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Letters from Josh Heikkila in Ghana
Josh Heikkila is serving for a year as a Presbyterian Young Adult Mission Volunteer in Ghana. During Josh’s year in Ghana, he is living and working in the town of Alavanyo, a village near the city of Hohoe, which is several hours northeast of Ghana's capital Accra. He will be working at the Presbyterian Trades Training School in Alavanyo. The school was set up to teach job skills to Ghanaian youth (age 18-25) who are not headed to college. He is also working at the Presbyterian Church in Alavanyo.
Josh has been a member of Fourth Church since 1996. During that time, he was an integral part of the Senior High Leader team, participating in every Senior High summer workcamp since 1997 and going on numerous retreats and lock-ins. Josh also served as a Deacon, a member of the Church Life Committee and was active in our young adult programs as a member of Fourthcomers and the Young Adult Mission Trips to Croatia (1999), Cuba (2000), Brazil (2001) and Cameroon (2002). Josh attended the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He is a candidate for ministry under care of Fourth Presbyterian Church.
Josh will be in Ghana from September 2002 through August 2003.
For more information on the Young Adult Mission Volunteer program, see the PC (USA) Worldwide Ministries Division website at http://www.pcusa.org/pcusa/wmd/msr/index.htm.
Letters from Josh Heikkila
| September 10, 2002| September 30, 2002 | October 26, 2002 | December 2, 2002|Greetings from Ghana. Akwaaba, or perhaps woezo. Let me tell you a bit about how things are going so far...
I arrived in Accra safely last Wednesday, Aug. 28, although my luggage took another two days to get here. I ended up wearing around a t-shirt of one of the more popular Ghanaian soccer teams, and that earned me a lot of friends in the country. The people are incredibly friendly, so without the t-shirt, it still would have been fairly easy to feel welcome.
After two days in Accra, the four of us Americans headed to a town called Akropong, one hour north of Accra, where the Presbyterian church of Ghana has a mission study center. It was a beautiful place to spend a week - in the mountains with cool air, surrounded by a bunch of interesting people. Most of the folks at the center were other
Africans -- Nigerians, Kenyans, Zimbabweans, so although I didn't get as much a chance to meet many Ghanaians, it was a wonderful week to talk and learn much about life in Africa.
Just yesterday, we traveled to a town called Ho, where the Evangelical Presbyterian Church has its headquarters. This is a rural area, but it's also very beautiful. I am excited to be here. Ho seems to be an interesting place. It's hot, but surrounded by mountains, and the weather seems to vary between having a dry, cool breeze, and it being incredibly humid and nearly raining. My final destination, Alavanyo, is about one hour north, further into the mountains!
Like the rest of Ghana, the people here are also very friendly. I went to church alone yesterday morning, and I sat down in the pew next to a guy who then accompanied me on a tour of town for the next eight hours. Not what I as an American was expecting!
For the next three weeks, we will be staying in the E.P. Church guest hostel, learning the Ewe language, as well as something about Ghanaian and Ewe culture, history, etc. I must say that Ewe looks very difficult to learn. It's a language in which a lot is conveyed through tone, whether your voice raises in pitch or lowers, so it's not something we English speakers are used to.
I think the thing I like most while wandering through town is the shops you see, and the interesting names they have. "Christ Is My Savior Beauty Salon," or "The Holy Ghost Saw Sharpening Shop," and "The Lord Is in Command Watch Repair Shop." I will try to take a few pictures to send next time.
Church yesterday was a good time, too, although I didn't understand much. The service only last two hours, as opposed to the previous week, where it started at 9:00 and went to 1:45. The service yesterday was the youth service, and I was told that many of the young people have to get back home to do their Sunday chores. The regular service started at 9:30, and it was still going at 1:00, so I think they are long here, too.
But they are filled with singing and lots of dancing and drum beating, so four hours of church here is not what four hours of church would be like back home!
I hope you all are well. Blessings, and take care!
JoshSeptember 30, 2002
Greetings from Alavanyo Kpeme! After a month in Ghana, on Friday I finally arrived in the village that will be my home for the next year. I have to say, it's a shock to be here, it's so small! I'd be surprised if the village had more than a couple hundred people.
There are maybe three small shops, a bar, two churches, a telephone center, but not much else. If you walk a mile in either direction, you just find other villages, but they are exactly the same as Kpeme. The Trades Training School where I will be working and living sits about a half mile outside of town, atop a small hill, with a wonderful view of the mountains in the distance. The school has more than 300 students, so it is fairly busy.
