Ghana Preparations

In a few short days, I will be headed off to Africa for the first time. Yes, I'm excited to put continent #3 of 7 on my list of places I've been. Yes, I'm excited to see cool cultural stuff you only see in on national geo or eat awesome food you only see on a show with a wacked out retired chef. Yes, I'm excited to get out of the heat for a week. Yes, I'm excited that the visa for this trip has taken up the second to last page in my passport, effectively requiring me to have pages added to my passport when we return (a goal of mine to achieve before I moved back to the States). But what I'm most excited about is the opportunity to see before my very eyes, the perceptions and world views of a small group of students being turn on end and changed forever.

We're going from July 1-8 to Ghana, a coastal country in West Africa, to work with Habitat for Humanity for a week building affordable standardized housing for impoverished families who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. We'll be doing hard manual labor for 5 full days of the 6 and 2-1/2 days we're there. We're living in the houses of Habitat home owners so we get to interact with people who have benefited from the same type of service we will be providing for others. They've told us we'll be taking bucket showers and using pit latrines - a first, I'm sure, for all the students going with us. We get to go to a church service, watch a local football match, take part in some singing/dancing/drumming circles, and even explore a little bit of the nearby rainforest. I'm definitely looking forward to all the activities that are planned for us to do while we're there... including the building! But what I'm most thankful to be able to hopefully witness is the learning that our students will be doing on the trip - about different cultures, about different peoples, about different lifestyles, and most importantly how all those seemingly different things aren't actually as different from ourselves as we had imagined.

More updates to come...