Dying in Ghana

                The word among the senior missionaries is that more people die in Ghana than in the U.S. and that everyone here has a close friend or relative who has died an untimely death. Whether this is apocryphal or actual I don’t know but I am not inclined to investigate personally. I do know that Ghanians go about dealing with death differently than we do. In Utah we can “preinvest” in a plot just like hundreds of others in the same cemetery and get the opportunity to do so by negotiating with someone who last month may have been selling pots and pans or suits to 18 year old missionaries. In Ghana you would be just as likely to be buried in that grove of trees next to the road between villages. 

These plots are next to the road to umbrella rock.

                In Utah the casket is likely to be part of the preinvestment. In Ghana you can get your own individualized coffin based upon you vocation or your hobby. Whatever your preference in caskets you can buy it from a small shop along the side of the road and get it delivered to your home or wherever you need it dropped off. 

These wooden sculptures are actually caskets.

It looks strange but it works.

                In Utah we all drive to the stake center and spend half an hour commenting on “how natural he looks.” Never mind that the time before that that we saw him he looked truly natural. In Ghana you can have a full blown funeral procession complete with friends, relatives, brass instruments and the ambulance with the siren blowing. 

This is a funeral cortege in the town of ADA. Notice the prevalence of red and black, the colors of mourning in Ghana.

In Utah when you die you get your photograph in the Deseret News with a very brief history of what someone else thought was important in your life along with a picture of you taken 45 years ago. In Ghana you get your obituary notices posted on the bulletin board in the church and on the fence outside with a true to life picture of what you looked like when someone thought you were starting to get ready for your funeral. You also get the hopeful statement that you have “called home” or “called to glory.”

Notice where this man was when he died. 

Obituaries like this are common.

 Occasionally you will see family members wearing funeral tee shirts with a picture of the deceased on the front and his stats on the back.

Can't you see my grand kids in Grandpa Bob shirts.

In Utah the funeral is always within a week of your passing. In Ghana the funeral may well be months later after various items of family business have been resolved. It is then followed by a rollicking wake including your family, friends, who come for the food and drink and music.

Chocolate is Big in Ghana

Chocolate is big in Ghana 

New research has proven that chocolate is good not only for the soul, but for the mind and body as well. It is no coincidence that the botanical name of the cocoa plant from which chocolate originates is Theobroma: “food of the gods.”

Most of the chocolate we eat has it roots in Africa which produces 70% of the worlds cocoa beans. .Most of the beans are exported to USA, Malaysia, Holland ( the number one being Holland.) There is only one company who makes chocolate in Ghana. You can see the hawkers selling them on the streets. Most of the cocoa beans are exported.

                                                .

This picture is Teta Quarschie who brought the first cocoa beans to Ghana.and this is the first cocoa plantation in Ghana

Cocoa Pods actually grow on the sides of the tree trunks.

The cocoa beans are inside the pods. The white soft filler is very sweet too.

The is the Research Institute of Ghana in Koforidua. 

They are using all their efforts to increase the use of cocoa beans

 and help the farmers to grow it better.

After fermenting,the cocoa beans are laid out to dry.

                             In Ghana they believe that chocolate can help cure almost anything.

                                        Elder Wilde enjoying a hot chocolate at the end of our tour.

Water is life.

One Primary boy in a local ward here, when being taught about the principle of fasting was told that it is not eating food or water. He replied, "but water is life." Africans know this. One of the major initiatives the Church has taken in Africa is finding and completing humanitarian projects. The projects are selected to do the most good, regardless of whether the good is for members of the Church or the population in general. A major class of projects is bore holes to create wells of clean water.

This is the Ga West Hosptial which did not have its own source of clean water.

It is hard to keep the environment clean without clean water.

A bore hole is drilled by this $250,000 truck with the drilling apperatus on the back end. A contractor owns the truck and hires the crew. He contracts with the Church for each individual bore hole he drills.

When they are drilling a lot of dust is created.

This is where the drill bit goes down into the tubing. At this point the hole was 100 meters deep. 

On this project they had to bring additional drilling pipe because they had not found water at the level they usually do.

 Each meter they sample the debris coming out of the hole and lay it out next to other debris samples for a drilling history. By looking at the samples they can tell when they are close to getting water.

