Our House

Our house is not in the middle of our street. Well, it sort of is, but it’s hardly a street. Min and I are staying at the guesthouse in the SILDEP compound. SILDEP stands for SIsaali Literacy and DEvelopment Programme. I’m not still not 100% sure what they do, but broadly they translate materials into Sisaali. There are a huge number of motorbikes in the compound that go in and out every day, I think back and forth to the villages. There’s a Sisaali New Testament, and the Old is nearly done. I have a copy which I take to church with me, but not having much success.

There are four buildings inside the compound; the main guest housebuilding on the left in the picture, our building on the right, the translation office behind that, and another house under construction behind that, where Margaret and Justin, the couple who run things, live. The rest of the space is taken up with a lovely garden, where Margaret grows lettuces (rare to buy here, so great we can just get them from the garden), runner beans (also very rare), papaya, guava, aloe vera, moringa (you use it in soap, good for skin infections apparently) and a host of other things.
The place where we stay is just a bungalow, with three rooms and a large entrance area with a kitchen off that. As we walked in and looked around, Min and I were both thinking and saying exactly the same thing; “WOW!” It is far nicer than we had ever dared hope for. We have our own rooms, which are en suite, and even have their own fans and AC (though I don’t use mine). Min got a bigger room, but I got a queen size bed and a huge bathroom. The kitchen has two rings, a fridge freezer, a water filter and was fairly well equipped with kitchenware. Penny might also give us her spare oven. Possibly the most unexpected thing was the TV! Our hopes were raised by a note describing how to put it onto “BBC, CNN, Joy Sports…” and further by Penny mentioning they showed Premier League football games on terrestrial TV here. It turns out we get two channels, if we’re lucky; GhanaTV, and whatever they’re watching in the main block! Thankfully that seems to be football often enough (though African Cup of Nations, not Premier League). Anyway, we are managing to cook for ourselves well enough, though I’ll probably do another post soon enough about shopping and sourcing ingredients, which is interesting in itself.

We’ve got to know some of the people who work here quite well. Joseph is a sort of general handyman, who has shown us how to slaughter chicken (and use every single part inside…), chop down popo, carry off pink shirts on a motorcycle, and much more. There are several watchman, who work on shifts watching the entrance, and doing other jobs too, and we try to greet them often. The night one sleeps (yes, the “watchmen” sleep, I know) literally right outside my window on the benches there. This can be quite disconcerting; my bed is next to the window also, so I am often about to fall asleep when I hear a rustle and a snort or a cough about a foot away! It’s like sharing your bed. One of the watchman has a son called Hadi who we’ve got to know really well. He’s 12, and we take him to the school with us to play football or Frisbee and things. We’ve introduced him to a lot of western things that he loves; Gummy Bears, RISK, chocolate, the occasional computer game, and The Beatles. He reciprocates, and tells us a lot of stuff about life here we don’t know, and helps me with my Sisaali. He brought us a pet tortoise the other day! I am trying to find a container to put it in, so he has it for the moment.

The cutest resident of the compound is Puppy. When we arrived, he was three weeks old, minute, and adorable. He’s grown a bit since, and is a little less sweet now that his hair is wiry and his teeth are sharp, but we still show him a lot of attention. His proper Sisaali name is (here you go Chris!) Zileh Kgeng Chieh (approximately), which translates to Kindness Has Tomorrow. The older watch dog, who tolerates the little one manfully, is called Ngar Worung Ng Siee; Do Well and See What Happens.

We share our house with a politician called Patrick, who is in Tumu campaigning for the elections in November. He’s running in the neighbouring constituency, Sisaala West. He has many, many visitors coming through at odd hours of night, which can be a little irritating, but sometimes they stop and chat. One man who was waiting explained Ghanaian politics to me, which was very interesting. Patrick lived for most of his life in the UK, and is an ardent Arsenal fan.

