SAS (South Atlantic Seas)

Feb 16.

Hello America:
It has been almost a week since my last posts, and for that I apologize, but there really isn’t too much exciting news to share.  We have been at sea for almost 6 days now and are set to arrive in Cape Town, South Africa tomorrow morning.  It’s been an uneventful past few days (as uneventful as traveling by boat down the western coast of Africa can be), filled with a little bit of school, a lot of taking naps outside on the deck, some meetings and presentations, and a nice dose of Christian fellowship and worship.  About 36 hours ago, we started hitting the rougher seas of the southern Atlantic, and the ship has been rocking much more substantially than before.  In fact, the whole ocean environment has changed quite a bit from the more northern/equatorial waters we are coming from.  The seas are a lot rougher now, the winds are heavy and causing quite a few whitecaps, and the air temperature is cooler than before.  This morning, during breakfast on the deck, we saw a bunch of albatross(es?) and a couple of seals, which we thought (and hoped) were sharks but oh well.
        I am sooooo excited to be in Cape Town for 6 days.  I really feel like it is going to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.  There is tons of stuff to do and places to see around Cape Town, so I thought I would share my plans, as tentative as they are at this point.

Thursday:  Backpack around the city.  Hit up the aquarium, mall, and soccer stadium.  Long St. for dinner.
      
Friday:  SAS trip to Robben Island and some other apartheid related museums.
      
Saturday: Habitat for Humanity build.
      
Sunday: Church in the morning, followed by wine lands tour, ostrich riding (or
more ideally riding an ostrich through the wine lands), penguin beach, and drive
to Cape Peninsula.

Monday:  Dangerous activities that I don’t want my parents to know about.
Let’s just say my friend “Jen” is cage diving with Great White Sharks.

Tuesday:  Botanical gardens to Table Mountain hike back down to Botanical gardens, also followed by other dangerous activities. (Jen might be going skydiving if she finds enough money/courage/diapers for pooping her pants).
      
I hope your next 6 days are as exciting as mine.

Much love,

-Ben

Unimportant Milestones

Feb. 11

    Today we simultaneously crossed the prime meridian and equator at the same time.  I’m not sure why this is a big deal, because the Earth is in a round shape, which means that pretty much any point, anywhere in the world, has just as most claim to be the geographical center (I understand that the equator has some importance, but the prime meridian is completely arbitrary).  However, the British were good at making watches a couple hundred years ago, and therefore decided that they had the right to run the prime meridian right through their backyard in Greenwich.  For those wondering, there is surprisingly no visible line for either the equator or prime meridian, nor was there any discernible bump or bounce when we crossed 0 latitude and 0 longitude.  Also, the toilet water still seems to flush in the same direction.  Actually, the toilets on the ships are vacuum flushed, so there isn’t much of a swirl on the way down to begin with.  But it does make you wonder; in the words of the iconic David J Matthews, “It’s crazy thinking, just knowing that the world is round and here I am dancing on the ground.  Am I right side up or upside down, and is this real or am I dreaming?”


-Ben

T.I.A This Is Africa

Feb. 10

So we are set to leave the port of Takoradi in several hours, and before I catch up on all the sleep I have skipped the past several days, I wanted to tell the blogosphere what I did in Ghana.  Unfortunately, I feel as though the minimal creative narrative skills I have won’t be on display tonight, so I’ll probably just do a chronological account of my travels, with perhaps an occasional display of wisdom and profoundness. 

