave person to take on an issue of concern to help others.

While traveling and learning in Ghana, my eyes were opened to richness of spirit, faith, welcoming nature, community, love and care for one another, serving others, attitude, outlook, work ethic... and again, the list goes on.  Am I rich in any of those ways?  This trip really made me look long and hard at not only what kinds of things are going on in another part of the world that is very different than my own, but also what is going on in my own life as well.

In conclusion, I will forever be changed and forever be thankful to have had this amazing CFE experience.  Thanks for following along, and I will post a few more short tidbits on another post or two to end this blogging adventure.  Peace and love to you, through Christ Jesus who loves us deeply and cares for us all... no matter where you live or what your situation!