Roadtrip: Day 2 on the road

We arrived safely in Wa this afternoon after another epic day on the road. We left Mole around 11am and visited Mognori ‘eco-village’ with a local guide named Mohammed for about 90 min. The village was very memorable – even though Rock was trying not to be interested. I loved that both Rock and Hannah insisted on getting a gourd of shea butter and a shea butter soap ball from the local women. It was really a great introduction to village life for the kids and Heather. Heather – ever the mom – loved chatting with a new mother and later went back to the home to ask to hold the 3 month old child. I also loved watching Hannah interact with the kids and adults in the village. After a brief stop at the Larabanga mosque (claims to be the oldest mosque in West Africa…mud and Sudanese style) that was brief partly because we could see people descending on us with requests for money, we were on the road again. 

The first 90 min in the car we were on a dirt road of variable quality – lots of red dust. Then, we turned north toward Wa on a paved road. After an easy two hours on that road, we were in Wa – the first two letter town I think any of us have ever visited. 

 Most memorable for the day: Another 30 min conversation in the car about what it means to be poor and why it is hard. We talked a lot about what life is like when a family is living on a dollar a day per person. When we told the kids roughly what we live on by the same metric – dollars per day per person – they were shocked. That this point in the conversation came at precisely the time when we passed by young kids drinking water directly out of a dirty pond really reinforced the idea. Based on their questions, we talked about the difference between relative and absolute poverty – and about whether money makes a person happy. Such profound, meaningful conversations – that would never have come up in this way, to this effect, during any other road trip we have made as a family.

After we checked into our room at Upland Hotel in Wa, Rock quickly observed that the bathroom has the nicest toilet seat we’ve seen since we got to Ghana two months ago. While he seemed to be right once I had a chance to inspect the seat carefully, it is funny what they pick up on.

Tonight, before the kids went to sleep, Heather shared a great thought on gratitude for FHE. We talked about how “gratitude is better than guilt”…although I’m not totally sure why this is true (or even THAT it is true), but it has always rung true to me. This is something that we may just explore and try to understand through these driving conversations tomorrow – another big day…with a border crossing into Burkina Faso.