Francophone Travels - Togo and Benin

Greetings from Cotonou, Benin.

We have a really great internet connection at our hotel! probably the best connection we've had in Africa, which is surprising to find in West Africa, but I'm taking advantage of this opportunity to post some photos!

So, here are some pictures from our trip far, from Tema in Ghana to Lome in Togo, then across to Cotonou in Benin. Tomorrow we're flying up to Burkina Faso.

On our way out of Ghana at the Togo border, heading into the city of Lome.

We spent time with our Togo National Director, Pastor Gedeon. This is Gedeon and his son.

That's Jim, the Regional Director for Francophone Africa, on the right.

Here's Jon working with Gedeon on our reporting system, doing some training, working through some problems. This is one of the major things we're doing with each of national directors this trip.

This beautiful lady served our meals at the West Africa School of Theology that we stayed at while in Togo. That's her cute little son on her back, and her little sister behind her.

On our way out of Lome yesterday it rained some (bringing a very nice cool breeze!), and we passed this petrol station under which all of these motor bike riders and pedestrians were sheltering, hoping that the rain would pass soon. This gives a small idea of how many motorcycles are driven in French West Africa.

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The wet streets of Lome

Traffic trying to get through the city on our way to Benin.

A little girl standing in the doorway of her family's roadside shop.

The entrance to the Lome port.

A very pretty advertizement for this high fashion designer brand, which creates beautiful West/Central African prints.

Grabbed a drink from the Petrol station shop. Sport Actif - a really yummy carbonated grapefruit-lemon drink. mmmmmm Refreshing! we like it better than Sprite or any of those. Probably because there is no sugar added.

The bush/countryside just outside of Lome.          

The sky was getting dark with rain clouds, and when the road came back near the beach it was a beautiful contrast between the dark clouds and the horizon and the green-blue water.

The blue on the beach is a line of fishing nets pulled up onto the beach, and those are fishing boats.

A common site in Africa. The local dump/trash pile which will be burned at some point.

It only took about 2 hours to get to the Togo/Benin border. These two countries are skinny and tall.

Road side stands and shops near the border. Borders are busy places for this kind of business.

Fishing on a lake.

We made it to Cotonou in about 3 1/2 hrs total.                 

 

 

"Have a good stay with us" (at our hotel)

A couple photos from the roof of our hotel.

 That's all for now! I'll probably post more photos from Benin tomorrow since we're still in this same hotel for one more day. Enjoy!

-J&L

We <3 Tema

So, we arrived in Ghana last Friday, and we are so excited to be here. For one fun feature look at the pictures below.

 

Yes, this is our motorcycle for scooting around Tema. And that is also the outside of our house. I'll post pictures of the inside later, probably after our trip into Francophone the next two weeks.

 How cool is he, right?














Yes, there is a container sitting out in from of our house. That is the warehousing for Ghana's OneHope books. Our house used to be the warehouse, but they were able to purchase a container so that they could set up the house as a guest-house/our home while we're here. The container will be moved to the church property soon. :)

Ready for a ride to the beach. So happy to be near the ocean again!

We Made it! It was a very nice ride.

  Hello Ghana shore! The cool breeze from the ocean is so lovely.

We  stopped for some Choco Fan Milk on the way back -it's kind of like a fudgesicle without the stick, you just eat it out of the corner of the bag- by that point we needed something cool and refreshing.

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Sooooo, yes, we are now in Ghana. About to head out on a trip to s few French West African countries with Jim, our fabulous Francophone Regional Director. Our main objectives on this trip are to connect with some of the national directors, find out how things are going, and to work on continued training in our recently revamped reporting system - making sure that they understand all of the changes in the system and feel fully competent as they report on inventory, distribution activity, and finances.

