Point A to Point B

Our WONDERFUL Ghanian National Fire Service bus that took us from Larabanga to Mole.
View from inside the a tro-tro, by the way, this one isn't full, we picked up another 4-5 people after this shot.
Dancing fireman.

My fantastic sidekick on this trip was my roommate, Christy. If it wasn't for her travel experience, I probably would not have been as open to going on this trip via public transportation. However, she's been to Africa several times, and had already made a trip to another country during my stay on public transport. Therefore, I felt assured we could do it with a little prayer.

We rounded Friday morning, then walked to the bus station. We caught a bus to Walewale, which a nurse from BMC was on. He then insisted he find us a ride to Tamale via tro-tro. We were convinced he would miss his own connection (he was going in the opposite direction), but he kept his word and found us a tro-tro to Tamale. We got to Tamale early enough to do some shopping and enjoy a nice dinner. We took a taxi to our accommodations at the Catholic Guest House, and were surprised when a caretaker from missionaries in Tamale, met us there to ensure we had arrived safely.

We knew there was a bus from Tamale to Larabanga (a town right outside the park) in the am, and in one of those God-planned things, someone at the guest house informed us we needed to go a ticket that night to make the bus in the am. We got one of the last tickets! So we boarded that bus at a nice early 5am the next morning, and took the bumpiest road ever to Larabanga.

Being that Larabanga is right outside a major tourist site in Ghana, they can be rather hostile or in your face about everything. Christy and I quickly escaped these "helpful" people, and thought we would walk the 6km to the park. We take off walking, when we here this loud bus of singing men, a red bus. It literally looked like some scene out a movie.

The singing red bus pulls up and tells us to join them. It's the Ghana National Fire Service! They were training in a town outside of Mole and were going to visit the park for the day. They were excited to be there. They literally danced and sang the entire ride! They were hysterical! We had to stop to pay our entrance fee, and they all filed off to dance some more! They were FANTASTIC!!!! I cannot think of a more perfect way to arrive at the park!

Then we were at the park, in the morning we wanted to fit in the morning safari (especially because the evening safari, we hadn't seen any elephants). But we also knew we were cutting it close because a bus back to Tamale was supposed to arrive in Larabanga around 10, and safari shouldn't finish until like 9:30am. We loved safari, and we saw our elephants up close. We begged out ranger to let us sneak off early to get moving, which he thankful let us do.

We overpaid a man (everything is more expensive in this part of the country since it's such a big tourist thing) to take a moto back to town, then he disappeared for like 10 minutes. Finally he reappears and after an argument with friends, it is determined his bike is too unsafe for 3 of us to ride. By the way, by US standards 3 people is always unsafe, but here, you can easily see 4 people on one moto! So his friend agrees to also use his moto, so it'll be only two people per moto. They drove so crazy! I prayed for my life on this ride, I was certain it wasn't going to end well! They would speed up, then slow down. Christy's guy at some point was chasing down this truck for an unknown reason. It was bad! Something I do not wish to repeat any time soon!

HOWEVER, they got us there with the bus already there, so were were grateful to not miss the bus! I'm just a bit frazzled at the moto bike incident and stress about making or not making the bus. We get on the bus, and the entire Larabanga football team is on there, singing, and dancing preparing for a game with Domongo, a town down the road. They completely melt away all of our stress!!! In fact, they insist we dance with them. Refer back to the note about this being one of the bumpiest roads EVER, but we did it! And in case Christy #2 reads this.....we got them to sing "You are the Most High God"!!!!!!!

To shorten the story, we got back to Tamale, stayed at a missionaries' house overnight. And took two tro-tros back to Nalerigu today! We missed Nalerigu, we had a great trip, but we were happy to return to our little town!

I loved my weekend, but I also learned how much I LOVE Nalerigu! The town is very good to us!

Elephants, Baboons, Crocidiles...Oh My

After much scheming, dreaming, planning, re-planning, praying, packing....this weekend my roommate and I headed to Mole National Park to go on safari! I had been dreaming of this trip since my last trip to Africa when I missed out on safari.

Not only did we go on safari, but we had decided to make it a true adventure (and in our budget) so we took all public transportation to and from the park!