Monday:
If we want to get technical, Monday started just after 23:59 on Sunday night, which meant it was 6 o clock back in the states, which meant the Super Bowl was just starting.  The ship had turned off everyone’s internet access in order to save enough bandwidth to be able to stream the game live, but I had told myself before that the last thing I wanted to do was watch the Super Bowl on the ship instead of out in the city with the locals.  Of course after a long draining day exploring the slaves dungeons (see prior post), getting a taxi into the city to check out the bar scene and find an internet café, I found myself sitting in the Union with some friends eating popcorn and watching the game on the ship.  After about a month of no TV, and very limited access to US news, especially sports, it was really strange to, in a sense, be thrust back into American culture so rapidly.  I was sitting with a group of about 300 students, eating popcorn, laughing at the commercials and watching the Super Bowl.  Not that unusual until you consider that we were on the Western Coast of Africa, docked in one of the largest cocoa ports in the world, in a country void of almost any western tourists except the SAS kids.  Regardless it was a fun experience and I am proud to say that I watched up into the fourth quarter, until I passed out asleep (I think it was around 3 or 4 in the morning at this point).  I was told the Packers won, but honestly have had no confirmation of this and really don’t know what happened in the game.  Perhaps this is why it was so important for me to go during the spring semester, so I wouldn’t miss any Nebraska games.
        Monday morning, or I should say later Monday morning; I was up at 6 o clock to try to find a spot on the Habitat for Humanity trip.  I hadn’t bought a ticket for the program, but with the hope that some kids wouldn’t show up due to Super Bowl related consumption activities, I decided it might be worth it to show up early and try to get on.  Sure enough there were four open seats on the bus, and three SAS kids, including myself, wanting spots, so everything worked out.  I think it was a three or four hour bus ride to our build location (I honestly don’t have the slightest clue where we were on the map) during which I slept in an awkward and cramped position.  As we got closer to the site, the roads turned into dirt, which turned into narrow paths with tons of holes.  On one particularly tight turn our bus managed to clip the roof of this rural school building.  We didn’t make the turn, and so of course backed up and ran into the school again.  This entire time the bus was literally rocking several feet side to side, and some of the less adventurous students were close to running off the bus out of fear of tipping.  I was absolutely loving it, and thought it was hilarious that we kept backing up and running into this building.  We finally managed to make the turn and everyone started cheering and clapping, until we immediately hit this giant rut and the bus tipped so far to one side that all the bags fell out of the overhead bins and landed on top of people.  No one was hurt, and the school was still standing at the end, so I think I am allowed to remember this experience as being a lot of fun. 
        After a short hike through the jungle (although it wasn’t really a jungle, but for lack of a better word for a hot forest in Africa, I’ll stick with jungle) we arrived at the build site, which consisted of a compound of about half a dozen partially constructed concrete buildings.  Just like my service project in Brazil, the logistics of the trip were not clearly understood by SAS, but instead of waiting around for directions, a group of us just found the closest Ghanaian worker, and started helping him.  I spent the morning basically pick axing, shoveling and then wheel barrow(ing?) about 2 feet of dirt that had accumulated on the floors of one of the buildings.  It was tiring and hot work, and when I went for a lunch break I realized they hadn’t provided enough water, so I immediately had to sit down and cool off before getting dehydrated.  Finally, some water bottles and lunch arrived and I hydrated quickly and went back to work.  In the afternoon, I helped to move cinder blocks from one location to another location about ten feet away.  Now that I think about it, it was actually pretty ridiculous that we spent hours moving these hundreds, perhaps a thousand cinder blocks just a few feet.  I also spent a bit of time perfecting my pick axing and shoveling techniques by helping dig this eight-foot deep hole that was going to serve as a septic system.  I was exhausted at the end of the day, and so covered in sweat and dirt that my clothes were literally stiff when I took them off back at the ship, but it felt great to labor for a cause and help this community.
        We made it back to the ship a little before 2100 and I was probably asleep within the hour.

Tuesday:
        I was up early again Tuesday to leave for the capitol of Ghana, Accra, with a group of students involved with Andrew Briggs’ organization Freedom in Creation.  I think about 30 of us left the ship at around 7:30 to walk to the end of the dock, to take a cab to the bus station, to take a bus to Accra, to take another cab and then another bus to the hotel and then to the school we were going to work at.  I guess I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the harbor in Takoradi is an industrial one, which means that to get to the city you have to walk about 15 minutes past warehouses full of cocoa and other exports, trains, shipping containers, conveyor belts, and a whole host of other machinery (I really wanted to play hide and go seek here) in order to reach the end of the dock, which is really tiny and basically only has taxi drivers yelling at you.  Then you have to take a taxi (or walk for about an hour) to get into the city.  Anyways, the thirty of us managed to all arrange taxis to the bus station and then we somehow were able to essentially charter this really nice bus all the way into the city, for a very reasonable price.  The bus had huge seats and tons of legroom, which meant I was barely awake for any of the 4-maybe 5-hour trip.  The bus also took us right up to our hotel in Accra, which again was somehow arranged by students the day before.   I think it is actually pretty incredible how successful us SAS kids have been in traveling.  We have overcome language barriers, negotiated taxi prices, visited places never seen before, found lodging, stayed healthy (relatively) and all made it back before on ship time the days we leave port.  The hotel was sorta of nice in that it had air conditioning and fancy furniture and not sorta nice in that it didn’t have working showers.  Regardless, we were the only people there, which meant that some of us slept outside, some slept on the roof, and some didn’t sleep at all, and we could be as loud as we wanted.  After dropping our bags off, we boarded another bus, which took us through Accra to one of the few government run schools in the country, a compound with probably around 1,000 students.  When we arrived we were immediately mobbed by the younger students, who were literally climbing over one another just to touch us.  It was fun being with the kids, who were so excited to see white people, and I got some good photos of about a dozen kids climbing all over me. 
After the initial mob, we divided up into 4 groups and helped the kids paint these giant banners, which will travel around the world with us and be enhanced with the artwork of other kids from different countries before being sent to Uganda with Freedom in Creation.  We left the school after a few hours and headed back to the hotel, stopping at an ATM to get some local currency, the cedi, on the way.  Back at the hotel we met up with even more SAS kids who had other travel plans for that day and spent the rest of the night hanging around the hotel and talking to some of the locals.

