Friday, July 31st.
Woke up early 5:30 with some machine noise outside. Not sure
what it was but probably something to do with the construction. We went to the
college by 10:30 and waited while everyone had snack. Then I MC'd the gender
equity sketches. There were seven this time and they were pretty good and
within the time limit. Right after that Diane and I got Eric to drive us into
town to exchange some money. Brenda, Marie and Obed came with us. Eric couldn't
find a ForEx so we tried three banks but none of them would do the exchange.
The last one gave us a heads up for a ForEx. We drove there, met a young man on
the corner and asked the rate. He told us 3.6 which is better than we have
gotten before. So he lead Eric and I down a couple of narrow streets to a
little shop that had a nice concrete and tile base, as opposed to the dirt ones in the shops around it. Inside was a bigger, older man. He confirmed the rate and said he
would give us a receipt. So we went back to get the others and we all went
there dressed in our lime green GNAT outfits. We didn't stand out too much! We
exchanged our money for the rate he said but he wouldn't give us a receipt. I
figured so what? We have the money at a great rate and we could all sign a
receipt from our book. Obviously we had stumbled upon a black market outlet. We
got back to the college in time for lunch. After that we sat through another
long three hour closing ceremony. At the end of it we were all presented with
little gifts of thanks. At the end GNAT invited all of the resource people to a
room for a drink and a kebab. I got Ernest and the two Thomas to pose with
Diane and me and then got the memory card from Ernest from his camera so I
could get the photos from the closing ceremonies and the school visit from
Wednesday. I asked Eric to round up the other three drivers, Francis, Felix
and Daniel so that I could present them all with an ETFO t-shirt that says I AM
THE FACE OF MY UNION. I told them that they truly are that and how much we
appreciated all of their hard work. They packed up our luggage and hauled it around
to all the sites we went to. This includes all of our workshop material as
well. On a personal level I thanked them too because they had also carried all
of the boxes of school supplies that I had purchased in Accra. And Felix had
found my lost Canadian quarter pendant. They were very pleased to be thanked
and appreciated. Then we went back to the hotel for dinner and to get ready for
our last Ghana night. We arrived at 8:00 and they were already dancing. They had a small drum group
and two young women who danced. The older of the two brought some guys up to
dance and tried to get me but I ran away from her. There was no way I was going
to be centred out dancing. So she asked me why I didn't like dancing and we got
to talking. Turns out she is 17 and her sister is 10 and all the women on stage
who were sitting and singing were her mother, her sisters and friends and the
drummers were males in the family. She introduced me to them and they let me
take some good photos. I went outside to cool off for a bit and ran into five
participants from our class. One asked me if people in Canada were as religious
as people in Ghana. I told him that there were lots of religious people in
Canada who celebrate a number of different religions but that I was definitely
not one of them. They were surprised and asked me why. I told them that I didn't
believe in god because if there was a god who loved us he would not allow children
to die of cancer, or people of AIDS and ebola. And I said if we didn't believe
and he really loved us why would he send us to hell? It was a long conversation
but that was the jist of it. Then I said I didn't understand why the people of
Ghana after being subjected to the slave trade by the Europeans, would adopt
the European Christian faith. A couple of them looked at me a bit shocked but
the one guy said that apparently their own original religion gave out more
severe punishment for noncompliance than going to Hell. They killed or maimed
people. I found that to be an interesting reason. Then I went back in and hung
around with our group a bit before we left at ten to go back to sleep before
tomorrow's return trip.
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