Akwaaba!
I recently returned home from Ghana, Africa. This trip was definitely something I will never forget. I met the most incredible people,
and formed amazing friendships in the short time I was there. Oh, I am so in love with Ghana.
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| On the GADCO farm! |
The purpose of my trip was to make a documentary for GADCO. This organization (founded by the brilliant Iggy Bassi) works with Indian, Brazilian, British, and Ghanaian people to farm rice in Ghana. They do more than I could ever describe on my blog, so if you're interested...here's the link.
http://gadcompany.com/
I traveled with a team of film-makers we coined "the Ghana girls". We focused on telling the story of one of their employees.
Meet Bernice. She's beautiful, huh?
She also is one of the most amazing people I've ever met.
As her friends say, "she has the love of God in her". Yes, yes she does.
Her husband passed away before they were able to have children, but that has not stopped Bernice from being a mother. She has taken in around ten children that she raises on her own. And raising children in Ghana is no easy task.
These are two of her beautiful daughters. The one in the gold dress is deaf. They have come up with their own form of sign language to communicate with her. It is beautiful to watch them together. Besides being a caring mother, Bernice works about 5 jobs to care for all of these children. Some of the jobs include cutting reeds out of the river, walking for hours to the surrounding communities selling fish, keeping her own farm, doing minor trading, and working on GADCO farms. That's a heck of a work load for someone who's almost 50. The hope is that someday she will earn enough from the rice farming to eliminate her other jobs.
And these are the men that could change her life. :) Fine group of gents. I have come to love them all, too!
So, basically the whole time we were in Ghana, we followed Bernice around to see what her life is like. We also hung out with these awesome people.
The people in Ghana are breathtakingly beautiful. I was responsible for making ridiculous noises to make this baby laugh in the picture. One of my favorite moments.
The people in Sogakope live very primitive lives, but they are happy people. They buy evertyhing from markets like the one behind me in the picture below. Definitely no grocery stores anywhere near this place in Ghana. Some popular items in the markets you can buy are fish, veggies, bread, candy, & cloth.
Below is what we ate for almost the entire trip. Needless to say, I have eliminated chicken and rice from my diet for a little while.
I am still so grateful we got to experience a new culture, even through it was often through the lens of a camera or the headphones of an audio kit...
I'm not gonna lie...at times we felt like seriously cool filmmakers.
Most of the people have seen white people before, but they are definitely not the norm in Sogakope. Bernice was concerned after a couple days when my freckles really started to show. She asked if I would have to recover at a hospital when I got home. Another time, a boy told me he like my tattoos. haha!
Definitely one of my favorite memories was going to church on Sunday. Alex, pictured above, took us to church with him to the local Pentecostal meeting. (Side note: We came to looove Alex and may or may not have cried at the airport when he dropped us off). Due to the fact that we are used to a rather reserved Mormon service, we were excited to witness another way of worship. The people really bear their souls. It was like being in a southern baptist church. We sang about 15 different songs complete with a little worship band. Imagine our surprise when Alex leaned over and told us we had to go to the front at one part of the meeting and introduce ourselves. They listened to us say we were from the United States, and then asked if we would share a song with them. We were like "okay!" and sang "I am a Child of God." The pianist broke into improvisational accompaniment and we were gospel-style singing primary songs. It was awesome. Then, we joined in the newcomer conga line and danced around. Yep. I loved church.
On our last day, we visited the Accra Temple!
Iggy & Adriana Bassi are two of the most gracious, responsible, intelligent people I have ever met. Renzo (on the far left) was the film maker that traveled with Adriana. He is also someone who I respect and admire. Overall, I learned that I should travel the world more often if it means I get to meet people like this.
Going to Ghana taught me to be a better person.
It taught me that hard work pays off and that taking risks help you grow.
I learned that people can take pride in themselves without being prideful.
I learned that God finds His way into the hearts of people everywhere.
And I learned that across the globe, family is always the most important.
<3
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