Part 2: Last Days in Abomosu, Ghana

Monday is P-Day for the missionaries and Elder and Sister Terry. We had asked the Terry's if they wanted to go on an adventure together for their last P-day with us in Abomosu. They were so excited and started making plans for what we could do. They drive around a lot to check up on all the branches in the district and they said that they saw this big factory and wanted to find out what it was. They found out that it was an Oil Palm Processing Plant. They went there on Saturday and asked if we would be able to take a tour on Monday and setup an appointment for us. Monday afternoon the Terry's picked us up and then we picked up the Elders and started our drive out to Asoum. It is such an amazing factory. They extract two different kinds of oil, which honestly I'm not sure I understand what they are for.  I think both are use for cooking (one definitely is and looks just like vegetable oil).  They also get fatty acid stuff that is used to make soap. They are trying to go entirely green and use the nut casing that contains the oil as biofuel to run the plant.  

Ready with our Hard Hats

Steam Room

Rail-Carts with the Palm Plant

Rail-Carts going into the Steam Chamber

This is the off-season for Palm

The Processing Plant

The many different products (from left to right: cooking oil, fatty acid used for soap,  stuff used for biscuits, ice cream, etc, another more pure cooking oil, and another product used for soap.

The last day we spent saying all of our goodbyes. Here are some pictures of us playing with the children for the last time. Thanks to Laura and Ember for the bubbles, the children really loved them.

Some of my favorite village children

We blew bubbles with them as our goodbye

I love their faces.

I hate to pick favorites but she chose me!

I absolutely love this girl!

Finishing off the rest of the bubbles

       The children made a song about us. Obroni means white person and Obibini means black person.

George was such a cutie.

Amanda, her mom had her bring out this picture to show us. We weren't sure if we were supposed to keep it or not so we just took a picture instead. She is so adorable and has the most beautiful smile, I wish you could see it.

George and his sister we called her Beautiful Face because we could not understand her name. Also many other children we love in the background.

As a goodbye from Esther she made us Golden Chicken, fried rice, salad, and brought us Alvaro (Joey's Favorite)

Where is this bird?

This was on our way to Accra. The driver gave us an orange and this is how you eat it. You cut off the top and then squeeze the juice and drink it.

This is Stephen Jr's Daughter, Rhea and a girl from an orphanage that is in the process of being adopted, Elizabeth. They are adorable. We spent our last night in Accra with them.

The bird is in a glove box. One our way to Accra we were riding in a Tro-Tro (a van) and this man opens the glove box and grabs this bird out and asks if we like it. He ended up putting it back in the glove box until halfway to Accra when he asks us to grab it for him. We think that he sold it to one of the other passengers because we never saw it again.

We really enjoyed Abomosu and we have set a goal to return in the next 4 years! We have definitely learned and grown a lot from our experience there. Thank you to everyone that helped make this summer possible for us. We are very grateful.

Last Week in Abomosu

We have been busy since we have been home and so I will be updating our blog with some old posts. This was going to be one long post but I think I will split it up into two smaller posts. I haven't finished the second half so just stay tuned.

On Tuesday, August 3rd Abbie and Spencer left to go to Estonia, which left Joey and me in Abomosu alone for our last week in Ghana. Joey and I had told Stephen that we wanted to go and work on his farm for a day to see if we could survive. We decided that now that the professors had come and checked on everything, loans were given out, and business classes were over that it would be the perfect time to go. Well Stephen is in charge of planning a funeral for a previous member of parliament and funerals are a big deal anyways so he informed us that he wouldn't be able to take us and that due to the drought (it rained quite a bit when we were first there but not as much as their usual rainy season, the farmers and crops and "crying for rain") there wasn't anything that we could do. Stephen told us that he had some workers that were going to harvest cocoa and that he would have Nkansah take us to the cocoa farm and let us watch how they harvest the cocoa. It was such a fun experience. The workers made it look so easy so Joey and I had to take this opportunity to work on the farm. Nkansah gave us some quick lessons and then let us try. Joey said that this is one of the scariest things he has ever done. It is so weird, first you are holding this large knife, second you have to hit the cocoa hard so that the knife cuts into it, and then you hand covers the whole cocoa when you try to hold it. It was quite a difficult task but we are glad we got a chance to try. I admire these workers, they were so fast.

Pile of Cocoa that was ready to be harvested.

Joey attempting to cut open the cocoa!

Emily scraping cocoa out of the shell.

Then we went to play soccer with the children in the village. We had done this a couple of times when we first arrived in Abomosu and then either didn't have a ball or time to go play. We went up to Presby Primary School and played soccer for the afternoon. The girls didn't want me to play and kept trying to get me to play hand games with them, let them play with my hair or carry them around on my back.

Joey still had some students from his business class to meet with that wanted to complete their business plans and also to do some mentoring with the loan recipients so we spent the next couple of days doing that.  We had also been asked to put together a profile for the Freedom Fighters- the Abomosu Football/Soccer Club. There is a team in Florida that may be willing to sponsor the team but they wanted pictures and profiles on the players so we went to watch the team's practice and set up a time to put together profiles. These players looked like they were between 20-24 years old but they were all between 16-20 years old.

