Sept 25 Tro-tros and "Children of the Light"

September 27, 2010 I went with one of my housemates to a small mission school named "Children of the Light" on Saturday. I'm attaching a photo of a little girl from the mission; The little ones are always so cute, but often they expect a treat if you take their photos. Although it's probably only thirty miles from here as the crow flies, it took almost two hours to get there by "public transportation". The tro-tros are the closest to buses available; they are a series of old vans with extra rows of seats added. One photo is attached of a passing tro-tro. As many people as can be packed into the condemned vehicles go from one location to another on roads that are not necessarily paved with pot holes easily two feet deep sometimes as close as every five feet. It makes those bucking bronco rides look tame, and the vans are sometimes at a 15 to 25 degree angle from being vertical in either direction.I banged my head good several times against the window. Now imagine that when the rains wash out the roads (it rained early Saturday morning before I took my walk) these pot holes are filled with water so you never know what is in store. Vehicles drive on the other side of the road to avoid the holes, but not necessarily avoiding the oncoming vehicles.And they take detours whenever they want, sometimes getting themselves in worse traffic jams on remote streets. Being at the mission school wasn't half the adventure of getting to it was! I got a good photo of the vendors on a very good part of the road on the way to the mission, going past the President's vacation house. Since it gets dark around 6 pm, when we actually left the mission, the ride home was all at night. We took one tro-tro to Medina, a smaller city outside Accra with a crazy, crazy marketplace jammed with blocks and blocks of shops, vendors and LOTS of shoppers. We weren't there to shop, just to change tro-tros to another place but boy was I glad I didn't have to figure where to go by myself. We left my neighborhood around 1:45 and got to the "Children of the Light" around 4 pm (one photo is the road we walked up to get to the school); we left here around 6:15 and had some difficulty getting the second tro-tro the lines were so long. We finally decided to get a taxi (and I use the word loosely) for the second leg of our trip home. Here you have to haggle for the fare before you get in the cab, and unless you know from experience what the fair price is you'd be as lost as me! Where the tro-tro cost 35 pessoahs (sort of cents to the Ghanian dollar or CD), the taxi for three of us was 5 CD's. It was worth every cent to get home by 8:30 in the dark. I took a hot shower and laid down to watch my third movie since I've been here (actually a crummy DVD on my little computer screen, but I could lay down and that's what mattered to me). I fell asleep anyway! Speaking of sleep, it's past my bed time now; 5:15 am comes mighty early to get up.
God bless you; He has provided all my needs each day, and allowed me to beter appreciate my blessings of friends like you.