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Driving in Ghana is an interesting experience. Or, perhaps I should say riding in Ghana, as I never actually sat behind the wheel.

The first thing that struck me is that they drive on the right side of the road. Ghana used to be a British colony, but they drive on the right side of the road. I never asked why that was, but I wish I had, because I’d still like to know.

The next thing I noticed was that either every car in Ghana needs a tune-up, or the gas is lower grade than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m guessing both are true, plus the lack of any air quality standards. Even fairly new, expensive vehicles blew smoke and chugged along like they were on their last legs. (Shell, by the way, seems to be the most common provider of gas; I did see one or two 76 stations.) Another problem with the vehicles - as with nearly everything else, as far as I could tell - is that “repair” is a concept that really hasn’t caught on. If it runs - at all - it doesn’t need fixing.

I quickly realized that the most important feature of any car is its horn (occasionally accompanied by yelling out the window). It seems that the horn has something to do with establishing right-of-way. It doesn’t really matter what else is going on, if you honk, you establish the right to go wherever you want. You can enter a major roadway, change lanes and make turns across lanes as long as you honk.

The Ghana honk is different than the American honk. Here, when people resort to the horn, they lay on it - the longer the honk, the madder you are at someone. In Ghana, the honk has a cadence similar to the Roadrunner’s “beep-beep.” Sometimes it takes on other, more common tones, but usually the Roadrunner beep-beep does the trick.

It’s also interesting that pedestrians don’t have any right-of-way whatsoever. It seems that if you get hit, it’s your own fault, as long as the car honked first. It didn’t matter who they were, children, women with baskets of fruit on their head, or the elderly - cars stop for no one. This is not just the taxi drivers, either, this includes the most gentle and well-mannered of pastors - a couple of quick honks, people would scatter like roaches in the light, and they would drive right on through at break-neck speeds.

On rare occasions tempers would flare, and a bit of yelling would ensue. However, this also seemed to be part of the game. And, to our amazement, we only saw one or two small fender-benders, indicating that these were actually very good drivers, with quick reflexes and good brakes.

We witnessed one fairly telling incident, where one driver had the nerve to bump another; within seconds the drivers were out of their cars, gesturing and arguing loudly. Just as quickly, a couple of other drivers were also out of their vehicles and we overheard one person saying something to the effect of, “calm down, this is no way to act.” In less than a minute, everyone was back in their vehicles and on their way - with no exchange of ID or insurance information.

Next: Road Conditions - or, “Where are we going?”

I ended the last Ghana blurt by saying I was going to write next about cross-cultural ministry. I actually don’t have a clue about cross-cultural ministry. I don’t really have a clue about ministry to my own culture, or I’d have been a lot more successful at it.

But, I will talk a bit about my experience trying to teach the “Gospel truth” to the students in Ghana. I may not have explained it before, but YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission (clever, using the first letter of every word like that). I’d known about YWAM since the early 70’s, but have never had any personal involvement with the group prior to this trip. I was tremendously impressed with what these handful of people are doing in Ghana.

I had spent many, many hours preparing for my classes over there; I had not done any teaching quite as extensive as what was called for over there, and that in itself was intimidating. When I left, I was as prepared as I could possibly be. I a good sense of the general concepts I wanted to convey, and had loads of notes ready to go.

However, the more I taught the more I realized that I had a lot of material that I simply couldn’t teach there, because it wasn’t “me.” I knew that I could teach it in the U.S. without any problem; in the context of American culture, I would have been fine. But, when removed to this foreign culture, the material couldn’t be translated by me. While I believed it to be true in an objective sense, I didn’t own it; I had no authority to teach it, and I think it would have been obvious.

This sent me back into culture shock; I was doing okay with the food and the heat and the humitidy and super-bright sun and lack of hot water (or sometimes, any water) for showers, but now I had to adjust to me. What did I have to say to these people, some of whom were called to evangelize the Muslim community, or felt called to minister to the orphans of war, or were planting churches in very less than ideal situations?

The result, I believe, was very good. It was good, at least, for me. I felt I was able, on a fairly consistant basis, to speak - alot - with authority. I couldn’t always address questions about how a certain issue should be handled in a certain culture, but was able to convey principles of truth and allow them to apply these trans-cultural truths to their home cultures.

I don’t know what impact - aside from a few individual responses by students, which I greatly appreciated - I had on those I taught. I do know the impact that it had on me. By being so removed from my culture (for the first time, unless you count living for several months in Canada), I was able to better see myself, better know what it really was that I believed, and find that I was happy with what I saw (whew!). I was not just another arrogant American white guy with a conveniently packaged gospel. Underneath that arrogant, Americanized white exterior, is something that held up okay in Ghana.

I’m still trying to find out what that means for me, back here in good old America. But, that’s a topic for another time.

If you haven’t read Part 1, start there.

As I said, it was exhausting, but in a very good way; nothing we did (even sitting on the beach watching kids and fishermen) was filler. They weren’t just trying to keep us busy, the good foks at YWAM Ghana had a purpose for everything they were doing. It wasn’t always planned as well as we would have liked, but we adapted, and they adapted for us, and it worked.

The second point I will make about my trip to Ghana - and I use the word “my” on purpose, as I am looking at this more or less existentially as opposed to a “what I did on my summer vacation” kind of way - is that it stretched me. Or, at least I thought I was being stretched. In reality, I found that my limits were much larger than I thought, like Indiana Jones in “The Last Crusade,” where he steps out on to what looks like empty air, to find a quite solid rock bridge (wow, what a cool analogy, like stepping out on “the rock,” you know…). Okay, enough silliness.

I was exhaused when I arrived, after 30+ hours of travel, and I think that just being that tired had a lot to do with my initial culture-shock. That, and the heat (everyone kept telling us how cool it was, compared to the past few weeks). This was also the furthest I had been away from home, ever, and I was not in control, of anything. Thank goodness for international cell phone service; I was able to call home, and connect with the world from which I was now physically removed.

I begged off doing much the next morning, but as I “caught the groove” of the church we were visiting, and realized that I was not without something to share with these people, and that they had things to share with me, I began to ease in a bit.

They made us feel as “at home” as possible, trying to give us food that we could at least recognize. Lots of fried chicken, lots of rice, and this wonderful red sauce that I am positive kept me on pepto-bismal throughout the trip. The pineapple was absolutely incredible- I still miss the pineapple. The people were absolutely wonderful - much more gracious than anywhere else I’ve been.

We had also each brought ample supplies of Starbucks coffee and French presses, so we were not without a little taste of home (except for our 2-3 days in the Central Region, where we learned to appreciate Nescafe - it’s really not that bad, if it’s all you have).

By the time we were ready to leave, about 10 days later, it had begun to feel like home, and I had some mixed feelings about leaving, already thinking about when I could return.

Next: thoughts on cross-cultural ministry.