Wednesday:
        After a pretty solid sleep sharing a bed with my 6’4” friend, I woke up to the drama of trying to locate the students who didn’t return from dinner the night before.  I wasn’t too worried about them because, 1) I knew they weren’t drinking 2) they all had international cell phones and 3) I was slightly envious that they would have a cool story to tell about getting lost for an entire night in a foreign city.  We were somehow able to find them by first calling the ship, which they had contacted, and found out that they had just stayed at another hotel in the city.  At this point it was around 9 and I was restless to get into Accra to explore, so four of us grabbed a taxi and left the hotel.  It was about a 45min ride into central Accra, and we eventually made it to the art center.  The art center is basically this huge area full of vendors and artists selling these beautiful sculptures, fabrics, paintings and other crafts.  Being white (which is like being a celebrity because they think we are all rich, which I guess is true compared to the economic status of most Africans), we were immediately greeted by a large Ghanaian named Jaguar, who took us to his shop and showed us his wares.  After beating him in a game of Mancala, and doing some haggling, I was able to get a medium and small size mask for 20 cedi, or roughly about 14 US.  He also took us to his “brother’s” shop where they were making elephant sculptures.  I told Jaguar that I wanted to make my own elephant, so he brought me an ebony piece of wood roughly shaped into an elephant.  After about 20mins of learning the proper sanding and finishing techniques, I was able to negotiate a pretty reasonable price for the elephant and some sand paper.  It’ll probably take me about 15-20 hours to finish sanding it, and when I get back to the states I’ll have to stain and finish it.  I’m pretty excited to have a project to work on and can’t wait until I finish.  After the sculpture lesson, we went to another one of Jaguar’s “brother’s” shops were we played drums and sang together with the Ghanaian artists.  One of my friends got this awesome beaded mask by trading deodorant, pens, toothpaste and some headphone buds.  I guess its tough to say if we got ripped off or not, but everything we bought was at least 50% below their initial price, and at least we were able to support some really talented crafts people, even if they did start acting a little strange towards the girls near the end. 
        After the art center, we walked around the city for a while and found a local lunch place.  We ate chicken and rice (what else is new) and I was able to get this awesome African soda called Alvaro, which I discovered the night before.  We found a taxi and headed for the school we were set to visit for the day, called Mother’s Nest Montessori School.  We left pretty early for the school, expecting the usual process of getting loss and having to pull over every few blocks to ask the locals for directions, but we were able to spot the sign for the school rather easily and got their about an hour before the rest of the group, so we walked around the neighborhood for a while.  The neighborhood was much more affluent than other parts of Accra, and was located just a block or two from some of the international embassies.  The environment at the Montessori school was completely different than the public school we had visited the other day.  The school was well stocked with supplies and teachers, and all the students were incredibly polite, well behaved, and spoke great English.  Obviously these students came from affluent families, and it was very apparent the difference that money makes in an education, a trend that is just as visible in the US.  We spent a few hours at the school creating more banners and art pieces with the students.  I was very impressed with the way Andrew Briggs interacted with the kids and how passionate he became as soon as he arrived at the school.  I respected him a tremendous amount before, but it was cool to see him in his element.
        We left the school around 1600.  26 SAS students boarded a “troo-troo,” which is basically a public bus designed for about 12 people.  I was fortunate enough to get a taxi with three others, and we headed to the Accra bus station to eventually find our way back to Takoradi.  The traffic in Accra, and all of Ghana for that matter, is literally the worse I have ever seen in my life.  About 70% of the vehicles are taxis or buses, and instead of having designated lanes, it is pretty much just wide roads with constant merges.  This adds up to a lot of honking and angry taxi drivers.  Perhaps even more intense are the thousands of street vendors who weave in and out of the cars selling their wares.  It is fair to say that the streets of Accra are basically a giant Costco store.  Everything from underwear, to watches, to hatchets and axes, to pieces of foam, to Kenny Rodgers CDs where displayed in front of our taxi.  You would think that this would cause a lot of accidents, but it is literally impossible to drive faster than 15mph because you have to stop all the time, so it isn’t as dangerous as it appears.  The bus station at Accra was wild; literally so crowded that you couldn’t move.  After some heated negotiations with the bus driver, we thought we had a bus back to Takoradi to ourselves, but about 4 more people were added, meaning that four of us didn’t have seats.  I volunteered to sit in the staircase with another Ghanaian next to the driver, and two other Ghanaians sat on the floor in the aisle next to us.  It was cramped but I had some great conversations with the Ghanaians, and had about six hours to sand my elephant.  We got back to the ship around 1 Thursday morning, pretty tired and in need of showers.  It was just our luck that the water to the ship had been shut off for conservation purposes so I had to go to sleep dirty, but was up extra early just so I could shower as soon as the water came back on. 

Thursday:
        Today the plan was to hangout on the beach about 40mins away but the weather was rainy this morning.  We headed into the city to an Internet café, where I was able to upload some pictures to Facebook and look into plans for other countries.  It would have been nice to chat with some friends, but it was 5am east coast, and none of my friends were online.  After the Internet, we went to Market Circle, which is a big circular open-air market.  The outer perimeter is surrounded by a road and filled with tiny shacks and small stores, again reinforcing the notion that the streets of Ghana are a big Costco store.  Inside the circle was a completely different experience.  When my friend and I walked in, we were the only white people in eyesight.  The different vendors were crammed together on these convoluted paths that were maybe 2 ft wide, forcing us to shuffle past one another just to make it through to the other side.  The booths were so close together that the roofs almost blocked out the sun.  This market was not at all designed for tourists.  Most of the items were spices, vegetables or meat, and catered exclusively for the local taste buds.  We made the unfortunate decision of walking in the butcher section of Market Circle, where we were confronted with the sights and smells of raw, and possibly rotting bush meat and fish.  It was almost a little nauseating seeing so much meat in this dirty place.  There were whole heads of cows, and live snails and crabs, and meat with fur still on it, and whole fish of every shape and size.  I don’t know if the meat had been smoked or not, but it appeared to be old and decaying and certainly smelled like it was.  My senses were definitely being challenged, and it didn’t help that I had sandals on because of the beach plans, which meant I kept getting sewage water splashed on my exposed feet.   It was a lot of fun though, and I really got a sense of the local culture.  We returned to the ship around 1400, grabbed lunch, and went back out to the street vendors at the end of the dock.  I got some more merchandise (I’ll keep it a surprise so I won’t have to buy anymore xmas gifts for a few years) and practiced my bargaining skills.  We left the dock about 20 mins ago, and tomorrow I’ll again have to adjust to being a student and attending classes. 

