Ghana Experience – Part 1 – Preparation

Late last year there was an announcement in the AFS newsletter about the availability of chaperon trips for the end of the school year. Some of these were to chaperon US students abroad for the experience, some to chaperon US students at the beginning of their experience, and several to chaperon students from other countries back to their country at the end of their experience. One of the destinations listed was Ghana. I was interested because not only was it a place that I had never been, but it would give me the opportunity to visit Shirley, who I had not seen since she stayed in our home a dozen years ago. Since I had not gone on any AFS trips for several years, I thought my chances of being awarded one of these trips was fairly high. So I applied.

After being accepted as one of the trip chaperons, all those who were awarded this opportunity had to bid on the various available trips. I put Ghana as first on my list and was confirmed for the trip a few months ago. My “job” was to chaperon 20 Ghanaian high school students who had been in the US for the 2014-15 school back to their home country. In addition, since these were scholarship students here on the Kennedy-Luger YES program, there was a requirement that the chaperon stay in the country for at least a week to get the benefit of the cultural exchange. I was fully agreeable to that.

I contacted Shirley to let her know that I was coming. I asked her for a recommendation of a reasonable hotel that was close to where she lived.

One of my key decisions was to let her know that I was not coming to Ghana to be a typical tourist. I was not interested in a geographic experience, but a cultural one, so I wanted to be “where the people are” and not where the other non-Ghanaians were likely to be. In retrospect, this was a huge decision, and one that I do not regret at all.

Early on Monday, 6/15, I caught a bus from Wescosville to Philadelphia, then took Amtrak from there to DC Union Station, then a taxi ride to the Hilton Hotel at Dulles Airport, arriving there before noon.

The next two days I worked with all the exchange students (approx. 370 of them) as they arrived from all over the US where they had stayed with host families, had meals and activities together, visited the State Department, and met back up with the other students from their country and prepared to return. On Wednesday each country group left to travel back home – most groups taking shuttle buses to Dulles, but a few going to other airports.

For the Ghanaian students (and myself), that meant a long bus ride from DC to JFK airport (leaving around noon on Wednesday), checking in, a flight from JFK to Amsterdam and a 3-hour layover, then a flight from Amsterdam to Accra, arriving there on Thursday evening. After safely delivering all of them (and ALL their luggage) to the AFS-Ghana staff and to their parents, I met Shirley at the airport for a ride to my hotel.

Background on Ghana

While I was going to be staying in a small area, I think it might be useful to give a little background information on Ghana to put some things into context.

Ghana is a country about the size of Oregon. It sits in West Africa on the southern coast. It is due south of London, with the 0 meridian passing just a few miles to the east of Accra, the capital. The 0 latitude/0 longitude, i.e. the place where the prime meridian meets the equator, is only 380 miles to the south of Accra. Thus the days are pretty close to 12 hours of daylight, 12 hours of night year round. At this time of year they are only 4 hours different than Eastern Daylight Time since Ghana does not use daylight savings time.

Ghana declared independence from England in 1957, so it is the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to be independent of European colonization. The population is approximately 27 million from a variety of ethnic and religious groups. Although it has a varied geography (including savannas, forests, mountains, nature reserves, etc.) I did not get to experience much of it.

The capital, Accra, has a population of 3 million, but it is not the largest city as Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region, is about 3.8 million. The Ashanti people are also the predominant tribe and the speakers of the most-used tribal language (Twi). There are 11 state-recognized languages, but English is taught in all schools and is the language of business. Over 70% of the population are Christian with 18% being Muslim, 5% traditional, and 5% not declaring a religion.