An Elvis Sighting in Cape Coast

Happy New Year from Ghana!
And as they say so poetically here,
"May the year come round to meet you."

It's an overcast day in Takoradi, which is perfect for today's upcoming soccer match with the Hasmal Ladies U13 soccer team. In our first match last week, we won 2-0. However, now our Hasmal Ladies have the new equipment we brought them, and we'll have to watch out!

Yesterday, New Year's Eve, we went en masse to Cape Coast Castle, the main slave export center of Western Africa during those horrible years. Much emotion, and I will definitely share this experience soon.

Today, the castle is dedicated to two things primarily: remembering and encouraging that we are all one family; and secondly, local handcrafts. The crafts sold here are high quality and, actually, quite good prices despite their presence in a more touristy area. Upon entering one wood carving shop, I struck up a conversation with the young shop keeper, Elvis. Gotta love the name seeing as I was born in Memphis! Elvis and his 80-year-old grandfather live in a nearby village and carved everything in the shop. It's wonderful to actually meet the artists and he was able to point to different pieces and give me an idea of how many days they took to make. Asked how long he had been carving he replied, "I've been cutting my hands my whole life."

Grace and team member Frances were also with me. I told him we were from California and the girls play football, as it is called here. Suddenly his face lit up! "I heard about you on television! You came to play matches in Takoradi. I wanted to travel there to meet you and see the match, but it couldn't happen. Now you are all in my shop! You've come to my shop!"
I went into the courtyard to gather as many of the team as I could. We squeezed in one after the other, buying carvings from Elvis, we making his day, and he making ours.

There in the shadow of horror, we came together through sport and art, and were healed a bit from what we had seen and experienced earlier in the day.