        I'm sorry if this post is dry and long, but this is a pretty basic description of what happened in Ghana.  In the next couple of days ill try to find time to blog about some of the things I have learned about traveling so far, and maybe some cool stories about the people I have met.  In the mean time, I need to sand my elephant up on the deck for a bit.

Respect,

-Ben

Slave Castles in Ghana

Feb 6. 

NOTE:  The following is a little more reflective then descriptive, because I had to write about my experiences for a class, and figured I would just post my response here:




“ In everlasting memory
of the anguish of our ancestors
may those who died rest in peace
may those who return find their roots
may humanity never again perpetrate
such injustice against humanity
We the living vow to uphold this.”

        This was the message on the plaque at both of the slave castles and dungeons we visited today.  It was presented several years ago by the different tribal leaders of Western Africa, when the decision was made that the slave castles should stay open instead of being torn down, to serve as a reminder of the evil that occurred there.

        Today wasn’t fun.  It wasn’t enjoyable and it definitely isn’t something that I would want to do again.  The locations we visited were evil, horrific, dark and completely unforgettable.  It didn’t feel right, being there today, snapping pictures and reading the plaques.  Hundreds of thousands; maybe even millions of Africans died in the very dungeons I stood in today.  It was hot, muggy and pitch black, minus a tiny window, and the 20 or so people in my group were only in the small dungeon for maybe 15 minutes at a time.  A few hundred years ago, 1,000 west African men and women would be crammed into the same spaces we occupied today, held anywhere from two weeks to three months.  They were chained together, but it didn’t really matter, there was hardly any room to move.  When the castles were restored, over two feet of human excrement had to be removed from the floor.  They were not allowed to bathe, there were no bathroom facilities, and food and water came in minimal proportions.  Slaves would die by the dozens every day, only to be plucked out and thrown into mass graves.  Of course, this was after the slaves were chained together and forced to march to the coast of Ghana for hundreds of miles, a trip that over half didn’t survive.  If a slave lived through the march and imprisonment, and was deemed fit by a European trader, they would be marched through the Gate of No Return, rowed to waiting ships and literally stacked on top of one another on their trip east, only to arrive and suffer the oppression of being enslaved.  Those who died along the way would be tossed into the ocean.  It is tough to know how many slaves actually were taken from Africa, but estimates range in the 12 millions.  More shocking however are the estimated 60 million individuals who were captured to be slaves and never actually made it to the Americas.   
        Our tour guides at both the Cape Coast Castle and the Elmina castle were absolutely fantastic, and instilled a realistic sense of what occurred centuries ago. We were told that no matter what hardships we faced in our lives, nothing would ever compare to what occurred in these castles centuries ago.  And I believe it.  This experience is one that provides a framework about the blessings I have and how incredibly fortunate I am to be living the life I have.  I know these memories will stick with me forever, and feel incapable of adequately describing the profoundness of the day.  I would imagine visiting sites like Auschwitz or the killing fields in Cambodia would provide a similar experience, but as an American, one with African American friends, and one who lives in an area that was once populated by the very slaves that traveled through these places, the experience was strangely personal.  Not to say that I felt any bit of guilt for being white, but for one of the few times in my life history felt real.  I don’t think I would ever want to go back to these places again, but feel it is almost a necessity to understanding history and the world for individuals to visit them.

In humility,

-Ben

Stuff I did while crossing the Atlantic Ocean

Feb 5

Hello America!
        I guess it has been a little while since I updated my faithful followers (my mom) on my life at SAS.  Honestly, I have no idea what day of the week it is, or what time it is in the US, or when I last posted, or what it is like to sleep for over six hours.  But really, my sense of time is completely off.  The first week or so, I probably didn’t know what day of the week it was, but at least had an idea of what day it felt like.  At this point, I don’t have the slightest guess as to what day of the week it is or what day I think it should be.  It is actually kind of liberating being “lost” in relation to a normal sense of time or succession of days.  In the states, every day of the week has certain tasks, follows an order, and each day is probably pretty similar to the way that day was a week before, or the way that day is going to be a week in the future.  Here however, the word Sunday or Thursday means nothing.  Two weeks ago I was listening to classical music in Manaus on Sunday.  Last Sunday, I had a “regular” day of classes while in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Tomorrow (which I’m pretty sure is Sunday) we will have arrived in Ghana and I will be visiting slave castles.  Next Sunday, I think we will be off the coast of South-Western Africa somewhere on our way to Cape Town.  Along with the confusion of days of the week, we have had 23-hour days, about every other day for a week, which doesn’t help when it comes to sleeping.  I think we are either 4 or five hours ahead of EST, but that will probably change again tonight.  Any way the past few days have been a blast and here’s why:
       