The man in the stripped shirt is the driller, called Dr.Joseph because he has degree in drilling. Elder and Sister Curtis and Sister Wilde also came to watch. The man in the pink shirt is the Church's project manager, also named Joseph. The boy in the red shirt is also named Joseph. The man with the cowboy hat and the red shirt is Elder Bullock, a humanitarian missionary from Calgary, Canada who has supervised many bore holes and whose mission ended the first week of May, 2015.

 Elder Bullock's projects attract children who he loves to entertain.

Elder Curtis and the Josephs survey the project.

 The hospital's research lab has equipment also donated by the Church.

A blind man walking near the hospital.

The hospital's commissary.

We are proud to be affiliated with a Church which does good for the sake of good.

Getting a drink in Ghana

Lake Volta is Ghana’s largest geologic feature. It covers 3200 square miles and provides hydro-electric power to much of the country. From the dam its water flows down the Volta river to the Atlantic Ocean. Notwithstanding this abundance of water much of the water in Ghana is polluted to one extent or another.

One of the Church’s primary humanitarian aid focuses in Africa is on potable water. This is often provided by drilling bore hole wells in the villages. Once the bore hole is in place the people can pump potable water. People in rural areas walking from their homes to the well and back carrying water in buckets or pans on their heads are a common site.

The bore hole is a great place to meet friends and play

In the cities water is also an issue. When you eat at a restaurant and order water you will be asked “small or large?” That is an issue because your water is always bottled. One of the most prevalent varieties of hawkers on the street is the women selling water from pans on their heads.  Their water comes in two varieties, bottles, and sachet bags. The bottles come from two or three major distillers. The sachet bags apparently are much easier to produce and don’t have the level of quality control the distillers do. Our prior area medical adviser told us tests had been run on sachet bags and 80% of them contained “critters.” Missionaries who drink from sachet bags run the risk of getting illnesses we in the west thought no longer existed including cholera and typhoid, never mind dysentery, and diarrhea.

A large water, a small water, and a sachet bag. The Book of Mormon is there to compare size.

In our apartment we have filtered water. That which comes out of the regular tap has been filtered twice. That which comes from the smaller spigot with the apparatus under the sink has been filtered three times.

 In Salt Lake in the winter I can get cold drink just by letting the water run. Here the only way to get a cold drink is to refrigerate the bottles.

These are poly tanks for storing potable water. These three provide the water for all six apartments in our complex. The garbage cans are there to compare size.

We do have one other resource for storing water but we don’t intentionally drink that water.

Temple Blessings

The saints in West Africa are blessed by having two temples, one in Accra, Ghana and the other in Aba, Nigeria. Today we met with a member of the high council who had come with his stake on the bus from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast on a bus. The trip took a day and half. They come alone, in families, by wards and by stakes. 

Shortly before we arrived the senior missionaries assigned to the Area office were asked to spend their Sunday school time teaching the temple preparation class. We have been involved in teaching in seven wards and branches.

 Brother Washington was in the early classes we taught. He is in the Medina 1st Ward.

Sister Bonnie is also in the Medina1st Ward. We fell in love with her. 

Brother Apperty was in the Branch Presidency. Dodowa is a now a ward.They were sealed
to their two sons.

Brother Rock, in the middle, became the family history teacher after he went to the temple.

Getting sealed to Eva has been the highlight of Charles' life.

This is the bishop from the Bethlehem Ward Nikoi Dsane and two elders from our class Michael and Franklin each of whom now has a mission call. 

At the conclusion of the temple preparation class in Medina 2 this long time couple was sealed in the Accra temple. The ordinance was performed in the Fante language.

Anthony Koomson is the first counselor in the bishopric in the Bethlehem ward.

Dora was sealed to her husband,Stephen Tettey, and their three daughters.- Dawenya Branch

Elder Agyei is in the MTC. He met his family at the temple and was sealed to his parents, four brothers and a sister (Sabina).  The ordinance was performed in Twi (pronounced tree)

This is Michel Camp Branch. Sister Adams, in the middle in red, taught the class in English and Twi at the same time. She is a wonderful teacher.

 This is the Medina 2nd ward with the 2nd Counselor, Brother Eghan.
 Can you see the joy in their eyes? And in ours?