Its a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I have been heard to say to my fellow African senior missionaries, when something is just completely different than it would have been somewhere along the Wasatch Front, “remember, you could be on a mission in Cleveland.” One of the things which distinguishes our mission to Africa from a mission to Cleveland is our neighborhood. What follows is a guided tour of our neighborhood. The pictures were taken on one of our morning walks.



This is our back gate. All upscale properties in Accra have large gates, usually with razor wire or glass on the top of the wall. Our guard house is on the right side of the gate.



Though drivers complain of potholes in the roads Accra does have some very solid infrastructure. This is a picture of the gutter on our walk. Many of the gutters are covered with the cement slabs you see here. Some are not. This picture shows the gutter in a place where the slab has been removed. You can see that the underlying gutter is concrete and about four feet deep. A very good investment for a city which gets equatorial rain storms.




This is my walking companion in front of a construction project which is temporarily on hold. There is a lot of construction going on in Accra, some of it high rise construction as seen in the next picture.



The construction workers can eat at this road side café. These folks show up every morning with their cooking equipment and put their business together and sell food to the construction workers and to anyone else who passes by and then take their equipment back home at the end of the day.



I am guessing that if you go for a morning walk in Cleveland you don’t run into a chicken or to a man going to work with his man wagon.


Here is a man under a tree with his belongings. He and his stuff are there every morning we walk that direction. I think he lives under the tree at night even though it looks like he has a job. In Accra you never have to worry about getting snowed on.



This is the final view of our walk.

Pots and People

We visited Kpetoe, (pronounced Petway) which is about four hour drive from Accra. Bishop Sadahem, a friend in Accra, whose village is Kpetoe arranged for us to see pottery making by local villagers at a nearby village.This village is blessed with mud . Unlike the pot makes in the US, they do not use wheels. The women walk around and around as they make their pots. They bend over as they work, and somehow those pot turn out to be perfectly round. After shaping them they smooth them with rags and leaves and sticks and then let them dry in the sun. These are the pots they made which now will be cooked in a oven. If the pots crack or get broken, they soften the clay again with water and start all over again. We are like pots. When we make mistakes, we repent, and then the Lord gives us water to soften us up and let us take a new shape. We are all in the process of becoming.

To Market To Market To Buy a Fat Pig . . .

While the senior missionaries shop at The Palace, at Maxx Mart, and at Shoprite many of the local people go to market. We went to market today. The primary market downtown is the Makola Market which has had an air of mysticism about it ever since we arrived. There are long term personnel, missionaries and others who have never been to Makola Market. Others will not go without Beatrice, a local member, to guide them. Recently Deanne and small groups of others have ventured into the Makola Market which gave her the courage to venture there with Bob on a sunny Saturday morning. There is limited parking near Makola Market so we parked a couple of blocks away and walked. The gunk you see on the ground near our parking spot is old coconut husks which have been discarded after the seller sold the contents.


I mentioned that we bravely ventured into this unknown land. During the two hours we were in this huge market we only saw two other obrunies (white people). The merchandise was varied. Here Deanne stands next to smoked fish. There is a lot of smoked fish in the market. It looks as though it was over cooked by about ten minutes but it is clearly not intended to be snacked on as you walk down the aisles.



Another favorite in other markets are the large snails. We only saw them once or twice on this trip to Makola Market These are about the size of your fist.



We didn't eat the snails but did have a drink of coconut milk freshly prepared before our eyes.



The breadth of the merchandise available is seen by these two pictures. Most of the merchandise we didn't get to photograph because the merchants are adverse to having pictures taken of them and their stuff. We didn't get to photograph the cows' feet cut off about at the knee and being carried on the butcher's head into the market skinned all the way to the toe nor did we get a picture of the small plastic bags of raw meat chopped into one inch squares and being presumably sold to flavor a meal.



There was every variety of vegetable and petter available in Ghana but less fruit that we are used to seeing at the stands along the road. There were open 50 kilo bags of rice rolled down at the edges to be scooped up for the buyer with a tin can. One favorite in one corner of the market was shoes, used shoes. Another favorite was multiple fabric stores which intrigued one member of the party.



This fellow is either coming or going on market day.



Most of the merchants were content to wait for prospects to show some interest in their merchandise. This man was actively solicited a crowd with his herbal remedies. He had gathered the large crowd of people who were apparently interested in being able to cure with seeds and leaves every malady known to man.



On the wall out of the market were numerous posters. A good number of them displayed the Ghanan religiosity.



The market is one of the wonderful experiences which reflects the adventure of Africa. However, at its heart, the Makola Market is literally no different than markets we have seen as we have walked through Korea, Portugal, Thailand, Seattle, or Salt Lake. People selling and buying and looking. It is a great experience everyone ought to experience.

Once More in Dodowa

We went to Dodowa for church again. I love that place. Elder and Sister Dube went with us. I called the branch president last night and told him I was bringing Elder Dube. That meant they were mostly ready for him. Even though he is a general authority they introduced him as an area 70, the first time. By priesthood meeting they got it sorted out. They gave him 15 minutes in sacrament meeting and 25 minutes in a combined priesthood/relief society. They would have followed him anywhere. He has a wonderful energetic style. In priesthood/relief society he taught about our desire to have good things for our families based on I Nephi 6. He then parlayed that into having them all set a goal to speak to their parents, grand parents, uncles and “aunties” to get three names of ancestors they had not found before to submit to the temple. As he was moving from point to point he used a very interesting tool he can get away with but I probably could not. After laying the scriptural foundation for a point he would say “you mean to tell me … WOW.” It was a great opportunity to be with one of the brethren in a small branch where the members clearly appreciated the unique opportunity it was.

Shopping at TK Beads

At TK Beads you can watch as they make beads and jewelry from glass.

They start with recycled bottles.



They pound the glass to fine powder with a large metal pole.


Then they place it in molds and melt it in the wood fired brick oven.



They paint it, string it and sell it.



Denny Berrett and Bob Wilde each had a difficult time selecting the right purchase and stopped to contemplate their purchasing options.