After this trip we'll be back in Ghana for about a month before moving over to East Africa, and we're really looking forward to that month, as well as the time we'll be back here during the second half of the year. We really like it here. It may be hot and sticky, but the house is very comfortable with ceiling fans, and our room has an A/C unit, so we sleep well at night. We are really quite spoiled actually for West Africa, and are very grateful for our A/C. And even grocery shopping is easier than we expected. We can get most everything we need from a couple of small local supermarkets, then if we want to get fresh fish or something we will find someone along the road selling it. But we are grateful for the supermarket, we thought we might have to haggle for all of our food, which many people do and it's probably much cheaper, but coming from a non-bartering society it is a relief that we won't have to do that for most things.

We're all set up with internet modems so we can be connected from home and do work from home when we want to, but we're also only about 3 minutes walk from the office, where Pastor Elorm (West Africa regional director) and the rest of the Ghana staff are working, and we can join them over there whenever we want/need to. Also, Ps. Elorm's church is very close, about 10 minutes on our motorbike. We joined the service and Sunday school this last Sunday. So we're very well situated, and we are feeling more at home than we have in Africa thus far.

So, if you think of us, please pray for our travel - safety, health, and affective time with the team. And also please pray for Bernard in South Africa as he is learning to take responsibility for the Southern Africa region, and for him personally as he is living in a new place far from his friends and family in Zambia, and especially far away from his fiance (I'm sure she could use some extra grace as well as she is missing him).

Thank you all!

Love,
-J&L

Habari!

That's "Hello" in Swahili.
Greetings from Nairobi, Kenya.

The month of intense travel has begun. It started for Jon almost two weeks ago now when he flew from Johannesburg, through Ghana, on to Liberia. He was there for a week for a program training and was able to meet some of the West Africa national directors who we didn't see last year. Maybe I'll try to get him to write something about that. You'd like to hear his thoughts too right? I think it'd be great!

But, anyways, he arrived back in South Africa on Sunday morning after an overnight flight and we spent the day doing final errands and finishing packing all of our stuff, because we're on our way to Ghana! - We spent as much time as possible with Bernard in February and March training him and getting him going in so that he can take care of Southern Africa for us, which we are really grateful for. And now we will be spending the rest of the year focusing on the other three regions.

As I said, we're in Nairobi. We flew in on Monday, and we're continuing on to Ghana tomorrow (friday), but it's been a great visit. We have very much enjoyed meeting and getting to know the team here and have been spending a lot of quality time with the Regional Director, Philip, learning more about his region and the ministry going on here, and spending some great time with him and his wife Eve in the evenings. Nairobi itself as a city is not particularly exciting on the surface, and the air pollution is really bad, but we're looking forward to spending more time here in a couple of months and getting to know it a little better. The National Park is actually in the city, then expands out beyond it with no fences on that side, so the wild life in it is really, truly wild, not contained. When we're back we'll be sure to go there, and there are other things we would like to see as well.

When we get to Ghana, we'll unpack and set up our next 'home.' Then next Wednesday, we're off! We'll be traveling through four French speaking west African countries over two week's time with Jim (similar to last year's trip) - Togo, Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso - and then Jon & Jim will go without me Congo - Kinshasa (DRC) for four days. phew... That will be exactly one month of constant traveling for Jon, and about 3 weeks for me. Then we'll settle down again, and will stay put in Ghana till mid-may. 

We'll then be based in Kenya from mid-May to July, then back in FL (for meetings) & CA (for sister's wedding) in July! and the second half of the year is unplanned at this point!  haha but it will probably be split between being based in Ghana and Kenya.

SOOOOooooo, that is what's going on for us! Now that interesting things are going on, I'll try to post a little more often to share about our travels and experiences with you, and hopefully be able to post a few picture along the way as well.

We love you all! Please pray for us as we are traveling a lot right now that we will get rest when we need it and we will have energy to serve well as we're visiting national directors and sitting down to work with them.

-Jon&Lisa

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UPDATE: in between writing the above and now getting ready to post it, we found out that there has been a coup in Mali - their military has take control of the country, and all borders are closed. This is very unexpected for Mali. So, the update for us is that we will obviously not be going into Mali. But please be praying for that country. You can find articles on BBC news about it.
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