Travel to Tumu

(Written 27.01.12)

The day after I posted my last entry, we travelled to Tumu. Not that we got there in a day, of course. Tumu is right up in the north of the country, and while it’s not quite like going from Land’s End to John O’Groats, it’s at least Scotland from southern England. We arrived at the bus station for the 7AM bus. It left at 8:30AM. This be Ghana. I quite enjoy long coach journeys, so I had quite a nice time reading, listening to music and seeing a bit of Ghanaian scenery. Accra was just built up, so it was good to see some of the countryside, which is very green and fertile down south. We also got to watch Nigerian movies! They have big TV screens at the front and middle of the coach, and believe me, there is nothing like a Nigerian movie. Imagine the worst possible overacting, simple storylines that somehow become incredibly convoluted without anything really happening, marvellously overblown characters, and an ending that comes out of nowhere. We watched Christ in Me, and it just stopped what felt like midway through, mid-scene even! This is because they stop making the film when they run out of money. And then continue when they get more; they promptly put on Christ in Me 2. I think there may have been a third, but I fell asleep. The basic plot was that a jealous woman makes her best friend’s husband fall in love with her, and then takes her to a witchdoctor who sends her mad. It was like Euripides meets East Enders.

Eventually we arrived in Tamale, Ghana’s third city, at 9:30PM; 13 hour bus ride! Penny, a Brit missionary in Tumu, and Louise, a German associate, met us there, took us to a restaurant. We then stayed overnight, and travelled to Tumu the next day after a bit of shopping in Tamale and Bolga to buy some essentials you can’t get in Tumu. G

hana were playing their first African Cup of Nations game (big football tournament for African countries), so we listened to them defeat Botswana 1-0, and unfortunately have captain John Mensah sent off. We finally arrived in Tumu at about 9:30PM again, another 24 hours on top of the coach trip.

Vehicles here often have some random slogan on the back. Saw some rather alarming ones on taxis in Accra, such as"Don't stop", that were mostly obeyed by surrounding drivers.

Our time since has mostly been taken up with orientation around Tumu, learning where the best shops are and where you buy certain goods, and getting to know people. Greetings here are incredibly important. We learnt a bit of the language, Sisaali, in Accra, and the first thing we learnt was how to say hello. Except you don’t say hello; you give a specific greeting depending on what time of the day it is, and who you are addressing (the one for the morning literally translates as “you got up well?”. Alternatively, at this time of year, people might say “has the cold left you? – despite the fact it was unlikely to be below high 20s even at night!). The greeting is then followed by a set of questions, which can range from asking about how your family is to how your work is going. All these are answered in the affirmative, no matter how things are, and the question is repeated back. It’s quite hard! So far we’ve just tended to greet, answer back “yes, it is well” (ohh-zoh-monet, transliterated) and run. Today (Friday) I met Muta, my language helper, who I will be meeting with three times a week from Monday for three weeks, to work on my Sisaali. We will meet in the mornings, I will ask him how to say certain things, and then go out and practice on people in the afternoon.

In terms of ministry then, things will be fairly limited for the first few weeks, as I settle in to the language and culture, and build relationships, while Penny, Tiffany, Louise and I work out how Tiffany and I can fit in. That said, there was a showing of an evangelical film in the town last night, which had a great response, and we got a number of names and numbers of young people, especially young men. Penny seems to think this was genuine interest, and that we could have a couple of new youth groups formed right there, so we will probably spend time quite soon following up those names. I hope to send out a prayer letter soon, but if I haven’t already (I write this without internet, so the letter may be written by the time this is posted) then key prayer points would be a strong relationship with Muta, which is key to the whole language process, and for those young people who showed interest after the film, that something might grow from that. I’m now going to go into town and try and fix my internet, which has been frustratingly complicated so far.

So three days after I wrote that I finally got my internet fixed at the shop, where it 100% worked. I took it home and it didn’t work again. Oh the joys of African technology. And customer service; Abu, the man helping me at the Vodafone shop (who admittedly I’ve come to know quite well), took advantage of the time taken to install a programme to have a look at the documents on my computer, including my photos! Thankfully it now seems to be up and running, though still not in the way that it should be.