Story by Kelly Petryszyn | Photos courtesy of Matt Smith

     Upon arriving in Accra, Ghana, sophomore psychology and communication major Matt Smith was immediately immersed in a new world. Around him, street vendors carried goods on their heads, goats roamed the dirt roads and kids ran after the van he rode in.
     “We stuck out,” Smith said. “It was quite the eye opener.”
     Smith traveled to Ghana this summer for a mission trip with the ministry, African Hope. He spent his 11-day stay in the city of Gomoa Fetteh with a missions team of 12 people from Ohio.
     While in Ghana, his group administered a program about sexual purity for junior and senior high school students. In addition, some group members held a small program for boys and girls about what God wants them to learn. Smith worked with the children’s program, where he and other group members taught about different topics including peer pressure and individual differences.
     He said there is no specific reason why he went on the trip, but he has always been interested in Africa and missions.
     “The group I went with was complete strangers,” Smith said. “Where we were going, we were complete strangers. I wanted to go into a new surrounding.”
     He said Africa particularly interested him because it is typically portrayed as a third-world environment and he has heard stories about the contintent.
     “I wanted to go see if it was true,” Smith said. “(I do) not want to live my life by someone else’s story. I wanted to have my own story.”

Learning the Culture
     He said that sticking out amongst the crowd was intimidating, but he was met with open arms.
     “I was told that if you’re a white person in Africa, you are a businessman, tourist or a pastor,” Smith said.
     When the natives found out his purpose, they were welcoming. The native language in the town he stayed in, Gomoa Fettah, is Fante, but they speak English in Ghana as well. A 6-year-old boy taught Smith the language by saying Smith’s English words back to him in Fante.
     “[They] were so eager to teach us,” Smith said.
     The hospitality of the locals never stopped. Even when Smith left the country through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the man checking Smith’s bag said something friendly to him. Smith asked him to repeat it and realized the man was trying to say ‘how are you?’ in Fante.
     In addition to being taught Fante, locals also made the effort to teach Smith and his group customs of society. He learned to wave with his right hand and to be careful not to touch anyone with his left hand because he could offend them. Smith said locals taught him “the nationwide secret handshake” in which one person snaps his or her fingers off the other person’s middle finger.

A Far Leap from America
     Traveling from Northeast Ohio to Ghana was a change for Smith.
     He stayed in a hotel that didn’t have water some nights, he said. The people washed their clothes by hand. Although Smith was in Ghana during the hot rainy season, with temperatures in the high 80s’, surprisingly, people were “huddling together for warmth,” because the temperature can reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
     In addition to temperature differences, their culture is not as time sensitive as we are, Smith said.
     “If you didn’t say ‘sharp,’ they wouldn’t come,” he said.
     He encountered some interesting people that can’t be found in the United States. There was a man in Gomoa Fetteh who was naked all the time, but despite this, as Smith’s team would drive through, no one would judge the man.
     Smith learned even more about the locals when he spent time with children. He said he was amazed at the ingenious things they would find to do. There was a time when an 8-year-old boy kicked a dead clump of grass to him, and then they kicked it back for about 15 to 20 minutes.
     He said children in America play with video games and complain about being bored.
     “Here we have so much … we become almost dead to what we have,” he said.
     He can recall a kid who still played with Smith even though he didn’t have any presents for the child.
     “It was cool to see they are human, but willing to stick around when they don’t get what they want,” Smith said.
     Overall, he took a lot away from interacting with the children.
     “They are so much more passionate and willing to do what’s right,” Smith said.

Lasting Impressions
     One experience especially stuck with Smith.
     He met a child who was named Wisdom by the local people. Wisdom was a deaf-mute, he said. The local people told Smith a story about people who decided to pray for Wisdom to heal him. At the very same time they prayed, his mother, who was with Wisdom, called the group who prayed for her son and said Wisdom heard the ringtone on her phone. Wisdom was taken to a nose and throat specialist who said his hearing was fine.
     Smith got to meet Wisdom when he did a program with the children. Since Wisdom couldn’t talk, the group prayed for him. After praying, Wisdom mumbled sounds when Smith addressed him. It was cool to “see a real, authentic miracle,” he said.
     Smith said he felt that the locals of Gomoa Fetteh had their priorities right. They didn’t have a lot of money so money wasn’t a priority for them, he said. If a person needed something they didn’t have, another person was willing to give it to them.
     In general, he found the people of Ghana and Gomoa Fetteh to be very loving of each other, and they placed family before acquring possessions.
     The common idea that Africa is a devastated contintent does not hold true, he said.
     “People say they have it bad there—go there,” Smith said. “They are happier than we are.”