Bridge Tour:
        I signed up (well, actually forgot to sign up and snuck into) a tour of the bridge of the ship, which is basically the cockpit, for those not nautically inclined.  It was really cool to see all the instruments and to interact with the crew who run the ship.  The bridge basically stretches the entire width of the ship and has a bunch of monitors, buttons, graphics, joysticks, throttles and electronics.  However, the area is very neat and orderly, and the steering wheel for the ship fits nicely into the palm of a hand.  I was able to talk with one of the Cadets (officer in training), who are responsible for navigation.  He showed me how the position of the ship, despite the most high tech electronics and GPS available, is still plotted by hand on nautical charts and double checked with a sextant twice a day.  He let me plot our latest position and determine our speed, all done by hand.  I also got to talk to our Captain, Jeremy, for a while, during which he briefed me on the protocol for pirate attacks, massive waves, and hitting a whale, all of which he didn’t seem very concerned about, but it was fun to joke with him and offer my assistance to fight off would be pirates.  I also was able to petition the Captain to have my duck tape returned to me, which apparently is a restricted item and was seized during a search of my room.  We will see what happens. 
       
School Work:
        So here’s the deal:  classes are a complete joke work wise, but I am actually learning stuff.  It’s actually fun to go to class sometimes and interact with the professors.  I think this type of learning, where students actually want to learn stuff, and aren’t treated as idiots or required to memorize random stuff the night before a test, should be tried elsewhere in America.  I think the lack of a good educators and educational philosophy is why so many kids, including myself, really can’t stand going to college.  Of course, the fact that three of my four classes don’t have any tests except a final, and that my only other assignment are open-ended essay questions due once a month makes me like school more.  I think I lucked out in my classes though, because a lot of other people have been studying a lot.        

Sea Olympics: 
        The Sea Olympics are a SAS tradition, where each sea competes against one another for the right to disembark the ship first when we arrive in San Diego and for bragging rights.  The “seas” are basically hallways, or decks on the ship, similar to a college dorm, and there were 10 of them.  They are named Red Sea, Caribbean Sea, Baltic Sea etc… My sea, which is the entirety of deck 2, about 70 students, was the Aegean Sea.  Decks 3 and 4, each have 4 seas (I think) and then there was also the Luna Sea (get it?), which was the faculty, and the Sea Salts (who were the life long learners.)  Each sea had a unique color, and sat in a certain section of the Union, which made for a really neat panoramic shot of all the different colors and students with face paint and head bands and decked out from head to toe in their sea’s colors.  The “Opening Ceremonies,” which took place Tuesday night, consisted of each sea making an entrance and cheering as loudly as possible.  We were then judge on our sea’s banner and our chant. Because I was working in the AV booth, I was able to design a whole music and light show for our sea’s chant, which was pretty cool, and we got second place in the competition.  The next day, Wednesday, everyone pretty much sleepy in till around noon and then woke up for the first events, which started at one (I woke up at eight to study for a test and get breakfast.)  In order to have the requisite energy needed for such a momentous occasion, about a dozen of the guys on my sea all shot gunned a couple red bulls at the pool bar in quick succession.  Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much that night.
I think that there were around 15 events throughout Wednesday afternoon, ranging from hula-hoop, crab soccer, tug of war, synchronized swimming, trivia and limbo.  The synchronized swimming was one of the more hilarious hours I have ever experienced in my life.  The creativity that was displayed is too funny for words, but ill try to find links to the You Tube videos that will be posted soon.  I competed in the tug of war, in which we placed a respectable third, after stalemating and losing to the eventually champs in an epic minute long battle.  The rest of the day was filled with obnoxiously cheering on my sea mates, running around the ship and generally having a lot of fun.  When the results were in at the end of the day, our sea got second, by less than ten points.  It was actually a really tough loss, because the expectation had been to win since we first boarded the ship, and we came really, really close.  Anyways, I suppose being the second group off of the ship allows me to sleep in a little more, but still be allowed off early in the day, which I’m told is a huge deal.

Weather:
        The weather has been absolutely gorgeous the entire trans Atlantic leg.  The seas have also been incredibly calm.  Partly because I’m used to the rocking, but mainly because the seas are flat, I don’t even notice that we are in a moving boat. The ocean is beautiful, and for me being on the water is a very peaceful and relaxing experience.  In one of my classes, the professor allows us to look out a big window at the ocean during class, and encourages us to interrupt when we see something cool.  It’s pretty interesting when someone yells out “bird!” and the whole class stops and crowds around the window.  It is also difficult to pay attention when it is so easy for me to get lost just staring across the water.

        Tomorrow morning we arrive in Takoradi Ghana, and I will be on a slave castles and dungeons trip for all of Sunday (President Obama took his family here after his inauguration).  I expect it to be a very surreal experience, and hopefully it will be one of those transformational travel moments we all seek.  After that we will try to watch the Super Bowl in the city, but if not, it is supposed to be streamed to the ship.  Monday I have free, but I think I am going to the beach or possibly joining a Habitat build.  Tuesday we are taking the bus to Accra and visiting some schools with Andrew Brigg’s organization.  Ill be in Accra for a night or two and then return to the ship Thursday to start our voyage to South Africa. 