Soccer Practice for the Freedom Fighters

Freedom Fighters Practice

Freedom Fighters Team Photo

My soccer friends- they kept me very entertained

I knew that I had less than a week left in Ghana and that I needed to truly become Ghanian so on our last Saturday I went to get my hair braided. This is quite the process and is very painful. It took four hours to get braided but I have really enjoyed it. Stephen Jr's wife Sonya told me that if I would have had it done in Accra it wouldn't have been as painful because there are salons there that are used to doing Obroni hair. Joey wanted to see what I would look like as a brunette so we figured this would also be a great way to do it without dying my hair. There were three women braiding my hair at a time and three other women helping prep the extensions. It is strange having that many hands touching my hair at the same time. After they braid a strand they take scissors to it to make sure that there isn't any hair sticking out of the braids. After they braided all of my hair they added some sort of wax/gel stuff to my hair and then they use a candle to burn the wax. This was scary to have a flame to close to my face. After they have burned all the strands of hair they pull it all back into a ponytail and dip it into some boiling hot water to rinse of the wax. 

(This is the reason I hadn't made this post earlier. I wanted to surprise everyone when I came home with my hair braided.)

The start of the 4 hour process

Part way through the process

Almost Done

The Hair Saloon Ladies (yes they spell it Saloon)

Close-up of the hair

Joey enjoying taking pictures of my hair

Walking home from Church on our last Sunday in Abomosu

Last Sunday in Abomosu

One of the loan recipients Ben Boadu was starting a sugar cane farm. We had told him that we wanted to see him plant the sugar cane so on Monday, August 9 Joey and I rode our bikes to his farm which was farther than we had thought. We were able to watch him plant his sugar cane starters. It is such a simple process. 

These are the Sugar Cane Starters

First you clear away the weeds where you want to plant the sugar cane

then you dig a hole for the starters

Lastly you cover the starters with dirt

If you didn't notice a machete is used as a cutting tool, shovel, and rake. 

Hopefully our last Ghana post will be up soon. 

Last Day in Ghana and Loan Recipients info

(THIS WAS WRITTEN THE DAY WE LEFT GHANA BUT I WAS'T ABLE TO POST IT UNTIL NOW.)

This is Joey reporting LIVE from Ghana. This is our last day in Ghana and we are sooooo sad we are leaving but also so grateful for the opportunity to come. Emily wanted me to talk a bit about the real reason we were sent to Ghana - the USU SEED program.

So SEED stands for: Small Enterprise Education and Development. Basically it means we help small businesses get up and going by teaching classes that help people prepare to start a business, then give them a small loan, then mentor them. We also had a special assignment finding contacts and gathering info about Abomosu and see what challenges and opportunities there are.

I think the SEED program will do very well in Abomosu. Those that we helped start businesses were definitely the low hanging fruit (the people ready to start businesses) but there are many more people that with a little more preparation will be able to start a successful business.

So we helped 7 businesses start/expand. They are all doing wonderful so far. Below are short descriptions of them. I hope this isn't too boring!

Esther Mensah - She was our golden child. A couple days after we arrived she showed up with a business plan (she wrote it by hand the night before), which was much more than we had expected from anyone. She wanted to start a catering and fast food business that served 3 dishes unavailable in Abomosu.
We taught her the content of our classes everyday for 9 days and then decided to fund her loan. She started her business and outperformed her projected sales by a ton! So much in fact that instead of paying off the loan in 7 months, she paid it off in 2!!! Which maybe that doesn't sound amazing, but for these people it is incredible. She is doing very well for herself (and her family).

Ben Boadu- Is starting a sugar cane farm. There is a great demand for sugar cane and not enough supply. You have to have a certain kind of land (kind of swampy) to grow sugar cane, and he had the land, so it was a good match for someone who had half the resources to start a business, and we supplied the other half.

Daniel Acheampong - (To pronounce his last name just combine Champion and pong really fast.) He operates a corn milling machine that grinds the corn into flour, but he wanted a loan to also purchase a Oil Palm extraction machine. There are lots of Oil Palm trees that produce this seed thing that contains a bunch of oil. Anywho, there is no one in town who has this extraction machine, so people extract the oil by hand by squishing it. So he'll help save a lot of people a lot of time (everyone uses this oil to cook for most meals).

Dompreh - He is the manager of his brother's pharmacy. The pharmacy lacked the capital to purchase much inventory. They were the largest pharmacy in the village (there are two others), but they still turned away 30 people a day because they did not have the medicine. So with the loan they about doubled there inventory and are very profitable. And it is helping the sick people of Abomosu.

Sampson and his Wife - Sampson's wife does not speak english, so we mostly worked with Sampson, but together they make a food called Kenkey. It the same idea as a tamale (because it is corn based and wrapped in leaves) but the corn is fermented so it tastes disgusting! But the Ghanaians love it and Sampson and his wife are known as the best Kenkey makers. Anywho, their problem is the cost of corn skyrockets between January and May, so there profit margin becomes pennies (actually Pesewas), but if they buy the corn now and hoard it away then they can be profitable year-round.

