Togo Journal 8/9/07

Togo journal entry: 8/9/07

It took us an incredibly long time to travel to get here. It was a six hour flights from Washington D.C. to Paris and a seven hour flight from Paris to Lome. The flight to Lome was also over an hour late taking off. But after traveling for such a long time, we were greeted with quite a welcome. At the airport we were met by the Police Commissioner who put us and our luggage on the fast track through customs and immigration. The baggage claim area was chaos. It was very hot and personal space seems to work differently in Togo, you don’t get any. Eventually, we managed to corral all of our luggage and make our way out of the immigration area where we were met by Pastor Emmanuel Guidi and what had to have been twenty people from his congregation. From that point on they wanted to do EVERYTHING. We were treated like dignitaries. They had a bus waiting at the airport to take us to the church. It looks like one of the busses that you always see in videos of people taking safaris in Africa. As we were loading up Pastor John (my internship supervisor) and Dr. Nancy (the medical expert on the trip) were interviewed by a roving reporter for the national television station.

From the airport we were taken to Pastor Guidi’s church. You could hear the celebration before you could even see the church. The top choir was lined up outside the church and we were processed in. They had been waiting there for us for over three hours. It kind of felt like the opening ceremonies in the Olympics. As we went down the center aisle, you could not help but be swept away by the energy and excitement that was present in that place. When we got to the front of the church they had set up two long tables for us. We sat down and were served bottled water, for which we were all quite grateful because even though we arrived in the coolest month of the year, it was still very hot and humid. As we sat and drank the singing and dancing continued. Then the real feast began. We first were given a variety of soft drinks. There was Coke, Fanta, a molasses based drink called Malta, and some sort of fruit cocktail drink. We were served course after course while the congregation sang and danced all around us. It was a feast! There was a salad made of minced carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados and green peppers, fish, fries, red sauce for the fish, a fruit salad, and bananas. Along the way we ended up breaking almost every rule that we had set for ourselves regarding what sort of food was safe to eat and what was not, but in a setting like this you certainly could not turn down the hospitality that was being offered to you.

The part of the welcome that will stick with me the most is the two huge signs that greeted us. One hung above the doorway and the other hung in the front of the church. They read, “The saints from Peace Lutheran Church, Charlottsville, Virginia USA. Beloved we appreciate your love and care. Enjoy your stay and stay blessed. We love you all.”

Right now I am still tired and disoriented and it does not look like we will be able to get much rest based on the schedule that Pastor Guidi has set for us. I am really amazed by what I am seeing and I’m praying that God will continue to bless this trip and our work on it.

I am really grateful that we came as a group because I am not sure that I would have kept going on my own. This has been hard so far. There has been some culture shock to get over. We are staying in a “hotel.” This hotel is a lot like camp in its amenities. My French is coming along very slowly. I’m grateful that we have so many French speakers on the team. Along this journey I have remembered that I neglected to bring a few things. One was the team songbooks that I worked so hard to create. I have come on this trip as the team musician. Somehow, all of the songbooks that I made got left in the states. I also accidentally left behind the Togoleese outfit that I was given. I’m really kicking myself for that one. Many of the “professional” people that we have met have been very nicely dressed and I’m felling rather under dressed.