Good Things,

-Ben
       

Crossing the Ocean in a boat

Jan 31

        What’s up friends and family? I haven’t written anything the past few days, and figure since I am literally in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, now might be as good a time as ever for me to share some stories and thoughts about my experiences. 
        One of my major concerns, and therefore prayers, over the past year was that I would be blessed to have a community of believers aboard the ship and that my walk with Christ would not falter despite being removed from Cru, church and my friends and family back home.  I have been recognizing how incredibly blessed I have been in my life to have had family enlightened with the Truth, friends in CP that kept me accountable and encouraged me in my walk, and the wisdom that certain individuals from Cru have imparted into my life.  Not surprisingly, God has so far answered my prayers for fellowship aboard the ship in a huge way.  Last night we had our second worship service, with about 30-40 people attending both times.  I was blown away that despite a lack of leadership from staff and adults, a confusing set of procedures and rules for reserving a room, and the fact that none of these people knew one another just weeks ago, we stood in fellowship, worshiping and praising a living God. 
        I think it was the second night on the ship (about three weeks, a few thousand miles and a couple different countries ago) that there was an interest meeting for those wanting to pursue religious services.  Of the roughly 50 people in the room about half said they were looking for Christian services.  The ship has a staff person designated as the coordinator for religious and spiritual services, but he happens to be Hindu and gay, so leadership for a Christian service was clearly going to come from someone else.  I volunteered my name as someone who would be willing to help lead a bible study or prayer group, since I have had some experience in those things during my time at UMD, and expected more information would be distributed in the next few days about meeting times and such. About a week passed with no further notice about Christian services, so I decided to email the coordinator and again volunteer to help set something up.  I had already met a bunch of other believers on the ship who had expressed a desire to formally fellowship together.  Next thing I knew, I was given the responsibility, or perhaps volunteered into the task, of reserving a room, getting together guitarists and singers, emailing everyone who had indicated an interest in a service and coordinating the various aspects of planning and running our service.  Of course, this all happened in about two days time, and just before we arrived in Brazil, we had our first Fellowship @ Sea (we had to pick a club name to go on the room reservation form, and fortunately someone suggested Fellowship @ Sea, otherwise we might be known as the “Christian Club.”  I wasn’t feeling too creative when it came time for names.)
        Although our first service didn’t run perfectly, and we fumbled over some song lyrics, and I had to play the guitar and lead singing for a couple of songs (yikes) and we had it planned out on the back of a napkin, which I lost before the service, it was organic and raw.  Stripped of the conveniences and luxuries of church buildings, power points, ministers, Internet resources and experienced leadership we worshipped the Lord passionately as a body of believers.  It was a very authentic “church” experience and I couldn’t help but feel like some of the early believers that are described in Acts.  Last night we had our second service, and again the presence of the Holy Spirit was apparent in the room we were in.  I think it can be liberating to strip to the necessities of worship; namely a humble and giving heart, and a reverential awe of Christ’s love.  I had asked a student to share a message about her life and was blown away by the manner in which she boldly and humbly articulated the power the Gospel had in her life and encouraged us to daily be vulnerable and broken, ready to receive God’s grace and mercy. 
        I have also had the blessing of meeting with my friend Jim for about an hour every other day to pray for and encourage each other in our walks.  Jim is a new believer, but passionately pursues Christ.  Our times have been mutually encouraging and a blessing, and we certainly plan on continuing to meet together one on one.  Andrew Briggs, who I think I mentioned in an earlier post, has been an invaluable resource and answer to prayer as far as an older believer being able to share wisdom into my life.  Briggs, like my self, is a thinker, and has been able to beautifully articulate some of my thoughts/concerns about the evangelical church in America.  It has been incredibly refreshing to hear something different than Cru’s “pressure” to have a high volume of
“converts” when in reality, I have no idea what it even looks like to be “converted.”  Briggs has been especially valuable in describing a missional (if that is a word) approach to career and life, while not strictly labeling oneself a missionary.  I am beginning to better understand the tension that exists between 100% service projects and 100% evangelical endeavors.  I am sure that, on a case-by-case basis, there exists a harmonious relationship between providing for an underprivileged area’s earthly needs (clean water, education, health etc...) with their needs for a Savior.
        In other non-spiritual news, the water on the ship has been poisonously bad tasting the past few days, and I have been required to buy whatever Gatorades and sodas remain at the ship’s bar just so I can stay hydrated.  However, the Atlantic Ocean is absolutely gorgeous and the waves have been mild at worse (at least so far).  Day to day is pretty busy for me, but does include naps since I wake up early every morning to meet with people for breakfast and for classes.  I work two hours each day, but of that time maybe 10 minutes are actually spent working and the rest spent stealing music from the ship’s 50,000 song library, playing chess with the Ukrainian AV staff person, and talking to my coworkers.  Classes are easy, and it is so different actually having relationships with my professors and knowing them on a first name basis.  The other day I was “adopted” into my extended family for the ship.  My “grandparents” are a nice older couple from Canada named Melody and Dr. Bob and my “siblings” are three other girls.  Once again I am the only guy in a group, but I know two of the other girls pretty well, and I think it will be a good “family.”  On Thursday, we have the Sea Olympics, which means no class.  I think I am competing in the tug-of-war and possibly trivia competitions.  More on that to come.  Hope everyone is doing well back home.