Prior to arriving in Alavanyo (which means "All will be well" in Ewe) I spent a couple weeks in the small city of Ho, which is the capital of the Volta Region, the home of the Ewe ethnic group in Ghana. Although Ho is small, and there's really no way to compare it to the U.S., I quickly became accustomed to living there. Ho is where the Evangelic Presbyterian (E.P.) Church has its headquarters, and I was living in a guest hostel run by the church. The city has lots of interesting people, several bars, restaurants, shops, and also an Internet cafe. It's easy to use the phone there, and buy a newspaper. There is none of this in Alavanyo!
Right now, I'm in Hohoe, another small city in the Volta Region, which is an hour car ride from Alavanyo, along a dirt road. To get here, I paid 2000 cedis, about 25 cents, to travel in a 1978 Peugeot along with 12 other people! I will have to come here for much of my shopping, and to use the phone and Internet.
Some thoughts about Ghana: I can't say enough about how friendly everybody is! The people are incredibly welcoming and generous. Ghana definitely should get an award for being a hospitable place! But it's also very different from the U.S. Here, drums talk, church lasts 4 hours, and people speak openly about evil spirits. Let me explain. At the beginning of the school day, you will hear a drumbeat. If you ask someone, they will tell you what the drum is saying. Mifofo, mifofo, kaba kaba, kaba kaba. Let us gather, let us gather, soon, soon. Several years ago, as the churches began to use drums in worship, I was told they had to teach the drums to say good things, because they tend to say "profane" words. When I told someone I didn't believe, he responded, just wait and you'll see that it's true. I guess I will be waiting....
The church in Alavanyo is small, and I attended it on Sunday. I brought with me greetings from all of you in the U.S., so I am sure they would want me to return the greetings to you. Miewoezo -- you are welcome! Anyway, the Internet here is very slow. Beginning at the end of October, I will travel to Accra once a month, where they have high-speed connections. At that time, I will try to send some photos via email.
Anyway, I hope you are all doing well! I will be in touch again soon.
JoshOctober 26, 2002
Greetings from Alavanyo Kpeme. I apologize if you didn't receive my previous message, but I was having trouble using the internet here in rural Africa. The service is slow, unreliable, and expensive -- one hour online is about a day's wage for the average person in this region of Ghana. And the closest "Internet cafe" to my house is about an hour's drive along a rough dirt road.
But in place of excuses, let me tell you a bit about my average day here in the village... I usually wake up at about 5:45, which makes me one of the late risers in town. The students at EPTTC (the Evangelical Presbyterian Trades Training Center) are up at 4:30 to bathe, eat, and take care of chores and yard work at the school. Almost everyone else who lives in the village is a farmer, and they are up at 4:00 to head to the fields. When I leave for school at 7:00, many of the farmers are making the first trip back to the village, with firewood or food balanced atop their heads. After I awake, I grab a small bucket of water from the barrel on my front steps. Once I fill the bucket, I usually heat it with an electric coil -- if the power is working. I'm fortunate, because my house has electricity. However, every day for the past two weeks, we have only had power for about 6 hrs a day. Sometimes the power comes in the morning, and sometimes it comes at night. As a result, I've gotten used to cold bucket baths in the morning, and reading by the kerosene lantern before going to sleep.
At 7:00 in the morning, after bathing and drinking a cup of instant coffee, I head down the dirt road that leads from my house to the school. Usually on the way, I hear the drum beat which signals the start of the school day. Each morning, students and teachers gather for a half hour devotion of prayer, Bible reading, and songs. The gathering closes after all the students who misbehaved the previous day are lashed with a bamboo stick. Each week, a new teacher is put in charge of the lashing, and I'm told that it will be my turn in a couple of weeks. I hope they're joking! At EPTTC, the school day lasts till 2:00 pm. There are three periods of 1:50 and two breaks of 30 minutes. Students at the school are enrolled in one of 6 departments: building and construction, carpentry, business, electrical, dressmaking, and catering.
I've been teaching English to the various departments. Although Ewe is the native language of everyone in this region of Ghana, all of the country's schools are conducted in English. But outside of the classroom, everything happens in Ewe. It's a difficult language, but I'm slowly learning. The school recently acquired 10 new computers, and once they are set up, I will begin teaching a computer class. I'm a bit worried, because everyone seems to think that computer knowledge will greatly enhance their quality of life. There's only so much you can do with a computer in a town with sporadic electricity and one phone line which hasn't worked for more than a month.
