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.

.
.



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.

------------------------------------

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

------
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.
------

We have Visitors!

Our boss Tom, and his assistant/our friend Katie are here visiting us and Bernard as he transitions into his new role here in South Africa. Here are some pics from the fun touristy things we did with them!  :)

(We're visiting the farm right now, so I can use their internet to upload these photos. yay!)

             

There and Back Again (and then, there again ;)

I'm back to my blog attempts!
Sorry it's been so long, a few months =/

Well, here we are again in South Africa. Isn't jet-lag the greatest? We sort of slept for maybe 3 or 4 hours last night (after getting very little sleep on the 16hr overnight flight) and then decided we might as well turn the lights on at 2:30am. So I read, Jon worked, and I unpacked and organized all of our clothes in the closet (at least that's done!) we are going to be so dead tonight, I hope we sleep.

We had a great 2 1/2 months back home in CA, going back and forth between our families in Orange County and San Diego. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. I got to finally meet my sister Sarah's man and celebrate their engagement and participate in wedding planning, and we'll be able to get back to CA for the wedding in July! We spent good time with friends and lots of great time with family, even made it up to the McMillen cabin over New Years weekend which is always so great! (even though there was no snow this year :(  )

And.. so, at the end of Jan. we flew to Florida and spend just a few days at the International Office, which was great getting to re-connect with everyone and work in an actual office instead of stepping out of our bedroom to our desk. heheh

Then, we started our journey back across to South Africa on the 4th and arrived the next evening. And here we are. It's end of summer, and I'm currently sitting in our room with the windows open and the sound of thousands of humming, cricking, buzzing bugs is loud in my ears. I don't mind it at all though. It's sort of like white noise. And the smell of the misty air is lovely. It's helping me get in the mood as I'm reading The Help, set in Mississippi.

Anywho, we've got a busy time ahead of us. We hired a great guy from Zambia to come and take over as Operations Coordinator for Southern Africa. His name is Bernard. He is arriving on Wednesday, moving here to be close to the rest of the Regional team here.  Also, our boss, Tom and our friend Katie his assistant are coming on Friday for about a week to spend some time with Bernard and the team here. So, the next week will be very full, and the new version of our reporting system is being launched on Wednesday which is going to be a little wild I think (we're anticipating lots of emails from the field needing assistance), and we have a lot to do with Bernard in the next month and a half before heading to our next location.

Our plan is to spend 1 1/2 months here to train Bernard, another 1 1/2 based in Ghana so we can spend more time focused on English speaking West and French (west & central) Africa, and then another 1 1/2 based in Kenya finally meeting and spending time with the teams in East Africa. While we're in the other regions we will be traveling a lot throughout the surounding countries so that we can meet face to face with the national directors. We are excited about this. Last year it really felt like we spent too much time in one place, and if we're going to be this far from home we'd rather be moving around a bit more, and spending more time meeting with the amazing people on the ground who are doing all of the hand on work and sacrificing so much for it.

So, that's a little summary of what to expect in the upcoming months. We'll be back in FL in July for meetings and will be in CA briefly for Sarah's wedding, then the second half of the year is unplanned as of yet. Were we spend our time will be largely determined by our time in the other regions in the first half.

We are anticipating this year being very different from last year, with many new challenges, but we are excited about spending more time in West and East Africa, connecting more with the teams there.

We love you all and we're so glad we got to see so many of you while we were back home.
Until my next post!

-J&L

Snippets and Stories

So, I think I've posted plenty of pictures of the PLACE we live in, I'm sure you'd like to seem some pictures with us in them as well. ;)

We have a washing machine at the house, but currently no dryer, so we line dry all of our clothes. These pictures were taken back in August when it was quite cold, so my fingers would get numb sometimes hanging up the wet clothes. heheh  It's warmer now, so it's kind of pleasant to go hang up the clean laundry.

My dear husband took these lovely pictures. I love the late afternoon light. Same time of day that I took the house pictures.

Jon produces a whole lot of laundry. It's usally 2/3rds his 1/3rd mine. ;)

Jon-Jon eating his Oatmeal on the stairs. Kind of a silly thing to do, but I thought it was cute and took a picture of him.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, the next set of pictures are all one day. It was a Sunday. We went to church with three other people who were staying at the house, but we decided to drive separately because they were going somewhere after church and we were both sick and too tired to join them.

So, we get back to the house after church, drive through the gate, park, get out of the car and realize... we do not have the house keys. ... There are not enough sets at this point for everyone to have one, and the other group just happened to have them! Meanwhile, we are the only ones with a gate key. So, if we leave, they can't enter the property, but we can't get into the house either... It was a dilemma.

We decided we had plenty of time to at least go get some lunch, which we did, expecting the others to be back by 2ish.  Oh, and did I mention that Jon's cell phone was locked in the house? And they were planning on calling us with their plans?  yea... Oh! AND we had just gotten back from the store with groceries, like milk and cheese... but that worked out, because there is a little fridge sitting in the garage waiting to be transported to the Farm. So we plugged it in. =)

Well, this is Jon walking around the house seeing if there is some way to get in.

Considering that every window is barred, and the doors both have iron gates on them, it is impossible to get in even if we had a hack-saw. We needed a key.

Well, let me say, the end of the story is that Jon is the real McGyver and got in!  How?  well, thankfully we found in the truck the keys that Tommy had copied but said didn't work and he needed to get them fixed. The thing is, they DO work on the gate! just not the wood door. And the gate is the impenetrable part (without a serious torch or explosives).

So, we got through one layer, but were having trouble with the next. This is Jon trying to file the door key in case he could get it to fit right. He was very persistent.

I just waited around. Couldn't do anything. I was tired.

So I sat in the truck. Then I took a nap in the car. We were stuck out there for a couple of hours.

Then I hear a noise, look over, and there is Jon standing in front of the open door!!!! HALLELUIAH!

I won't tell you how he did it. Let's just say he's amazing. And thank goodness! Because the others didn't get back till late that evening, having changed their plans. And they texted instead of calling to let us know, so they had no idea we didn't have the phone. So, Jon saved the day with his persistence and ingenuity! Hooray for my husband!

Yup, that's the story. Hope you enjoyed.


Much love from the both of us,
-J&L