Afesheapa!

(That means Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.. somehow)

Christmas in Ghana was quiet. There were decorations and parties and musical lights being sold out the windows of cars and eating and drinking and making merry.. but not in the way we are used to. The stores were still open, the market stalls, there were still hawkers and except that buissness was slowed there wasn't much to indicate the day.

My childhood memories of Christmas are to a Prespeterian church on Christmas eve where the candels are lit on top of the pews and the air is thick and soupy from the glow and with mint and the anticipation of sugar plums and tortiere and the sermon is peaceful and we all get candy cane raindeer on the way out. They are of waking up on Christmas day at 7 (but actually we stayed up all night because we could hardly sleep from the anticipation) and giving out presents and drinking champagne and orange juice (except I thought the champagne part was yucky until about 2 years ago) and then relaxing and playing with our Christmas toys and sneaking out to show our friends and seeing family the next day at my grandmas house and eating turkey and home baked cookies.

Here, it was mostly people just relaxing with their family, sleeping in and visiting relatives. They say "Christmas is just for the kids- to give them new clothes and something great to eat" but I saw some kids selling 'pure wata' out the window on my way back from town.

But anyways I will write more about Christmas later- I wanted to talk a bit about my day. Today the nuns had me write quotes by Mother Teresa on sheets of paper in kid-marker-colours to hang on the walls by the summerhut. One of them was a prayer:

"The sick and suffering may find in us real angels of comfort and constitution, the little ones of the street may clint to us because we remind them of Him, the friend of the little one"

This reminded me of a very special memory I have from last year- when I walked into one of the churches I was atending and all these kids I never met ran up to me and started climbing all over me and wanted to play. After playing with them for a while I asked the pastor whos kids they were, and he said 'I dont know they are just from the neighborhood- they have been coming here every week'. (They had a dinner ever wed. night to get to know people at the church/ the neighborhood better)These kids didn't know my name. They had never met me- but some how they knew that in that place they were safe- that they would be loved and played with and tickled and carried around and smiled at. Even though they didn't recognize me, they could recognize Jesus- God's love- and knew that they would find it there, regardless of who I was, they knew HIM.

Today, a year later on the other side of the world, I walked into the MoC house and some of the younger girls that stay that ran up to me to greet me. One climbed on my back the other two hugged my thighs as I lugged them back ito the summerhut.I have been playing with these girls for 2 weeks now and until today they didn't even know my name. Come tomorrow I don't even know if they'll remember. And I see them every day- they run up to me and cling to me and know they'll be smiled at and tickeled and played with. Sometimes when I meet kids on the street (which is where these ones came from) They start to cry or run away if I try to play with them because Im forgien and white and scary. But this is something beautiful- that they know the love of Jesus, and so regardless of who I am, they know HIM.

Cool Huh?! :)

:)

ITS MANGO SEASON!!!!!!! YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

E-waste

Today I went to Agblogbloshie to watch my friend give a presentation to some local leaders on e-waste. A lot of the guys that live in the slum salvage metals out of toxic waste shipped from the west to sell on the scrap market.

To be honest I didn't really know this was a big problem- I just thought the stinking wasteland was like that, I didn't know it was all e-waste- but today I chatted with a girl sitting on an empty computer moniter as a stool who worked with this metal and I watched a kid chew on a battery last night because he didn't have anything else to play with. Im starting to see how bad it is.

You can learn about it here http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html

Afterwards I changed into a dress in the back room of a chicken market and got dropped off at a really nice wedding. Ghana isn't all poverty and grime- this country is really beautiful, and there is so much hope in it- but this "not-in-my-backyard" un-official policy we have in the West has got to stop. We do it for our poverty, we do it with our waste- We hide our emotions and our pain even, for someone else to deal with. I think its time we face up.

My friend was kind of discouraged after the talk and didn't think that it would change much, so I made him a dove our of the info papers he was handing out to remind him that there is hope even in the smallest things. There is hope for all of us.

Deck the halls with boughs of...

bamboo? palm trees? I don't know, its too wierd being in a tropical climate for christmas to say. I proposed to the nuns yesterday that they let me build them a christmas tree out of plam branches for their christmas party on the 23rd and we could hang candies off it.

I also suggested to my friend selina who im staying with that we could have a bonfire and christmas carols and roast the ghanain equivelant to marshmellows over it.

Last night i chased a giant cockroach around my room with a sandel while I was half asleep. It was disgusting and I didn't know cockroaches could fly like that.. esspecially not right on top of you in the middle of the night.

Yesterday on my travels I had another God-given-coincidence meeting which I was super excited about, when I saw my friend Prince who Id lost touch with shortly before leaving Accra last time and had been praying to get ahold of out my tro window. I basically leaped out of the vehicle and ran accross the pavement to meet him. He runs an NGO educating people that will be effected by next years oil exploitation about their righst.