In addition to my work at the school, in the next few weeks I will begin assisting the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in town. In this part of Ghana, the E.P. (Evanglical Presbyterian) Church is probably the largest denomination, followed by the Catholics and Pentecostals. The pastor just arrived last week, after a vacancy in the congregation, so I am looking forward to the work I will be doing with him. I hope at some point in the future I will be able to preach in Ewe! Once school ends at 2:00, I usually head home to rest and read. At 6:00 every day, the whole year round, the sun begins to set, and in a few short minutes, the town in pitch black. At this time, people return home for dinner. Sometimes after dinner, I will come back to town, to sit and chat some more. But by 9:00 or 9:30 at night, almost everyone is at home and in bed. I usually read a bit, and turn off the light, or lantern, by 10:00.
As I said before, Ghanaians are probably one of the most hospitable and welcoming people on the planet. They are incredibly friendly, and are always giving me food, fruit and vegetables, and inviting me over for meals. I am lucky at how warmly I've been received by the village. Anyway, enough of me and Alavanyo. I hope you are doing well. Please keep me in your prayers. I will do the same with you!
Take care,
Josh (known as Kojo in Ewe)Greetings once again from Ghana, on a hot and dry 95-degree day. It’s December, and here in Alavanyo, we’ve entered the dry season, which in West Africa, they call the harmattan. During the day, the temperature gets up into the nineties, and at night, it cools down to the lower sixties. From what I’ve been told, the rain won’t come again until the end of February, when people will return to their fields to plant new crops. Despite the hot weather, one nice thing about Ghana is that there’s always a pleasant breeze. As a result, you quickly learn to adjust your behavior in a place like this. (1) You walk slowly! But even if you walk slowly, you will soon start to sweat. So... (2) From time to time, you relax in the shade. In just a few minutes, the breeze will cool you off, and you’ll be ready to start walking again. Luckily, in a small town like Alavanyo, there is never any reason to hurry or run, unless you’re playing soccer.
I think I’ve gotten over the initial sense of claustrophobia I had from being in such a small, isolated town, and I’ve begun to adapt to life here. I’ve also adjusted to the lack of running water, and can manage to take a bath with only a gallon of water. Strangely enough, I’ve even come to enjoy washing my clothes in buckets on Saturday morning. I use three buckets -- one with soap, one for the first rinse, and one for the second. Then it’s off to the clothesline. Last week, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in town invited me to be the guest preacher, and I gave a sermon based on Matthew 25, where Jesus instructs people to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, welcome the stranger. Sometimes, I’m frustrated by the version of Christianity practiced in this town, because it’s so focused on the salvation that might come once you die. In addition, I’ve begun to think that many people here see faith in Jesus as one big insurance policy. If you believe in Jesus, God will provide for you and protect you. Sickness, evil, demons -- all of these can’t harm you if you invoke the name of Christ. It’s interesting, because often when God doesn’t seem to provide and protect, you see people turning to the "lesser gods." When they want God to do something for them, but he just isn’t granting their wish, certain people will try the traditional practices. It got me thinking how religion, at its worst, can be nothing more than a way to blindly reinforce our own cultural practices. I wonder how Christianity has been co-opted in the U.S. Maybe for some people, Christianity is nothing more than having a nice family, two cars and a house in the sub urbs, wearing good clothes on Sunday, and being respectable and middle class. Personally, I hope that our faith is more than this.
In my sermon, I said that I believe God is calling all of us to help build a better society. We can’t wait for salvation when we die, because there will be a lot of years in the meantime. With God’s help, we can make the world better, here and now. Although the sermon seemed to be well received, I think some townspeople see me as the silly white man who has come from the U.S. with a lot of strange ideas. At times, I can sit and talk and laugh with a person, and we seem to understand each other so well, that I forget I’m halfway around the world. Then at other times, the gap between our different ways of thinking appears so big. Also, a friend of mine has loaded some pictures of Ghana on the net. If you would like to see them, please go to... http://adobe.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=67b0de21b30ff30a05de
I hope all of you are well. Happy late Thanksgiving, and Merry upcoming Christmas.
Josh
If you are interested in taking a trip like this one or if you wish to support this work with a gift of time or money, please contact Vicki Reynolds at vreynolds@fourthchurch.org (312.787.4570).
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