Ghana Trip - United Reformed Church



High Corss URC Pilgrimage to Ghana January-February 2007

FROM THE MANSE

Dear Friends,

The visit of 22 of us to Ghana has been a quite amazing experience. In two and a half weeks we did so much, visited so many places and learnt so much. We all agree it was a life changing experience. This is what we set out to do.

Purpose of Visit

To develop an awareness of life in Ghana historically and present day

• To develop understanding of the effects of colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery on the people of Africa, Carribbean and White Europeans

• To engage with the Presbyterian Church of Ghana through worship, meetings and visits to projects

• Enabling one another to share ideas and feelings throughout the visit and to grow in our faith

To achieve the above

• To engage with a group of young people, youth leaders and Ministers to discuss programmes concerning the URC and Presbyterian Churches of Ghana

• Church work in poor urban communities and poor rural communities. What are the issues? How do suburban churches engage in these issues or support such churches

Reflection sessions

Two opportunities to visit markets, craft markets and normal shopping centres

• To experience one or two community projects, eg Begora Vocational Centre, Justice and Peace, Northern Outreach Programme

I believe, although we didn’t do everything, we did achieve most of what we intended to achieve. We also managed a bit more! We visited Ogogo Hospital taking with us gifts and also Begora Vocational Centre where we also gave gifts. Thanks to all church members who contributed.

Our visit to Bono Manso, north of Kumasi, where they collected the slaves and tied them to a large Baobab tree was very sad. Also the slave castles of Elmina and Osu in Accra were terrible experiences, but places we needed to see.

Our visit to Akrapong was a great inspiration. It was there that Andrew Riis, the last white missionary to survive malaria came to live. However, he made no converts and the Basle Mission decided to recall him. However, the kindly chief at Akrapong suggested he find some black people who believed “the book”. This was taken seriously and 24 missionaries came to Ghana from Jamaica and one from Antigua. They settled in Hanover St and also Little Jamaica. The mission became established and the Revd Peter Hall, a Jamaican became the first moderator of the Ghana Presbyterian Church. What a wonderful story of care and love across the continents! Everywhere we went we got a wonderful, even overwhelming, welcome from the Presbyterian churches.

We learnt many things. Some of my own thoughts and what others have said are:-

• How can people have used the bible to justify the slave trade? How important is it that when we interpret the bible, God’s love and deep desire for justice inform our conclusions.

• How can there be a church above the female dungeon at Elmina Castle? What wicked hypocrisy! How important is it today that who we are, and what our actions show, is true to Jesus so full of truth and compassion.

• Why do we all know of William Wilberforce, but few of us until recently knew of Olaudah Equiano and many other black people who worked tirelessly, often at great personal risk, to end slavery. We need to rewrite and relearn history so we can build a more honest understanding, and work for a real unity and harmony in today’s world.

• What a wonderful thing it is to belong to the Worldwide Family of the church! We have all returned with a new determination to make a really united church, where no cultural group is dominant or subordinate, but where we all work together with respect and valuing each other.

Finally we thank Eleanor Boateng for being such a wonderful leader. May God help us to build His church, as He wants it to be with the power of His Spirit.

Your friend and Minister

Francis Ackroyd

GHANA REPORT

The two and a half weeks we spent in Ghana had a huge impact on me, as a person and as a member of the church. The culture, faith and worship contrasted strongly with that which I have seen in England.

Everywhere you turned you could see people praising God on their cars, shops and house windows; from when we arrived in Accra I couldn’t turn away from the signs things like “Jesus saves barbers salon” and “Worship him communications”.

One of my favourite parts about the trip was all the newfound connections between Ghana and the Caribbean that I had not known about. From the colours of the Asante people matching the colours of the Jamaican flag, the similar plant life, the similarities between languages such as between Jamaican patois and Twi; the links and connections were everywhere. I felt more in touch with my roots than I have ever been before.