Peace and Love,
-Ben

Living the Jungle Life

Jan 24-27

        I think I just had one of the most memorable experiences of my life.  It is a little hard to figure out where to begin and how to explain how challenging, difficult, fun and rewarding the past few days were. This blog post will probably be a lot of rambling, not follow chronological order, and show some evidence that I haven’t slept much the past few days and want to write this down before I sleep for 10 hours tonight. 

 I guess I’ll start at the beginning since it was quite an experience just traveling to the remote Tupana Village in the middle of the Amazon jungle:
We left Monday morning and were picked up by a river boat at the pier.  The best way to describe the river boat is to compare it to a double-decker bus that you would find in the UK, except not as safe and with 6 foot ceilings that I kept hitting my head on.  We were on the river boat for about two hours, and passed the area where the Rio Amanozas and Rio Negro converge, which results in this incredibly distinct line/barrier separating the black water of the Rio Negro with the brown water of the Amazon.  After the river boat, we hiked a little ways up a muddy hill and boarded a tour bus (again, safety was not a huge concern with this vehicle).  The tour bus then took us to a ferry, which was essentially a barge that was being towed by another riverboat, and again safety was not a top priority, as evidence by the huge jagged pieces of metal we had to navigate while walking onto the barge.  The ferry took the bus and us to the other side of the river, where we had to walk along side the bus up a steep muddy hill (we made it without getting stuck, barely).  After the ferry, it was back in the tour bus and a few more hours of traversing the only road for hundreds of miles, which was of course littered with potholes.  Also, the tour bus driver decided to stop at every gas station (2 of them) and stay for 20 mins, which added a lot of time to an already three hour bus ride.  I think the bus driver was trying to prove that the area was civilized, at least slightly.  We finally made it the village and school where we would spend the next few days, but of course in order to make it the lodge we were staying in, we had to board a canoe and travel up the Rio Negro for another 20 mins.  Literally, we were in a canoe. Imagine all of these American students and faculty with their big backpacks going down a remote portion of one of the largest rivers in the world in a canoe that was handmade of wood, floated maybe two inches above the surface, had a 4hp engine that barely turned over, and was as easily tipped as any other canoe I have been in.  All told, it took us around 6 hours to make it to the lodge.  To review: we came up the Amazon river in a big ship, got in a smaller boat, rode on a tour bus, took a ferry, hiked a little, took the tour bus again and finally rode in an even smaller boat to our lodge.  The way back was a little quicker because of the currents, even though our bus did get stuck in the mud and required a Brazilian arm vehicle to tow it out.  We made it back to the dock today (Thursday) on the midst of a massive rainstorm, but most of my gear stayed dry and I made it to ship on time. 

