From our first time coordinating Calvin’s Semester in Ghana, Susan and I have tried to integrate that program for students with the continuing Sister City partnership between Grand Rapids and the Ga District, one of the administrative districts of the greater Accra region. Indeed, our first two weeks in Ghana together in August 2004 were spent with a Sister City delegation of pastors and church leaders in August 2004, preceding the arrival of our first group of students.
But logistics were always a challenge. Organizing transport to the district offices at Amasaman, 15 km west of Legon, was time-consuming and expensive. Host family arrangements worked out well for some, poorly or not at all for others. We visited schools and made plans to return as volunteers, but then communication broke down or students’ plans changed. Each year we felt we had made only a small beginning at effective collaboration. There were some great moments such as planting a pineapple field in 2004 and harvesting it in 2005—see the photo featured on Calvin’s main Ghana program page, with Susan and the students holding up the shoots they are about to plant. Frank Amoakah has told me he plans to revive that tradition in 2010 and 2011. But the linkage was loose for a number of years.
In 2008 and 2009 activities were more frequent and better planned, I think, now involving the newly separated Ga West and Ga East districts. When the National Democratic Congress won the 2008 presidential election, new municipal chief executives were appointed in every district. John Kwao Sackey, our longtime friend and our houseguest on Kent Hills for seven months in 2003, was elevated from second-tier civil servant to MCE—“mayor” is the term most Ghanaians use—of Ga East. He seems to be doing a very good job, and he has asked his finance director, Joseph Kojo Ata-Baah, to work on building up the district’s collaboration with Calvin.
And when you give Joseph a task, he digs into it with both hands and both feet, and things start happening quickly. We first heard about his plans on the Calvin campus just a month ago at a lunch meeting that I organized for Joseph and his counterpart from Ga West at Calvin in August. Calvin’s president Gaylen Byker agreed to host Calvin faculty and Sister City planners to welcome these two visitors during their brief visit to Grand Rapids. It took no more than a few days after I arrived in Ghana for Joseph and John to get some new initiatives underway. The least expected, and most promising, is the designation of a “Calvin College village” in a remote corner of Ga East.
On Tuesday I drove up to the Ga East offices in Abokobe, a small town and a historic center of Presbyterianism about 10 km from Legon. (Susan and I had attended the 150th anniversary celebration at the Zimmerman Memorial Church there in 2005.) John and Joseph informed me that we would make our first visit on Friday to the village of Adenkrebi in the northernmost section of Ga East, on lands traditionally held by the Akuapem people. In this "Calvin village," they said, there will be opportunities for our students to get to know families there, help in the clinic and the schools, participate in planning for water treatment projects, and the like. It's a village where John's wife Victoria, now working as a pastor of an independent church she founded, has been active in organizing a group of women to identify critical needs in the community. Preschool and kindergarten emerged as a top priority, and she and John are personally paying the salary of the teacher.
This is a small agricultural village in a remote location, accessible by a truly dreadful road that branches from the main Aburi road just as you reach the top of the ridge. There are only 700 inhabitants, mostly farmers. Electricity arrived only 7 months ago. But the chief and village elders, and the district administration, have ambitious plans for expanding the school, improving housing, installing a water pump (there is now only a hand pump at the village borehole), and more. They would like Calvin students to come back year after year to help out and observe the village's development.
We were told to be ready at 9 am Friday for transport in the Ga district minibus (which holds only 13, so I always need to carry 4 or 5 additional people in my car). It showed up at 10:40. There was a complicated explanation -- something about the first driver getting lost and returning to the office and another driver coming instead -- but the students weren't fazed; they had all brought books to read while waiting in the hostel lobby. I went upstairs to the cybercafé and sent a few emails (or more accurately sent one and watched several more vanish into the ether because the connection was so bad it kept timing out).
On arrival we were shown into a meeting room where several of the elders were waiting for us, men ranging from 50 to 80 in age so far as I could judge, and soon the chief joined them. He is very young for a traditional chief--not more than 35--and was enstooled less than a year ago. Unlike other chiefs the students have met, he played the traditional role assiduously, wrapped in the traditional twelve yards of brilliantly colored cloth. He did not speak except in whispers to his elders and his linguist and acknowledged our thanks and greetings with just a slight bow. Even when there was raucous laughter all around the room, he didn't break a smile. The most senior of the elders, named Kwame, did most of the talking, explaining the village's history and its current profile. The Ga arrived here about 300 years ago, but established such harmonious relation with the Akuapem that--while other groups were in continual battle--they were given land for permanent settlement.
