West African Bus Adventures

I’m tired in the morning no matter what and so four hours of sleep is an awful preface to a day of language ineptitude, indefinite travel plans/accommodations and multiple foreign borders. Francis drove at a tranquil frenetic pace that only he could manage into downtown Accra. The speedometer didn’t work, but the blinking red 120 km/h warning flashed most of the time as we hurried to the bus station at 6 a.m. Kimberly and I were traveling to Benin through Togo from Ghana and neither of us speaks any functional French and we had failed several times to confirm where we were meeting Timothy and Severin. We didn’t have time to say a quick prayer when we boarded the bus as we were preempted by a Ghanaian preacher who greeted the bus with a quick sermon and zealous prayer before collecting an offering. It was one of the many firsts we would experience today. We made several attempts to confirm our plans, with little success and with two border crossings between us and Cotonou, I was a bit apprehensive in addition to my sleep deficiency. The bus attendant spoke in a monotone drawn out English and her French was much the same. I can’t understand African English half the time and so I only half caught the odd request that people don’t defecate in the bathroom because it would asphyxiate the rest of the bus, still in perfect monotone. As we disembarked, they played music and it was a gospel mix, which the bus attendant seemed to know by heart. I closed my eyes and joined the muffled choir in singing worship. I really wanted to go to church this morning and so this was a pleasant surprise. There was a fairly intimidating Nigerian man sitting adjacent to me emulating the pitch and sounds of the songs without fully grasping the words. He didn’t know most of the words, but recognized that they were worship and so the exact words were not as necessary for true worship as the proper heart. God just wants us to sing out to him and he will put the proper words in our lips, he just wants our hearts of obedience and commitment. I want to be like that man, my life singing along to God’s music, not concerned about the specific words and exact pitch, but simply recognizing that it is the song I am called and desire to sing and so I will allow God to take care of those details. We reached the Ghana/Togo frontiere where the bus lady led Kimberly and I practically by hand first to the Ghanaian passport and customs control and then to the Togolese side as well. I think that the primary criteria for border patrolmen is that they be surly and emotionally detached. I felt like I was in the Last King of Scotland with intense African men of stature in fatigues, guns and funny sideways hats. I think that people speaking rapid French is more intimidating to me, could be a push though. Well, we made it through without much difficulty only to realize that our bus documentation expired at noon and we were five minutes too late to pass through. I’m not really sure what went on, whether it was legally or underhandedly solved, but after the initial bus wide panic, it was remedied fairly quickly. I caught a bit of a nap and listened to my ipod as I caught pieces of the scenery along the coast.  The Togolese/Beninouis border was a bit more scenic and so Kimberly decided to take a picture of the border sign. I fought the urge to dissociate with her when several angry French African men began scolding her for the now apparent impropriety. Thankfully someone from our bus told her that she needed to delete the picture and so Kimberly held up the camera with trembling hands to delete the image in front of them. We quickly realized that we needed to learn how to say “I’m sorry” in French, and probably also, “dumb American.” The walk across the Beninouis border is a bit of a hike and as we cleared the passport control tunnel into Benin, we failed to see the customs office scattered among the many buildings, shops, vendors and government buildings. We apparently ignored their shouts and crossed the border only to wander up and down the market strip waiting for the bus. When it finally made it to us we grabbed our seats only to be informed about ignoring the shouting customs officials and our patient bus steward dragged us the near quarter mile walk back to the customs, where they hastily wrote down our information. According to the Benin government, Kimberly and I live together and are staying at the Cotonou Biblay Guest House (Bible) We just smiled nodded said Merci and were on our ways as quick as possible. Timothy, our translator and research coordinator was not going to meet us until later, but I think Francis was able to convince him that he had better get to Benin before us or we would disintegrate. We were probably 20 minutes from the bus station when we finally got in touch with Timothy and eagerly gave the phone to our bus steward so that she could talk in French and English to him about our location and she gave the phone back to us and said that everything was set up and they’d be there. I went back and fell with relief into my seat. We got off the bus and I pointed at Timothy and gave him a Journey-esque rock fist pump receiving a big grin in return and I felt so relieved. Kimberly was wearing a dress so we took a taxi instead of a moto, like the majority of people traveling the red dirt roads of Cotonou. I was surprised by the sheer volume of motorbikes congesting the roads. We got to the catholic center where we are training for the week and worked for a few hours to prepare for the morning. The electricity flickered in and out all night long as we laughed at the random interruptions into our planning. It is so very dark outside and I don’t have a television, phone, or internet in my room. I’m listening to my playlist that I created from my trip to the slave castle yesterday and I am alone and it is still. Two songs stood out to me and I smiled at the contrasts and how much they represent the quirky curiosity that is my life. Israel Houghton declares, “Away from the noise, alone with you, away away to hear your voice and meet with you, nothing else matters, my one desire here is to worship you, I live, to worship you I live, I live to worship you…it’s been a while, but hear my heart cry again, to worship you I live, to worship you I live, I live to worship, nothing else matters” Yes that is what I need, I need to remove myself from the noise, from the distractions, from the desires of my heart that are my own, and keep me from truly. I love Israel’s connection to the spirit of the Psalms and that sense of instructing your soul to act as it ought to, repeating that we were created to worship building into the prophetic declaration that, yes I live to worship, that is where I’m going, that is what defines me.  Contrast that with mewithoutyou’s “January 1979”, my one foray into screamo music, “I was floating in a peaceful sea, rescued by a sinking ship… after years with a crown on my head, I’ve grown overfed, unconcerned and comfortably numb too busy indulging in the pleasures of the wealthy, o someone make me afraid of what I’ve become, at the first sign of possible sorrow, I turned my head and ran, oh I’ll never learn, my life’s a cup of sugar I borrowed before time began and forgot to return.” To me those are about the most profound lyrics I’ve ever heard and that song is a good wake up song for me. Yes, I have hopes and dreams and I’m a bit sad about some aspects of my life, but man, I don’t want to sacrifice knowing God and being known by him for some less passionate lover that marginally resembles God’s intentions, but have been disfigured by my own selfishness and manipulation. Both of those songs point towards the costly grace and high level of obedience and discipleship that accompanies an appropriate response to God’s amazing grace freely given to his children. Jeremiah’s reminder that we will find God when we seek him with ALL our hearts, he will be found by us, he will reveal himself to us when we search for Him with all. We can’t hold onto anything. That’s radical and crazy and I know I honestly haven’t ever truly done that and through pain, external and internal to my own choosing, God is laying down that gauntlet to me across the coast of francophone Africa, Philadelphia, South Florida and the globe over. May I be worthy of the call and the suffering that is truly required to follow Jesus with our hearts. Our lives are found only when we lose them what a great and scary paradox.