I took:
-bus
-tro-tros (take a van, and put in about 20+ people, add more to the roof, and you have a tro-tro)
-hitchhiked (NOT in the true sense that we were actively seeking a ride, but in the sense that we were walking when we were offered a ride)
-moto (this was scary, very scary, but I'll have to post later about some of my getting to and from adventures)
-taxi
-walked

The Lord was so good to us because public transport in Ghana comes with alot of baggage, and miraculously we ran into relatively few problems. We made every connection we planned out. The Lord went before us in this entire adventure from the most small detail (like someone telling us we needed a bus ticket the night before, and we got one of the LAST tickets) to the big details (seeing those elephants!).

Ghana is not known for it's animals and it lacks many of the big animals (aka lions), but I was just so excited for the opportunity to go and the support from the hospital to let us go. Mole National Park is located 56 km outside of Tamale, down one of the worst roads in Ghana. The park has one motel, which is situated on top of an escarpment (ridge), overlooking two main watering holes in the park. So we could look out our hotel window, and see monkeys, warthogs, etc. We ate breakfast with elephants bathing in the watering hole below!

We actually only spent about 24 hours at the park, but it was well worth the trip! I can't remember the last time I lost sleep because I was so giddy about a trip (I was like a little kid Christmas eve). We went on an evening and morning walking safari, it's one of the few places in the world, where you can go on foot with an armed ranger.

I saw:
-Elephant
-Kob (kind of like a deer)
-Water buck (a really big deer)
-Crocodile
-Green monkey
-Baboon
-Countless pretty birds
-Warthogs
-and more...

If the location of the hotel wasn't cool enough, the hotel had AIR CONDITIONING and a SWIMMING POOL!!!!! I won't let people tell me how hot it is outside because it would depress me. But Elisabeth Faile let it slip the other day that it was 107 IN THE SHADE! So with that in mind, you can imagine how excited we were with air conditioning!

I wish I could express to you just how blessed I feel to have been able to enjoy such a great weekend! I hope through pictures and a few stories, you'll see a glimpse of it.

Faithful Readers

Hello.

I know some of you check my blog often. It's been a busy week, so I haven't had time to post. I apologize. I also wanted to thank you for all the support I have received.

Finally, I just wanted you to know I won't be near a computer again until at least Monday, so you will have to live without a new post till Monday. Hopefully though I'll have good stories when I'm back online!

But meanwhile, no one has gotten the correct answer about what was in the picture from the compound we visited, you have all weekend to guess.

Many blessings!

Damba III

More Damba Photos

Local Medicine

Local medicine happens here, sometimes called witch doctors. Often you can diagnose a sickle cell patient, by merely noting the small cuts on his body from the local treatment. There's a struggle between patients choosing local treatment vs traditional medicine. One barrier to traditional medicine is the cost, our facility tries to contain cost, but at other facilities you must pay before treatment. Then families can put pressure on loved ones to seek local treatment first, even the educated. The full time doctors told a story of a medical assistant choosing local treatment for his daughter's femur fracture over traditional medicine. It's something very different than America.

Tommy had brought us to a compound, where a man was receiving local medicine for his knee on our Sunday trips to the bush. How it worked out, we went to the compound two Sundays in a row, so we saw two different types of "healing." I'll try to post both pictures of the same guy above. In one picture, multiple small cuts have been made all over the knee. In the second, he has cow dung spread over the knee. In fairness to the man, he had been at our facility at some point, but the doctors were not sure if he had tumor or what, he was referred to go to an orthopedist, but then opted for local treatment.

People believe in witches here, in fact you can be accused of being a witch, and exiled to a witch village. I was privileged yesterday to get a motobike tour around one witch village just 10 km from Nalerigu, in a town called Gambaga. (That does mean I finally got on a moto outside of the BMC compound) We would have had to gotten permission from the chief to do anymore than circle the place on moto, so it wasn't much of a tour. I tried to find out how one gets accused of being a witch, but there is no set way. Often the accusation is made after someone gets sick or dies, the matter is taken before the chief, and sometimes the accused just admits to being a witch or is judged to be a witch. It reminds me very much of the Salem witch trials from our own US history.

There are many little signs of superstitions at homes, from crosses on houses to keep ghosts away or sacrifices put outside the home. They will mark trees they think are bewitched, tying cloth around to hold the evil spirits in.

