Wednesday May 30th

Wednesday May 30th

After waking up at 6:00am and getting ready for the day, it was time to pack up and head off to Kara, Togo. We all ate around 7:00am and left around 7:30am. I got to ride with Bryan, Lauren, Rachel and Olivia. We reached the border of Ghana and Togo around 10:15am and did our paper processing. It was pretty hot. We finally finished our processing and headed on our way. About 11:15am rolls around and Bryan says, "It should take us about five hours toget home if we don't have a flat or barring any other unforseen circumstances." Not two minutes later and we hear a loud noise and smoke starts coming from the tire in front of us so we figure he has a flat. It was Brett's vehicle. He pulls over and we pull in front of him and look back and realize that the tire is perpendicular to the wheel well. I remember that it happened at 11:15am because I looked back at Rachel and she says, "Lets see how long this will take. Its about 11:15am." The tire had fallen off. So, after a little discussion, our car heads to Palime (the nearest city) to find a mechanic to help. After about thirty minutes to an hour, we finally got him to come out with us to the car. Once we got out there, every intern was out of the car and surrounded by kids. The people in our car decide to join them. At first I was quiet, trying to observe what was going on but I quickly forced myself to go and talk to somebody. I met this guy name Bernard. He was from the area and he was between 18 and 23. We talked about why Christians worship the same God but fight each other when we are supposed to be one (referring to denominationalism). It was amazing. First conversation with an African and the first thing is God. He actually started the conversation by asking me how he can be a missionary and do evangelical work and get support. I told him how we did it and he understood. After this discussion, we talked about the American economy and why Wall Street hass a lot of money in it and why we don't help Africa with that money. Mary Margaret and I had a tough time trying to explain that. We also talked about why Americans feed maize (corn) to cows when we could send the corn to them to help them have something to eat. They were all very interesting discussions. Half way through one of our conversations, an older gentleman decided to join us. His name was Ananie and he lived at his nearby farm. After letting Bernard and Ananie inspect a U.S. dollar because they hadn't seen one before, they got to keep them. I'm not sure who gave the money to them but Ananie wanted to give us something in return so he decided to go back to his house and get us fresh pineapple. He brought a few of them back for us and cut them up for us. They were delicious and refreshing after having been out there for a while. All the time this is going on, a bunch of the interns were surrounded by and entertaining as well as being entertained by about twenty to thirty little kids. They sang for us and we sang back for them. At about 2:45pm, it was decided to pack all the stuff and people from Brett's Prado into the remaining two vehicles. At 3:15pm, we left. Those of us in Bryan's car rode back in his car and Brett joined us. We finally arrived in Kara at around 8:30pm, had dinner around 9:00pm and talked some during dinner and then went to bed around 10:30pm. It had been a pretty long day.