Praise the Lord

April 8. After breakfast at the Four Villages, we attended church services at Dr. Annie’s Pentecostal church, where everyone is decked out in their Sunday best. Carol and I had been there before and were anxious for Phoebe to experience it.

The services are loaded with singing and religious fervor. Phoebe enjoyed it, and so did I, except that the pastor went on for at least 45 minutes with a sermon that said, it’s hard to be a good Christian and you’ve got to act like the Bible says, not just come to church on Sunday. Forty-five minutes is a very long time for that message. Dr. Annie is extremely devoted to and active in her church and was happy to have us attend and take photos. In general, Ghanaians are very religious people and many shop names carry religious messages, such as, “God With Us Beauty Parlor.”

After church, we stopped by Dr. Annie’s clinic, which is named “St. Anne,” after her daughter. It’s a small clinic with three doctors; Annie, her son and one other. We’d seen her previously operating a very much larger clinic, but she seems passionately devoted to this clinic and interested in raising some money, from us and others. Annie, of course, is now a rabid Cubs fan.

We stopped for some lunch with Daniel and Priscilla. At Nicole’s invitation, we went to the Kumasi Cultural Center in search of drumming lessons. While we didn’t find the drummer, we had an interesting walk around the area, seeing a few craftsmen (Sunday is not a great day for that), and encountering diverse, sometimes chaotic scenes on nearby streets and, of course, some cute kids.

Daniel had to take off, mid-afternoon, because he got word that an investor from Chicago was arriving in Accra tonight and wanted to see the pineapple farm early tomorrow morning. He has made arrangements with our driver, Steven, to pick us up in the morning and drive us to our hotel in Accra. Daniel will meet us at the hotel for dinner tomorrow night. I told Daniel that, since the fellow from Chicago (whose name is Euler) had stolen him from us, we’d be pleased to have Euler buy all of us dinner tomorrow night. Daniel laughed and said he’d try to set that up with Euler. I told Daniel that if Euler is not available for dinner, he can just give Daniel the cash to pay for it.

We have dinner at the Four Villages. Later, Joe Kwarteng and Priscilla stopped by to chat for ah hour and to bid us farewell and a good journey on.