The chief runs an electronic repair shop in Tema, I was told, and speaks English fluently. But he gave no sign of comprehending what I or others said until it was translated into Ga (mostly by Daniel Sackey, John and Victoria’s eldest son, a UG student), and he spoke only in Ga. When we asked how long he had sat on the stool, the elders passed around big enlargements of the coronation ceremony last September, including photos of Nii (a respectful term of address for a chief) sitting on the lap of the paramount chief to symbolize his loyalty and taking an oath while holding the handle of a sacred sword that he would not neglect the needs of his people. Another photo showed him on the shoulders of several other men on the day before the ceremony, men who—so we were told--had just given him a sound beating. The purpose is to remind him of his duty to punish anyone guilty of wrongdoing more severely than they had beaten him. Once he is enstooled, of course, no one would dare to strike him.
In the room with us were a couple of dozen women of all ages--those in Victoria's group, I think--and a few men who aren't elders. Another thirty or forty men and women and children listened at the doors and windows. Elder Kwame (who kept reaching across to shake my hand again and again, "Kwame to Kwame," using my Akan day name) told us he looks forward to Calvin's contributions to the village, including supplying wives for men of the village -- he himself would take two. (One student heard a later remark that I missed: he wants two young wives to assist the two older wives he has now.) He told the male students they should look around too and pick wives from the village. When we came back from a walk to see the church and the school Kwame began by asking (in Ga, then translated), "Are you all back safely? Are you up to your full number?" I replied that we were but that I would be making an especially careful count of the women when we got back on the bus.
We were supposed to visit a nursing college nearby and also trek out to a sacred rock and a tree that was cut down and then miraculously righted itself again, but these were put off for another visit. Basically our audience with chief and elders was the only event on the day's program, and it lasted nearly three hours. Just when I thought we were about finished, and stomachs were rumbling with hunger, the chief rose to make a brief speech directly to us, still in Ga, which was translated. It was brief and straightforward, a welcome and an assurance of his assistance as we find ways of working together in the future. Then he abruptly asked through his linguist whether I would like to offer a toast and signaled someone to bring in a liter of gin. The linguist first poured a tiny portion into a glass, drank most of it, and poured the rest on the ground--traditional duties of the linguist, the first to establish that it is not poisoned, the second to honor the village’s ancestors (or maybe just a generic sort of blessing, since he didn't recite any names).
Then the linguist handed me the bottle. Following instructions from Joseph, I poured some into the glass and offered it to Kwame. He downed it, poured the last few drops on the ground, and then spat a little from his mouth onto the ground. He instructed me to do the same. The spitting, he said, is a sign that it is good gin. (It wasn't.) And then -- all this was at my direction, they insisted, because the gin was the chief's gift to me -- the linguist offered portions to all the students and then to everyone else in attendance. Most of the men accepted, as did a few of the women. In the Calvin group, hardly anyone declined. Portions were tiny, and after about thirty people had imbibed the bottle was still half full. A little later, however, after we had stood outside conversing for a while, I noticed that "my" bottle of gin had been drained.
The toast and libation were not quite the end, however. The chief apologized for not having opened our meeting with prayer and for a student volunteer to offer a closing prayer. Megan Dickens raised her hand and was motioned to stand at the front to lead us in prayer. Afterward Kwame shook her hand, and then to our surprise directed her to shake the chief’s hand—something no one else had been permitted to do. And Megan said he gave her a warm “Thank you!” in English.
This is going to be a very interesting venture! I'm pleased with the eagerness of the students to return and roll up their sleeves to work with the residents, and there were some great moments as we mingled today--mothers lending their babies to Calvin students, men from the village walking hand in hand with guys from our group to homes or farms, old women setting up a rhythm by beating plastic bottles together and then leading the students in dancing. Language is going to be a challenge, since few of the older residents speak much English (or Twi, I suspect), but we can enlist the schoolchildren as translators.
When we were finally permitted to leave and go to a restaurant for lunch, it was past 4 pm. But nobody complained.
