A New Chapter Dawns

Finally, the waiting and preparation are over. This is it – today we leave the UK to start the first leg of our journey to Segbwema in Sierra Leone, to take up posts as Mission Partners with the Methodist Church.

Tuesday night was a tedious and tiring night as we tried to fit everything we thought we would need for two years, into 5 suitcases. Trying to fit 2 years clothing into suitcases without exceeding BA’s ‘generous’ weight allocation of 92kg just doesn’t work. I am sure most of you guys know that. There was the constant weighing, adjustments and re-weighing of jumbo suitcases on bathroom scales hoping for some ‘magic’ but eventually we had to admit defeat. Suddenly it dawned on us all that no matter how hard we tried we just would not be able to fit an assortments of clothes, CDs, notebooks, every conceivable time saving equipment etc, into our suitcases. 102 kg was after all not that generous for 2 adults and a growing toddler when going away for 2 years. I am sure we will master this trick later – but not yet.

Wednesday morning was very emotional for me. Was up early as usual leaving J & J in bed and tip toed downstairs. I took one look around the house, all the cases on the floor, unpacked papers and the general chaos, and for no apparent reason the tears started flowing. It dawned on me then that this is what the last 18 months has been about - preparing for our ministries in Sierra Leone – all the preparation during the past year and months was geared towards today. Today is the day – and the thought made me emotional. I just went back upstairs to cuddle J & Little J. Did I have any regrets – of course not. I knew we were doing the right thing and this is what the Lord wanted us to do.
Finally we made our way to the airport after more weight adjustments and finally giving in as a losing battle. The irony is we got to the airport only to be told that we had a more generous total weight allocation of 138 kg between us even though BA was not keen to publicise that.

PART 2 In Ghana – The Entry Visa Saga

We finally arrived safely in Ghana around 8.00pm local time. The flight was smooth and the hostesses were very pleasant. Little J slept for the first 2-3 hours and for the rest of the flight the plane was her playground. We had to take turns in jumping and jogging down the aisle. It’s getting harder as she gets older, but we expected that.

We knew getting into Ghana would have been expensive when we checked in at Heathrow and we were told we needed a visa to enter. We ‘forgot’ this small matter….. and it turned out to be a long and expensive mistake. At least, they didn’t send us back on the next flight to London!!! We had to fill in countless forms in order to apply for ‘visa on arrival’. The visa application cost us $300.00 in total and even little J had to pay the $100.00. The irony of the situation is that the Ghana immigration service would not accept payment in the local currency, not that we had any local currency on us anyway. British pounds sterling was not acceptable either. In Ghana US dollars reigns supreme over the British pound. We were one of the last people to leave the airport that night, and Little J made the best of the emptiness of the immigration hall by running, rolling and basically ‘cleaning the floor with her clothes’. She was basically at home there, greeting all the officers, but it wasn’t enough to get us in without paying. Anyway, I think it’s good that they demand a visa. It shows not only the 1st world countries can do that and get away with it, and there were many varied people on the flight (not only Ghanaians). To think that we needed a visa to visit Ghana when Michael comes from Ghana, but then that’s what happens when we exchange our passports for that of other countries. The good thing about it all is tat no one tried to extort any monies from us ‘to try to help us’. If anything at all, they were very sympathetic considering the amount of money w had to pay. Everything was done above board – there are still honest government officials in third world countries contrary to reports we read in the west. Praise God
Ghana feels and looks a lot like Kingston and the people look like Jamaicans!!!!!! The difference is in the speech and the driving on the right, and they drive better, but otherwise, it really feels like home.

Until later, continue to pray for us.