Happy Easter!

I'm late! I was on call on Easter, and just never made it to the schoolhouse to post.

I hope everyone had a very blessed Easter!

Saturday evening, the Christys and myself dyed Easter eggs! They came out surprisingly well for not having the usual little Easter egg dying kits you get in the US. We also made Easter baskets for the missionaries, which was alot of fun! The Failes had us to dinner for Swedish pancakes (Elisabeth is from Sweden, Dr. Faile met Elisabeth when they were both on the mission field in Yemen).

Easter started out with my usual tradition of going to see the sunrise. Ok, we didn't actually make it for the actual sunrise, but only because everyone felt it was a bad idea to walk in the dark up the "mountain" with waifu (snake) around. I'm pretty sure I scared the night gaurd, I think he thinks I was sleep walking. Because I come out of the house at 5:30 am and stare at the sky (it rained the night before), and we determined it was pointless to go if it was too cloudy. He comes running over speaking Mampruli fast, and I cannot understand him or explain that I am merely looking to see if it is cloudy. He had a very concerned face, I'm certain he thought I was sleep walking. I walked back in the house satisfied we could go.

Christy #2 and I did head for the mountain. We enjoyed some quiet time, until we were interrupted by bees, which Christy is allergic too. When I looked out from the top, I just kept thinking this is what the Garden of Gethmane must have looked like. Despite being cut short by bees, it was a very pleasant time.

We made it back to the hospital to round (there are sick people EVERY DAY of the year). I will spare everyone details, but I witnessed a very dramatic death. I've seen people die before, but not quite like this. The patient had been talking and answering my questions not 2-3 minutes before. What was more difficult for me is that I still had about 4 patients to see in the ward, we don't have private rooms like in the US. So I have this family, who just witnessed a very graphic death of their loved one, and now I have turn my back and see the patient in the next bed. That was my downer of Easter.

However, the Lord lifted me up. I had time to quickly change for church (and might I add, I had a second African dress made, which I wore and love). We had heard the Presbyterian Church has a very good choir, so we decided to attend. The church was tiny, like maybe the size of our living room and dining room combined, but it was PACKED! I mean my knees were jammed into the bench beside me, people were everywhere! We were NOT disappointed we came, the choir was AMAZING! The Christys and I often joke about Ghanaian music, because they tend to play very very very loud and off key, but this was not like that. It was the most worshipful beautiful singing! It's a sad comparison, but the closest thing I can relate it to is the African hymns in Lion King on Broadway. Of course, I don't know most of what was actually being sang, but I'm sure it was very reverent! It put me right back in the Easter mood. We are going try to locate some kind of CD of African gospel music.

I was on call, so I spent most of the afternoon at the hospital. However, we had planned a big surprise for one of our patients. Grace is a high schooler, who broke her leg, actually she had a pathologic fracture. What that means is that she didn't just fall and break it, but that some other pathology (in her case infection) had weakened the bone to the point of fracture. There are no orthopedics here, so her option was traction, which she thankfully took. (I owe you a post on traditional medicine/witch doctors, but often patients refuse to have bones treated here, instead opting for local treatment) Grace had been sitting in her bed since before I got here in traction. We got permission from Dr. Faile to move her into one of the operating theaters, which had American plugs. We plugged in my laptop, made popcorn and watched, "The Chronicles of Narnia." She LOVED IT! I actually missed most of the movie due to seeing other patients, but I know she loved it! We had told the nurses if her family came to tell them where we took her, unfortunately that message didn't get passed along. When I got called to see a patient, I found her very frightened mother thinking her daughter was in surgery. We quickly made amends, and showed her mother what kind of "surgery" we were doing! We've been supplying Grace with some books to read too, but she's really taken to the Children's Bible I brought, so I think I'm going to just give it to her. However now that I know Mrs. H reads this, when I get back I will need another copy of that Children's Bible!

Since I missed most of the movie anyways, I hung out with some of the nurses, who were sharing mangoes. They are messy to eat, and I didn't want to eat the skin because I didn't have the proper way to wash it at the nursing station. Needless to say, I made such a complete mess of myself! Whatever, it was fun, and all the nurses had a great laugh watching me.