I think Ghana's plans for exploiting oil next year are bound for disastor. The feilds are already owned by international coorporations and there have been essencially no efforts put forward to ensure rehabillitation for coastal communities.

I also think that Canada's oil exploitation and environmental irresponsability is ridiculous. Its bad for the world and bad for the soul. Way to go Harper, way to go. Anyone been following the copenhagan talks? My friend went there for Christmas. I hope that he has stories about dodging police officers from protests when he gets back.

Migration

I forgot how congested Accra was. And noisy and exciting and exhausting. I slept in til 8:30 which was glorious. I am staying with a friend on campus who has the most wonderful family.

Yesterday it took me 3 hours to get to the Missionary of Charity house halfway to Tema and out of Accra. I will be traveling there again today. I didnt mind so much though, Ive always enjoyed being on the road and I am getting very good at reading and journaling on the bumpy cramped up in the back of a sweaty and crowded vehicle with babies and overflowing baskets squeezed up beside me.

I stayed at the house for a while playing with the kids and talking to the women until the nuns whisked me out to an urban strip to teach some kids that congregated out of nowhere and put me on the spot to teach them Christmas carols. I had no idea what I was doing but tried to make it up as I went along. I hope I did okay- when people here say "it was fine" you don't really know what they mean.

I stopped at the post office before I left to pick up the mail that had gotten to me while I was up north. On the way out I met a man named Hardy. It was just a chance meeting, he worked for another program out of the IAS where I was based and wanted to know what I was there for, since classes are closed and most people are out travelling. We got to talking and it turned out he had just submitted his masters thesis last year. On exactly the topic that I wanted to study here.

I got all jumpy and excited and palm-sweaty as we kept on talking. He had done all his research on EXACTLY what I was hoping to do mine on (Rural-urban migration and slumisation), and the very reason I am back in Accra. Right now I am printing out his thesis and next week I am meeting him for coffee so we can talk about it.

Sometimes God is so good to me that I actually can't believe it. I mean it is unreal to me, how He can just plant things bit by bit, step by step in our paths out of NOWHERE and just provide for us exactly as we need. I am quite amazed quite regularily.

Christmas in Accra

It started earlier in this semester.

I was going through a lot of emotions being all the way over here- I was excited and overwhelmed. Accra is a crazy city. I don't usually like cities that much. I don't like the cars and the noise and the traffic and I don't like how impersonal everything is. I don't like feeling like the whole worlds just a giant quest for money and buissness and getting where you want or what you want, and I don't like feeling that everybody wants something from me. I get all guarded and focused on myself and often don't want much to do with anybody.

I was sad at everything that I left at home and It was hard to jump into school so suddenly. I was living in a suburb and all I felt kind of numb sometimes. I didnt know anyone- I didnt really know what I was doing there a lot of the times and I was seeking God so desperately, flailing around that place, but felt like I was hitting a brick wall all the time.

I looked for God everywhere- I went to the edge of the river and the sea and sat on a sand dune and looked for Him there. I ran through the ocean in the giant crashing waves and sought Him there. I climbed up a mountain to look for God there.I even went to the heart of the country and the middle of the city and I couldn't hear Him, couldn't see Him.

But sometimes Hes just waiting for us. Sometimes he just speaks in the tiniest whisper on the tiniest wind and waits for us to just listen to him.

I woke up one morning really early. It was quiet, and the sun was just kissing the horizon. I had only one thought in my head, that I needed to find some nuns in the city. I know, strange eh?! I didn't want to really, I was nervous and it seemed so random. I don't think I had ever met a nun in my life and Im not a Catholic, so why would I go out of my way to find one? But the thought wouldnt leave me so I said 'okay God, if this is from you, please give me a push'. I went to the internet and found the Missionaries of Charity- a group of nuns started by Mother Teresa that worked in the slums of Agblogbloshie. I thought this was really cool- but I still didnt want to call them. I prayed again and the next day I opened the newspaper at 7am over a large cup of nescafe and the first thing I saw was an artical about Mother Teresa. of course. 'okay, You win' I said; and called them the next day.

A tiny small voice picked up on the other end of the phone. I had no idea what to say- I already felt awkward enough, sitting on stump calling some nuns with chickens picking at garbage around me on the red dirty streets. I stumbled over my words trying to explain why I was calling (to which i didnt really have much of an idea). She listened to me calmly and then said "come and see". So I did, and I was humbled by what I saw there. For me it was an answer to prayer.