The people there were amazing. Practically everyone had a smile on their face, and there was no awkwardness, waving or talking to a complete stranger as is so often found over here. Everyone we visited was amazingly hospitable, and it was no exaggeration to say every church and person we visited fed us all without fail!

I remember visiting different organisations that provided services such as vocational training for young women, and support for pregnant teenagers. They worked hard and provided all that they could; but relied on sources such as philanthropists and donations for financial support.

What stood out to me as drastically different from England were the young people of the church. Especially when I found out that the young peoples group, instead of having a maximum age within the early twenties as our church, stretched all the way to the age of 40! Spending an afternoon with a co-ordinator of the youth ministry, Kofi, I found out that the youth themselves got involved heavily in the work of their charity. He told me of how they raise money to buy vans, so that they can drive hours away to provide clothes and support for the poor and disadvantaged youth. And it was done almost entirely independent from the main church!

Going to Ghana taught me many things. It taught me to appreciate the blessings I do have, but also that there are many blessings that I do not have that people have been blessed with in Ghana. The sense of community and hospitality in Ghana was beautiful, and something that I honestly do not see being found in England. I will never forget my time spent there.

Robert Stafford-Williams

TRIP TO GHANA

22 of us went on the pilgrimage to Ghana and to me this was a very worthwhile visit. The trip was made possible by the excellent help we had from the various departments of Thames North Synod and the Presbyterian Church of Ghana who kindly gave us a free bus and a driver to take us on our journeys and we are very grateful to both the Synod and Presbyterian Church of Ghana. We stayed in a beautiful Church of Pentecost Guest House and were treated very well by both the Guest House and Catering staff.

To me, coming originally from Ghana, one would have thought that I know many historical places but this trip definitely gave me the chance to visit places that I would never have dreamt of going to. The trip had been talked of for a long time but it was not until it actually took place that I realised how good and wonderful it had been. I remember when myself, Maggie Osae and my brother Richard met the rest of the group at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, we noticed that everyone was in a good mood even after flying for 6 hours. It was a dream come true for many in the group who were not sure if they had actually landed in Ghana after hearing so much about the country and I could see how their eyes lit up. I assured them that they were safely in Ghana and we were all going to have a great time together. The trip was a great eye opener for me as we visited place after place and the welcome alone made me feel proud.

The Churches we visited, namely Accra Ridge Church, Christ Church, Adenta, Victory Church, Adenta, Madina Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Kukurantumi Presbyterian Church, Akropong Presbyterian Church, Begoro Presbyterian Church where the Church bells were rang to welcome us and the hospitality was just amazing. We met and interacted with so many people. In some places we visited, the Women’s Fellowship wore their uniform to welcome us. In some churches all the elders came to meet with us and we were able to have a sing song.

We visited projects like the Begoro Presbyterian Vocational Training Centre to see what the young girls are learning and also to interact with them, we visited the Teenage Pregnancy Centre in Abiriw where the girls are taught vocational subjects like sewing and catering. We visited the University of Ghana in Accra and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, we visited the Ramseyer Centre in Abetifi and also the Presbyterian Hospital in Agogo.

We met with the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Right Revd Dr Frimpong Manso, Revd Samuel Ayete-Nyampong, The Ecumenical and Social Director, Revd Erasmum Odonkor, Human Resources Director and brother of Revd Godwin Odonkor, the Ghanaian Chaplain in London and Revd Cephas Omenyo, brother of our own Daniel Omenyo and many others for interaction.

Other places we visited included the Slave Market in Bono Manso where slaves were brought from the Northern part of Ghana for the Slave Masters to choose their slaves and the weak ones left to die. There was a big tree where at any one time about 100 slaves were chained to until they were ready to walk all the way to the coast which was a long way before they were shipped abroad, we visited the Monkey Sanctuary also in Bono Manso where about 1000 monkeys live, the Elmina and Osu Castles, Kakum Park, a beautiful tourist attraction, the Volta Lake at Akosombo where we had a cruise, the craft market and many more places of interest. We learnt so much from these visits especially at Elmina Castle where we were told that all the slaves were kept in very filthy conditions with the Slave Masters living a life of luxury in other parts of the Castle where they also had a Chapel to worship.

