Day Three - Tuesday, September 25

We set the alarm for 7:30 this morning and when we awoke, it felt much earlier. I could have easily slept a few more hours but we were eager to meet Hugo and we made Boat promise the night before that he would get to the hotel as soon as possible. Our room was a strange mix of luxury and economy. There was a balcony overlooking a beautiful pool and the room was reasonably attractive. On the other hand, the hotel was surrounded by dirt roads, shacks, broken down cars, and half-built houses. The bathroom had a switch on the wall that turned the hot water heater on. Kelsey had warned me of this before we left but since I forgot to share the news, Rebekah learned about it the hard way.

Boat had a meeting to attend this morning so despite our urging, he was not able to pick us up until about 10:45. In the meantime, we had breakfast at the hotel buffet which included eggs and toast, potatoes, oats, stir-fried vegetables, pineapple, juice, and coffee.

When Boat arrived, he had already arranged for a taxi to take us to Hugo and then on to our next destination in Cape Coast. The driver was Joe and his car was a small Hyundai with the words "God is Love" written across the back window. We thought this was a good sign, and it turned out fine, but we quickly learned that nearly every taxi had a Christian phrase of some sort on the back window. Probably it was more of an economic decision than a spiritual one. A smaller number of taxis had Muslim phrases on their windows.

The economic use of Christianity was everywhere. Nearly every business had a Christian name or some sort of Christian imagery on the sign. We passed King of Glory Bakery, God's One and Only Son Beauty Supply, God's Grace is Sufficient Technologies, and What a Friend We Have in Jesus Cold Storage. It was interesting at first but soon became absolutely hilarious to us. Not wanting to offend Boat or our taxi driver, we did a lot of inconspicuous pointing and laughing.

The streets and highways that we traveled on were completely amazing. Imagine taking the entire contents of Walmart, throw in an appliance store, a ton of furniture, and the complete inventory of several auto parts stores and line all that stuff up along the highway. Everywhere you go, Ghanaian people have goods for sale. Unlike America, there is no one-stop-shopping place. A man would be selling universal electrical adapters next to a woman selling T-shirts next to a man making and selling couches next to a guy selling windshield wiper blades. When the taxi would get stopped in traffic, people would approach the cars with large numbers of goods balanced on their heads and attempt to sell us things through the window. We saw one guys selling dead rats. I'm not sure what they were for but I decided not to ask.

The driving in Ghana is scary, and that is no exaggeration. Every time we got somewhere, we were glad to have arrived alive. If there are traffic laws, Joe and everyone else on the road just generally ignored them. He passed on the left, the right, on the berm....it didn't matter. I glanced at the speedometer once and saw that he was doing 90mph. Several times, he passed on blind curves. Once, in a busy market, we encountered a traffic jam. Joe just drove down the wrong side of the road until opposing traffic got in his way. He then continued farther to the left and was driving on the left berm with oncoming traffic passing on the right. When that no longer worked, he continued FARTHER to the left and actually drove through the walking paths of the market. It was like a scene from a movie where the bad guy drives down the sidewalk except that all these pedestrians behaved like they see this all the time. He wasn't the only one either. Generally people just go where ever their cars will fit and ride with as many people inside as they could. I saw a pick up truck with 10 people in the cab. I saw a man and woman riding a motorcycle with an infant stuck in between them.

We were very anxious to get to the orphanage but we first made a stop at another orphanage that our friend Liz visited when she was in Ghana a few months ago. We said hello to the kids there, delivered a letter, and gave a hug to one of Liz's favorites. For the complete story on that part of this adventure see this post titled, "Miracles."

We finally arrived at the orphanage/home/school where Hugo is living. Joe pulled the taxi right through the front gate and we all got out. All eyes were on us as we certainly stuck out in this all-African crowd. Boat had a brief exchange in Twi with a young lady who smiled at us and disappeared around a corner. Just a moment later, she came back leading Hugo by the hand. He was rubbing his eyes with his free hand and I'm pretty sure she had just woken him up from a nap. She led him over to us and he immediately lifted up his arms in the way that all kids do when they want to be held. I picked him up and cried. Rebekah did too. We passed him back and forth for a bit but then it was time to leave again. We got back in the car as many of the  children waved and said goodbye to Hugo. He waved back.

In the car, the moment was surreal. Here was this little boy that we have seen everyday as a picture on our refrigerator. His pictures are on this blog, he had a concert in his honor, we talk about him regularly. But for the first time, he was flesh and blood and in our arms. He was shocked. Despite knowing that it was going to happen, we were just as shocked. It was different, but not completely unlike that moment when a biological child is born and you see him for the first time.

Hugo just stared out the windows for a long time. Rebekah and I examined him all over. We took his shoes off and looked at his feet. We marveled at his beautiful skin. We saw that he had cotton balls in his ears and a pretty snotty nose - sure signs of some kind of sinus infection. We finally got a smile out of him when Rebekah saw that he was ticklish and took full advantage. Then he did the last thing I expected from a child in his situation...he fell asleep. It was a long ride to Cape Coast and he slept the whole way.

We checked in to a pretty nice hotel in Cape Coast with plenty of room to go outside and take walks and play. We had dinner and talked to our family in the States. We weren't sure what to make of Hugo after those first few hours together. He wanted to be held all the time but it was hard to imagine that he had attached to us that fast. I think it was rather the normal reaction of a kid hungry for attention. He has a strong attachment to food and we had to hide the snacks that we brought because having them in plain sight was driving him crazy. He's pretty clever though and did a great job of finding our hiding spots. We saw right away that he is very smart because he only needed to be shown something once before he understood what to do.

Hugo fell asleep around 9 p.m. and after a long, emotional day, we were exhausted. It was tough directing so much energy toward building trust with this little one, knowing that after a few days with him, we'd have to leave him in Ghana and return to the States.