The Lodge:
        The lodge we stayed at was by far the coolest place I have ever paid to sleep at before.  To get up to the lodge we had to hop onto a floating dock that was partially sunken, cross over the water on a 4 ft beam that was about 6 inches wide, and then climb up a long series of stair cases and platforms to reach the lodge, which was essentially a collection of around 6 different buildings scattered through out the trees overlooking the river.  Half of our group of about 40 stayed at the main lodge (they didn’t do the service project and instead did day excursions) and the 22 of us that did the service project slept in the “tree fort.”  The tree fort was essentially a big platform about 30 ft above the ground that radiated in a circle around this big tree.  The roof was made of trash bags that had lots of holes (great for seeing the stars at night, not so great for the tons of rain we got the last night) and the floor was made of this really great smelling wood, a redwood of some sort.  Arranged in a complete circle around the tree trunk were our 22 hammocks.  Sleeping in hammocks for three nights was honestly better than I expected, most likely due to putting in tons of physical work during the day and being exhausted each night and waking up before six each day.  I got a good 4-5hrs of sleep every night, and didn’t wake up with any additional aches or cramps, at least not due to carrying wood and swinging a hammer for hours. The few times I woke up in the night were mostly due to swinging into the hammock next to me (we were only a couple of inches apart) or the lodge’s monkey climbing around.  Yes, the lodge had a resident monkey, who was very friendly and liked to climb around us and even on top of us.  The monkey also had a habit of getting into our pill cases, and one morning we were awoken to the screams of “the monkey is eating my Ambien” at around 4 in the morning.  The lodge also had a resident taper named Romeo, and some of the largest insects I have ever seen.  One night we found a grasshopper that was bigger than my palm.  We also saw some giant beetles and I almost stepped on a tarantula the size of a grapefruit one morning.  The lodge had a generator, which ran a few lights only during the night.  The only running water was just river water stored in giant vats, although all the drinking water came from bottles.  There was one communal bathroom with one sink, shower and toilet for guys and girls and then a big meshed tent where our meals were served.  We woke around 5:30 or 6 each morning and then would leave around 7:45 for our canoe commute (by far the best work commute I can imagine) to the village where we worked.  We arrived back at the lodge around 5:30 in the evening.  After realizing that the shower water was actually river water, we figured we might as well just go swimming, so each night after arriving from work we jumped out of the canoes into the river and essentially took a bath.  One night, we took some kayaks out and paddled up the river into the forest.  On the way back we were kinda tired, so we decided to flipped the canoe and swim along side while the strong current pulled us downstream.  I guess swimming in part of the Amazon River doesn’t sound like the best idea, especially considering we spotted some caiman and piranha off the dock, but everyone survived and hopefully I didn’t get any bladder catfish or parasites.  Tuesday night at around 2230, one of the guides took some of us caiman spotting which was one of coolest things I have ever down, even though we didn’t spot any crocs.
Brief interjection on caiman spotting: Basically caiman spotting involves silently paddling into the jungle forest in the pitch black while the guide occasional shines a spot light in random directions.  What this results in is having absolutely zero sense of where you are, and being surprised and a little freaked out when you brush pass a tree you didn’t think was there or have the spotlight shine in a spot that illuminates the fact that you are in the middle of a jungle forest, in a crappy canoe with a guide who barely speaks English, having no idea of where you are or which direction you came from, and having to worry about snakes dropping into the boat.  It was a fantastically eerie and awesome experience.  Unfortunately we didn’t spot any big animals, but we certainly heard enough sound to know that they were there.
Service Project:
        So the whole purpose of this trip, and by extension this blog post, was to help a remote village with repairing their school.  We were the first group of Westerners that had ever visited their village, and the village had had electricity for the first time just two weeks prior to our arrival.  The school was about a quarter mile from the river along the side of road we came in on.  If I understood the translation correctly, the school had been built 7 years ago, although it seemed a lot older, and was basically a crudely put together wooden structure with about 7 different classes, a 40 ft wooden bridge over a deep ditch/swamp, and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. Throughout the four days we worked at the school, there were probably about 25 different villagers who stopped by and helped, with about 8-10 villagers staying the whole time and essentially directing the process.  Even though our guides spoke English and Portuguese, I feel as though there was a lot lost in translation and considering the fact that our professor overseeing the project was a little misinformed about the tasks we were expected to do.  For the first three days there weren’t enough supplies for all of us to work and since the majority of the SAS kids were girls, I found myself doing some of the more manual labor such as hammering and carrying wood, while the girls handled the painting in shifts, since there were not enough brushes.  We also had some cool opportunities to play soccer and volleyball with the local kids, on their dirt field with tree branch goal posts.  It wasn’t until the third day that enough supplies had arrived to allow us to all work at the same time.  The main task that the six guys were assigned to was to take down and rebuild the bridge that was spanning the ditch.  To do this we had to carry the 60lbs wooden boards up a muddy slope and down the quarter mile road to the school.  It was pretty rough work, with two of us carrying about 140lbs of heavy wood on our shoulders.  Once the wood was transported, we knocked out the floor planks and wood supports (everything but the posts) of the old bridge and had to carry the old wood to another pile up another hill.  I managed to step on an old nail, which went all the way through the thickest part of my shoes and into the bottom of the foot.  Fortunately the cut wasn’t that deep and so far it doesn’t seem to be infected, but they are still making me go to the doctor tomorrow.  At this point it was around mid day and all we had done so far was destroy the old bridge.  I was slightly worried that we wouldn’t be able to build the new one because of time, which would have made us look like idiots for going into a remote village, destroying their bridge and leaving.  Fortunately, we all found a rhythm and got into a smooth pattern of measuring, cutting, transporting, nailing and then hydrating to avoid heat exhaustion.  Although it had been hot the first several days, the heat on Wednesday afternoon was very intense and I felt the power of an equatorial sun for the first time.  It wasn’t hot in a “ one oven on high temp” kind of way, but powerful in a “50 ovens close by on medium heat” manner, if that makes any sense.  Regardless, we made great progress in the afternoon, and were almost finished until the power cut out and the saw wouldn’t work.  However, on our way back this morning (Thursday) we stopped by, put the last few planks down and had the honor of walking across the school’s new bridge. 

        One of my favorite parts about working at the school was getting the opportunity to experience how the people there live their lives.  Through interacting with them, I never once felt pity for their lack of modern resources or poor living conditions but instead felt the joy and happiness they had for the few meager things they owned.  My satisfaction and sense of accomplishment was directly related to how much I sweat and how dirty I got.  Even though none of the villagers had shoes or clean clothes, they definitely worked harder than any of the students and were incredibly patient, kind and thankful for our efforts, which motivated me to work even harder. I spent probably around 8 hours nailing wooden planks and slats with one older village named Francisco, and even though neither of us could understand each other, we spent almost the whole time singing and conversing together.  I still have no idea what he said to me, but at the end I was very honored to have helped his community and feel like we truly developed a friendship despite the vast differences between us.  Hopefully, SAS can develop a lasting relationship with the school, since there is so much more that can be done to help.  We managed to collect enough money among ourselves to buy all the students school supplies for the next year or two, but I think it would be fantastic if SAS visited 2-3 times a year for similar service projects, and who knows, maybe I will find myself back there one day.  

        I apologize for the length of this post, but this was clearly a great experience for me that I want to be able to remember and share with others.  Tomorrow we have classes again, which means I need to do some homework, and I still really need to sleep.

Enjoy the snow in CP and Cambridge!
-Ben