Be our guest

After our great weekend in Sewfi Wiawso, we invited some of the kids to come visit us in Accra. Anthony, who is 22, Patrick, who is 20, and Sara who is 17 all made the journey down here last weekend. Patrick had been to Accra once and the other two had never been. They had been to Kumasi a couple of times, which is the second largest city in Accra, but they had never really seen anything like Accra. There are small skyscrapers here and tons of cars and traffic, which is very different than any other place in Ghana.

Also, though they are practicing Jews, they had never experienced an Orthodox Shabbat. We made challah, which they had not seen and traditional Ghanaian food for dinner and lunch. We did all the prayers in Hebrew and helped them to follow along. Also, we sang zmirot (traditional songs sung at Shabbat meals) and they were able to sing with the transliteration. Then, at the end of the third meal of Shabbat, they told us the Hebrew songs they knew and we all sang together. They knew Oseh Shalom, Adon Olam, and a couple more.

During dinner at one point another Jewish, but not observant, girl from CIEE walked in and introduced herself and told Patrick, Sara, and Anthony that she was Jewish. After she left, they questioned why wasn't she observing Shabbat with us, why wasn't she eating and singing with us. We explained that she's Jewish but does not practice the same way that we do. They did not really understand that if she had the opportunity to practice like us, why wouldn't she? Though the Jews of Sewfi Wiawso are not traditionally observant, they uphold certain principles and strictly abide by their practices. They were really baffled by the idea that this girl chooses to not practice; it was almost unfathomable to them.

Since Sefwi Wiawso is landlocked, they had never seen the ocean so after Shabbat we decided to take them there. There was a little restaurant/bar that has chairs on the sand that we went to and just relaxed. At first only Patrick was willing to put his feet in the ocean, but after much coaxing all three of them went in. It was really exciting for them to see the ocean for the first time, though it was at night. Also, for some reason there were tons of pigs roaming the beach. There were families of pigs, babies to old fogies just walking on the sand. As you can imagine, I was not so happy about the pig situation but somehow I made it work. Presumably, someone owns the pigs and lets them walk around at night, but why the pigs would choose to come to the beach is beyond me.