I like to go to the 7AM Mass on Sundays.  While this may sound like a slight sacrifice, there’s really a selfish reason behind it.  The next and final Mass of the day is at 9AM.  So while the later service might go on for longer than my knees can take, the early Mass can only last about 2 hours.  I am not proud of this, but as a lifelong Catholic, I’ve learned a few tricks.

I take a taxi to St. Michael’s even though it’s only a half hour walk.  I need those last precious minutes of sleep.  The walk back home is quite nice.  It’s still early and the city hasn’t quite recovered from Saturday night.  The first time I tried it, I immediately took a wrong turn and ended up deep in some back alleys.  I sorted it out, but not without backtracking, which I hate, and surrendering to a taxi, which was humiliating.  I might have just pushed through, but I felt like an intruder, aimlessly wandering around half-finished homes where peoples’ lives are laid bare for any passerby to ogle.

The next time I got it right.  My route takes me past a family whose home is a street corner under a tree.  There’s a guy who sleeps naked at the bus stop.  It always throws me.  I’m not sure what the story is there.  He clearly has clothes, but prefers to sleep in the raw.  In public.  There are two bus stops close together.  Everyone else crowds into the other one, giving him his space and “privacy.”

My walk brings the stark contrasts of Accra into focus.  The climate, the foliage, the birds all croon “paradise.”  Living conditions can often tell a different story.  From the bustling, active area around the barracks church through a few very tough areas and back to my home in Airport Residential Area, I pass by shacks with 3 walls and corrugated metal roofs, then mansions and embassies with electrified razor wire and armed guards.

It’s easy to see how this walking narrative might provide an excuse for some to focus on the failures.  There is no escaping the poverty here.  You move through it every day.  It’s too easy to ignore the inexorable progress.  Lives are improving, albeit slower than they should.  The U.S. so often fails to see this place as the next (and maybe last) area for explosive growth.

West Africa is brimming with opportunity – financial, social, and cultural.  Especially financial.  As inept and corrupt politicians are replaced by the up and coming crop of true public servants, the fog lifts from the path to success.  These people have had to work harder than any I’ve seen.

One of the SEED professors, an American, closed his lecture by noting that as West Africans throw off these government-imposed shackles, “[they] will eat our lunch.”  I had an ominous realization like this many years ago, in a clean, efficient Japanese factory.  Now, another continent, another time, and bigger stakes.  America needs to help serve that meal now, or we will be left in the dust of our own hubris.

I’ve been here a little over 6 months.  Stanford SEED was very generous and bought me a round trip to go home and see family, take care of things, and just decompress.  This was above and beyond the contract I signed, and I was very grateful.  Even though Linda came out to Africa a month or so ago when I needed her most, my apartment is a temporary place.  There’s no place like home.

However this time it’s different.  Boise is where my heart and my love are.  But for now, it’s not where I live.  I’m a tourist in my own neighborhood.  Linda now very capably runs the show.  I have projects, friends to see and lots of things to catch up.  But I have to leave to live somewhere else again.  Bonnie described it well:  it’s like coming back from college for Christmas.  You’re home, but really you’re not.

About 30 hours from there to here.  No long boring travel saga.  I ate, I sat, I whined.  I still hate flying after all these years and miles.  But the flights weren’t nearly as bad as I’d expected and the Senators’ Club in Frankfurt is the best way to kill 8 hours in any airport.  Sean & Mandy met me in San Francisco.

We went to an Italian restaurant on the way from the airport.  I was overwhelmed.  Things were disjointed and, well, foreign.  I can best describe what I felt as “reverse culture shock.”  The restaurant seemed huge.  Everything was in motion all the time.  My face didn’t stand out like a glaring light – in the Bay Area, everyone is a different color.  They hadn’t changed.  My frame of reference had.  Familiar things like drinking fountains would make me flash back to West Africa, where I’ve yet to see one, and wouldn’t use it if I did.

Returning to Ghana was more difficult than I expected.  The comfort of my American life, my wife, family, and old friends made me want to stay.  My commitment, my passion, and my new friends pulled me back to Accra.

My time here is winding down.  October is just a couple of months away and I’ll be saying a lot of difficult goodbyes.  But I’m looking for my next opportunity to work here in West Africa and know that I’ll always have a home in Ghana.