Philip Twum - He is the LDS branch president and runs a DJ business. DJs are very important to Ghanaian culture because funerals are a BIG deal. He wanted a loan so he could get some new equipment so he could DJ for two funerals at the same time. He was very grateful for the accounting and record keeping skills we taught him.

Faustina - She is probably the person who's income level will be helped the greatest. She has started a very simple business selling tomatoes and onions to her little part of the village. She goes to a town a few hours away to purchase her inventory. Her loan amount was the smallest at GHC200 (about $140).

I can not even begin to describe how wonderful of a learning experience this was. I really feel like we helped these people a lot and helped start something wonderful in Abomosu. We also made some wonderful friends. To avoid making this extremely long I will sum it up and say that I am grateful our Father in Heaven blessed us with this opportunity to learn, grow, and develop.

Teaching a Lesson and Learning a Lesson

As I have mentioned in some previous blogs we have craved some American foods especially sweets. We have made a couple of treats throughout the summer to satisfy our sweet-tooth. A couple weeks about Spencer, Abbie, Joey and I made Brigham Young's Buttermilk Doughnuts for two reasons: It was the 24th of July weekend so we felt that it was very fitting and we were craving doughnuts. They turned out delicious and the Abu's really enjoyed them, mainly the glazed ones, they didn't really enjoy the cinnamon sugar coated ones. We decided that we could make them again the next week because we still had quite a bit of flour left and they had tasted so good. After we had made them the second time Margaret Abu asked if I would show her how to make them. So this morning Sister Terry came over and we helped Margaret and Gloria make doughnuts. It was so much fun, I don't think either of them had used a rolling pin before. We had a lot of fun teaching them to make doughnuts. My favorite part was after we were done Margaret told Gloria that she needs to make them for her everyday. 

Another learning experience that I never expected to learn this summer is how to cut hair. I had helped my brothers cut their own hair with clippers before but their hair was the same length across their whole head. Then when I married Joey he has me cut his hair which he uses different sizes of guides with the clippers so that was a little more difficult. Well Sister Terry asked me a month ago to cut her hair because her husband didn't really like to do it and because she knew that I cut Joey's that I would be able to do hers. I began by using the clippers on the bottom of her hair and then using scissors to blend and layer the top. This made me so nervous, I have never cut women's hair before. I guess I did a decent job because she asked me to do it again before we leave, which I did again this morning. I admire cosmetologists, cutting hair makes me really nervous. 

Primary Songs and All Those that We Love

For the last month, Abbie and I have been helping out in the primary. We have been teaching them the Primary 2010 Theme Song, I Know That My Savior Loves Me. The Senior Primary learned the song in about three weeks but it took about four weeks for the Junior Primary. Although Sunday was Fast Sunday, it was also Abbie and Spencer's last Sunday here, so we asked the Branch President if the Primary would be able to sing the intermediate hymn in Sacrament Meeting. Abbie was playing the keyboard and I sat on the front row doing the actions to the song to help the children sing. I have taken on a couple temporary "church callings." They weren't really callings that I received but that I took part in. When we went to the Temple for Branch Temple Day, I acted as the Young Women Leader helping the young women through the locker room, confirmation room, and the baptismal font. Now as a Primary Music Leader, I felt like the Primary Leaders that are in charge of the Primary Program that sit on the row showing pictures and doing actions as the children sing so that they remember the words.

Singing "I Know That My Savior Loves Me"

We were also able to teach the Senior Primary some other songs such as:

I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

I am Trying to Be Like Jesus

The only songs that they ever sang, especially in the Junior Primary, are: 

I am a Child of God 

Popcorn Popping

Book of Mormon Stories

Sister Terry teaching the dance for the "Mighty Change" Program
that they will be performing the end of August in Accra 

We are going to miss the branch members here. We have grown close to many if not all of them. We are so grateful for their testimonies and the spiritual strength that they have given unto us. I really feel like this summer has so such a spiritual experience for me. FHE, Institute, Sunday Church Meetings, Branch Temple Trip, Baptisms, Seminary/Institute Graduation and other special meetings. Especially being surrounded by missionaries: Stephen Sr and Margaret are missionaries- they proselyte twice a week and attend the different branches throughout the district, Elder and Sister Terry, and the Full-time Missionaries- Elder Hicks and Elder A. 

During FHE this week Joey showed a slideshow that he had made of the pictures that we have taken since we have been here. I can't believe how fast these three months have gone. After the slideshow Margaret came out with two big bags that she gave to each of the couples. They gave us each a dress for the girls and a shirt for the boys, as a gift of gratitude for all that we have done. I was about to cry, I had to keep reminding myself that we have another week here. Abbie and Spencer left yesterday for Accra and will be leaving on Thursday. It was weird to watch them leave, I just kept thinking about how soon before we leave. I have met a lot of amazing people and it will be very hard to me to leave. Joey and I have set a goal to return here in 4 years. We have grown so much and are so grateful for all that we have learned and all the people we have met and grown to love.

Joey and Emily in our outfits from the Abu's

Spencer, Abbie, Stephen, Margaret, Gloria, Emily and Joey after FHE