The highlights of the trip for me were our reflection and worship at the end of everyday which summed up how we felt and I think everyone was honest in giving a correct account of what had taken place that day. We had the chance of getting to know each other better and I hope at the end of the trip we were able to achieve all that we set out to do which was mainly some of us looking for our roots, and interacting with our colleagues and learning more about the URC and the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. I do hope everyone had a wonderful time and I would like to thank everyone who came on this memorable trip for your kindness to me. God Bless you all.

Eleanor Boateng

SANDRA’S REPORT

❖ Twenty two members of High Cross United Reformed Church, Tottenham, have recently returned from a pilgrimage to Ghana. The group comprised four Ghanaian members, thirteen members who were born and grew up in the Caribbean and have lived in the UK for between thirty and fifty years, black British born members, two white British born people and he group was further enriched by having three young people (18-25 years). The purpose of the pilgrimage was to develop awareness of life in Ghana, past and present; to understand better, the effects of colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery on the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and white Europeans; to engage with the Presbyterian churches through dialogue, worship, and visits to church development projects and also to develop our own faith as we reflected on the experiences we encountered as we travelled far and wide.

❖ The experience of being part of such a group and the learning that took place in all of us in different ways, is difficult to put into words. However, we hope and pray that this whole experience does not only stay within the group who went to Ghana, but should also manifest itself in deeper appreciation and understanding of one another within our growing multicultural congregation of High Cross United Reformed Church, through effective action. The highlights of the pilgrimage included peoples’ discoveries of their roots in different ways and places, but especially when visiting Akropong which holds that very special story of Jamaican missionaries who were the ones that really got the Presbyterian church in that region off the ground and where the great great granddaughter (86) of the first Jamaican missionary and first moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Peter Hall, still lives, alongside other Jamaicans in that neighbourhood. Other highlights included that wonderful welcome and hospitality that we expected to experience and received everywhere we went which made us feel special. For me this helped me reflect on how we deal with hospitality and welcome in our own society and in the churches. Everywhere we went in Ghana, even in the places that were not expecting us, people were willing to lay aside their work for a few hours and to give us their time with graciousness and genuine interest in us and who we were. It was also good to get out into the countryside and the boat trip in Lake Volta was wonderfully relaxing.

❖ The painful moments included seeing so much continuing hardship and poverty especially in relation to trade injustice connected to the unjust trade rules, although it was heartening to see positive development taking place in some places through debt cancellation projects in particular. The most painful times were experienced in the visit to Elmina Castle on Cape Coast and to Osu Castle in Accra. Walking into the slave cells and listening to the story of what happened to African slaves kept there, is a horrific experience and many of our reflection times involved exploring the issues of slavery and its particular significance during this year of 2007. The words on the back of this report are written on the wall by the condemned cell at Elmina Castle and remind us as people of faith, of the importance of not sitting back and doing nothing whilst old and new forms of slavery that degrade, demean and destroy human beings continue to exist.

❖ I would like to thank the whole group for their company, support, humour. It was good to get to know one another better. I particularly appreciated our Ghanaian members who took time out to be with us in Ghana and filled in so many gaps for us and of course, a very special thank you to Eleanor and her fantastic leadership throughout, always putting our needs first and challenging principalities and powers when she saw injustices of different kinds looming. Thank you.

Sandra Ackroyd

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IN EVERLASTING

MEMORY

OF THE

ANGUISH OF OUR ANCESTORS.

MAY THOSE WHO DIED

REST IN PEACE.

MAY THOSE WHO RETURN

FIND THEIR ROOT.

MAY HUMANITY NEVER

AGAIN PERPETRATE SUCH

INJUSTICE AGAINST HUMANITY.

WE, THE LIVING

VOW TO UPHOLD THIS.

Elmina, the Castle and the Slave Trade 61

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