Saturday, August 11, 2007

wedding day

This will probably be my last post from Ghana physically, though I'm hoping to write a few more Ghana posts offline and upload them from Kenya.

This week we visited two villages: Nkwateng (pronounced pretty much like it looks except the first "n" is silent) and Akim Aparade (pronounced "akeem" or "acheem" "ah-prada", that'll get you pretty close at least). It was great to meet people in the villages and observe the contrasts and similarities between village and city life. Our Ghanaian friends have told us that everyone here has a village. Even if you grow up in the city, there's a village you refer to as your village. It's the village your people come from and everyone knows where their village is.

Today we're going to a wedding. Sintimaa, one of the Ghanaian friends of the Joseph Alliance, invited us to accompany her. We're all very excited. In her generosity, she also is having dresses made for all of us to wear to the wedding. However, it's around 10 am here, the wedding is at noon, and the dresses still haven't arrived to us at the hotel. It was a rush order for the tailors/seamstresses (we didn't talk with Sintimaa about it until Tues and Wed). On top of that, there have been daily rolling electricity outages around Accra this summer (summer for the northern hemisphere, rainy season here), so the outages slowed down the sowing work. They were feverishly working last night to finish our dresses.

I leave for Kenya tomorrow evening on an overnight flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I'll arrive in Addis Ababa around 7 am on Monday. I leave for Nairobi at 11-something and arrive around 1:45 pm. Please pray for safe travels, that all of my luggage will arrive and that everything I packed into it will still be in there when I pick it up. Thanks for praying, friends!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is so great to hear what's going on in Africa! I've been anxiously checking your blog. I am praying for you--usually in the mornings, that you will be able to find that balance of alone and social time and that God will use you and continue His work in you. Much love, Andrea

Jason said...

Kami, thanks for posting these insights in to your travels!

Kami Rice said...

Thanks for the comments, Andrea and Jason! I had to write that post twice because the connection was lost when I tried to post it. The first time I had put a p.s. on the end to remind people that they can comment, but I forgot to add it when I rewrote it. Thanks for commenting anyway. :-)

Quick hello to everyone from the Accra airport. I head out soon for Nairobi. Found out my plane has a stop in Lagos, Nigeria on the way to Addis Ababa. I don't think I'll even be getting off the plane, though.

Julie said...

That's funny about the stop in Laos. I remember stopping there too when we flew from Egypt to Ghana. Nice runway. :-)

Anonymous said...

I love reading your blogs! So glad to hear Ghana was a successful first stop! Can't wait to hear more too :)

Laura said...

Sounds like you are having some amzing experiences. We're praying for you!

Anonymous said...

Hello Kami,

What do you think of Kenya? How does it compare to Ghana? I, too, had a brief lay-over in Nigeria. When all was finished, in my 2-day return to the USA, I went through 5 time zones!