On monday I am getting on a bus from Tamale to Accra. This bus will take 14 hours and it will leave very, very early. The next day I will start working with the nuns in the slums and I can not wait. I have no idea what to expect still- but I am excited to learn. Im excited to try to not be jadded and I am excited I can learn to love the poor at Christmas, because I think that Jesus is in the poor, and this is a beautiful thing. Jesus said that whatever we did to the least of these, we did to him. This is such a blessing, to see the love of God in our poor.

I always walk by Jesus. I think that maybe if we didn't always walk by Jesus then this world could really change. If we really believed and lived that what we did for the poor we did for Him- it would negate all our obligations of 'charity', or good intentions with bad results, or feeling guilty or overwhelmed or blaming everything on government policy. It would just be the love of God on earth and that would be beautiful. Its something that Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven. This is comming to us, I believe.

I don't want to be idealistic or pretend that Ive achieved all this or even gotten close- a lot of times I can be absoloutely selfish, a lot of times I don't want to give anything at all.

But my prayer for us this Christmas, for you and for me is that we could remember the love of the poor. That we could remember to give and not just give out of our abundance but to give until it hurts, that we would give everything we have and more and that we could do it joyfully. I want us to be alble to give like this because when we give this way then we stop just trusting in the things we have, our riches and securities and we recognize that maybe everything we have maybe really does come from God, this world and everything in it. And this can bring us to our knees. And we can understand about love, so much more, when we're not so concerned about ourselves- which is a beautiful thing.

So for the love of the poor, and for my heart and for yours, this is my prayer.

Love your enemies- a Christmas Miracle.

I was challenged today about loving my enemies. This isnt something I think about often- mostly because I like to think that I dont really have any enemies. But today it challenged me. Its challenging because its not something that comes naturally or easy- to love those who do wrong by me.

But Jesus said to love our enemies.

He said to pray for those who persecute you.

He said to bless and do not curse. (But it is so much easier to curse!)

He said that we should conquor evil with love- with an unyeilding and uncompromising love. With a love that smiles and radiates joy to whoever we meet; even if those we are meeting are rearing at us in anger and hatered, we should still love them. This is a love that is almost uncomprehensable to me. I actually can't believe it because its so unreal- and its humbling; because I see people all the time who I don't want to love. People who look funny or treat me badly or are just unappealing, or who have hurt someone I love or who have hurt ME. I meet people who just want something from me that I don't want to give and the last thing I want to give them is love. And I see evil in so many measures- against the poor and the opressed and against ME.

But this is something beautiful: Its that Christ didn't die for the 'healthy'- He died for the sick. He died for those who WERE rearing in hatred and anger to him- for the ones who wanted to kill him because of his love, for the ones who put the crown of thorns on his head. "Christ died for the ungodly- very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone migh possibly dare to die." But this is the miricale of Christ: That he died for the ones who put him on the cross- and that is the humbling part, because I know that includes me. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" And so I am always left standing amazed.

I want to be like Jesus. I want to have this kind of love. I want to turn to the ones who hurt me and give them the biggest hug in the world because of the love God gives me for them.

Because what can evil say to love? It can say nothing. Its like a boomerang of unexpectedness right in evil's face. This is something beautiful- it could bring the whole world to its knees.

on passion and suffering and love.

"The passion of Christ is the victory of divine love over the powers of evil, and therefore it is the only supportable basis for Christian obedience. Jesus calls those who follow him to share his passion. How can we convince the world by our preaching of the passion when we shrink from that passion in our own lives? On the cross Jesus fulfilled the law he himself established and thus graciously keeps his disciples in the fellowship of his sufferings. The cross is the only power in the world which proves that suffering love can avenge and vanquish evil. But it was just this participation in the cross which the disciples were granted when Jesus called them to him. They are all called blessed because of their visible participation in His cross"- His suffering, His passion, His love.
--Dietrich Bonheoffer

Last night I lay in the middle of the field outside my house with a guitar and gazed at the stars and worshipped. It was the best. thing. ever. Gods gift to us is grace and it is. so. good.

A note.

Dear G8 summit that is taking place in the beautiful Muskoka countryside in June 2010:
Here is a copy of your agenda I just came across online:

Agenda: The Policy Summit
Priority Themes
World Economy
Climate Change
Biodiversity
Energy
Nonproliferation
Africa
Economy
Development
Peace Support
Health
Outreach and Expansion
Accountability Mechanism

Here is a list of participating countires:

Canada
France
United States
United Kingdom
Russia
Germany
Japan
Italy

Since you have an entire section of your summit focusing on Africa, WHY don't you have any African leaders present in you talks?

This seems like a big problem to me. It would be lovely if you could please kindly change this so that we could actually speak of something called equality in this world. I have met some lovely African people who I am sure would love to participate in your meetings about them.

Thank you! and best regards.

A concerned global citizen (whatever that means)

2 Corinthians 12:9

"My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness"

Pictures! Haleluja!