Back in the States, I’d recently resumed going to Mass.  I’d spent some time away to mull the scandals of my Catholic church.  Upon return, I was lucky to find a good parish with a delightfully cynical pastor who really makes me think.  Well worth the price of admission.  I’d hoped I could find something like that in Ghana.

When you get off the airplane in Accra, religion is right out there. Many of the taxicabs have inspirational messages stuck to the back window.  “Nyame Adom” (By the grace of God) or “Nyame Bekyere” (God will provide) are popular expressions.  While it is comforting to see a fellow motorist with such devotion, they still drive like cabbies.

The storefronts also demonstrate the strong devotion of Ghanaians.  “Faithful Is the Lord Cold Store,” and the “Pray Hard Provision Store” are good examples.  The “God Is Great Beauty Salon” implies a lot of faith by some patrons. The “Trust Nobody Cool Spot and Pepper Soup Joint” is there for balance.

In my very limited mastery of Twi (i.e. greetings), I’ve learned that Ghanaians don’t really say “hello.”  Instead, the greeting is “ete sehn?,” or “how are you?  A common reply is “Nyame adom, mehoye,” or “by God’s grace, I’m well.”  The first time a business meeting started with a prayer, it kind of surprised me.  Not wear-it-on-your-sleeve devotion, but ever-present and a cornerstone of this culture.

In my quest for a parish that felt like home, I attended an interdenominational service which set the bar pretty high. This was my first of this type, and it was inspiring.  Music, testimonials and laying on of hands.  Powerful, but I’d grown up with a different structure that sort of defined my religious comfort zone.

My next attempt was a parish that was dominated by an Irish pastor.  My roots are predominantly Irish and I served a sentence in a Catholic boys’ high school run by Irish priests.  So this wasn’t really something I wanted to repeat.  I soon found that I just couldn’t pick the right Masses to avoid this guy.  His sermon (lecture) to first communicants about the evils of not making your bed and to their parents about the perfidy of eating kabobs finally put me over the edge.  Time to go shopping again.

I checked some other places out that didn’t really ring my chimes, but learned a lot.  Catholic Masses in Ghana are much more invigorating than in the States.  People get up at random and dance in the pews to compelling, inspirational, rock-out music.  Communion is relatively disorganized – no orderly pew by pew march.  Folks get up as they like, and the priest keeps going until no one is left.  Offertory (collection) is another story.  Pews are emptied in order, EVERYONE queues and dances up the aisles to put something in the baskets at the front of the church.  Maybe a bit of peer pressure?

In the USA, most Masses I’ve attended take about 1 hour, tops.  Then squirming ensues.  We’ll tolerate a bit longer for Easter and Christmas.  In Ghana, don’t expect to get out in under 2 hours, 3 if there’s a veneration or a lot of parish announcements.  I’m always faced with a dilemma:  do I duck an accounting of last week’s collection proceeds or sit tight knowing that because I stick out, EVERYONE will notice me departing early.  Oh, and never choose the last Mass of the day.  They can go on and on…  In the end I decided that Mass length would not be (much of) a criteria for parish selection.

Finally, I found the military barracks church.  The Reverend Doctor Philip Mensah is just what you’d expect of a priest who is also a Wing Commander.  I’d put him up against any Baptist minister in full swing.  His voice, his command of the congregation, and most important, his message brings it all home.  No kabob lectures here.  He doesn’t mince words about the corrupt aspects of the government either, and charges the parishioners to force the change that’s needed in this country.  My kind of guy.

One of our local SEED staff, a pastor in his own right, pointed out that without strong faith, Ghana would be a “burning inferno.”  It’s an understatement to say that Ghanaians have been kicked in the teeth a lot.  They have put up with everything from massive slave export to colonial brutality, vicious despots, military coups, and a very corrupt government.  I don’t begin to understand their tolerance and patience, although I see it every day.  When I tried to describe their spirit to a fellow American, she concluded, “so they’re happy.”  No, I told her, not always and not enough.  The life for so many folks here is very hard.  But they persevere and grow and have their joys and tragedies, more than their share of tears, lots of laughter and of course, that deep faith.