Gone to Ghana

Today I came across the adage "May the best of your yesterdays be the worst of your tomorrows."

This was certainly true for us today. While today wasn't great, the worst part of today was probably on par with the best part of yesterday. As long as we're improving, right?

Andrew made it to Ghana—I may as well spill the beans since he chose to sleep instead of blog—and is all in one piece. I pray it stays that way because he went on a tour of Accra today with his cohorts and the tour bus company said they could leave their personal items on the bus, assured them that the bus driver would stay with the bus with the doors locked, etc., and so forth. So they stopped for lunch and everyone disembarked, many people leaving their belongings behind.

Well, they got back to the bus and, much to their dismay, found it completely empty.

Passports, money, cameras, computers, everything...gone.

Today Rachel asked, "Mommy, why is Daddy in Ghana if it's not gone?"

"Because he's gone-a Ghana!" I said.

"But it's not gone if he's there," she pointed out.

Anyway, Andrew was telling me this story over IM and I was getting a little nervous because...remember Rome and The Great Financial Crisis of 2010?

I do.

So by this point in the story I was finished with the suspense and told him to just tell me the bad news and get it over with already.

The bad news was that five people had left their belongings on the bus but Andrew was not one of the five. Don't get me wrong—I feel, deeply, for those five who lost their things, but I'm relieved that we were not among the five.

I told Andrew to keep his valuables with him at all times—constant vigilance! And I've been praying for his physical, emotional, and material well-being since before he left for the airport. You can pray for him, too.

It's funny, the reaction we get from people when we tell him Andrew's in Ghana. Usually it's along the lines of, "Oh, neat-o. He'll have a great experience, I'm sure." And on the first day—BAM!—theft.

But, whenever we tell people about our time in the Middle East they usually say, "I'm so glad you got out of there alive! You're seriously so blessed that you're not dead in a ditch somewhere." And nothing like this ever happened to us there.

Right now the whole group feels a little violated, as one tends to do after they find themselves a victim of a crime...and stuck in a foreign country without money or passport...and Andrew told me he found it very underdeveloped and dangerous. I hope that he can overcome his initial impression of the country and grow to love it.

The crime rate in Ghana is actually relatively low, which means that, in theory, they are a relatively safe country to visit. The report I read about them was glowing compared to Egypt's report by the same source and we rarely felt threatened in Egypt at all.

Unfortunately, tour busses/groups are obvious targets for criminals. We felt much more comfortable traveling around Egypt alone than when we were traveling through Egypt with the BYU group in 2006. People in Africa stare at white people like Americans stare at black people, and that's normal because being different is interesting. However, when you have a whole herd of "different" traveling together it draws much more attention to your presence, your ignorance, your fear, your vulnerability. Staring, verbal harassment, and, apparently, theft seem much more likely to occur in a large group than a small group, as counterintuitive as that sounds.

At any rate, having known several people who love Ghana dearly, I'm sure the country and its people will redeem themselves before Andrew comes home.

Now maybe I'll write about my day instead of his for a while since he'd probably be much more interested in reading about what we're doing at home instead of reading me reiterating what he already told me today.