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(re)Discovering ‘Home’
I spent the previous week away from my usual residence at the University of Ghana, and stayed in the small community of Adenkrebi. Upon returning an interesting thing occurred. When I set foot back into the crazy-busy-crowded-calm of the University of Ghana I felt something comforting. I had spent the last week away from many…
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A Week in a Village
This past week five of my classmates and I spent a week in the small town of Adenkrobi. Adenkrobi is a community of about 300 people, with many residents working outside the town and living here only on the weekends. The community is about an hour drive north of Accra, but is only about 20…
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SME Study
It occurred to me that I had mentioned my time at Hopeline and the SME (small and medium enterprise) study in recent blog writings but haven’t explained the details. Besides taking classes here in Ghana, our program also connects us, in pairs, with different organizations. We are to work with and serve this organization in…
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Dedication of A School
As part of our service placement and internship Nick and I had the opportunity to attend and observe a school dedication. The school was funded in part through the excess profits from two mattress shops. The owner of these shops and the program director of the school is part of the Hopeline network and we…
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Elmina Slave Castle
Last weekend our group traveled to Elmina, Ghana for a weekend excursion. We visited the Kakum national forest with its famous ‘canopy walkway’ and spent most of Saturday on the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. We also visited and toured the St. George’s castle in Elmina. This castle has been used for many…
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Christianity in Africa
This past weekend I visited the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture in Akropong, Ghana. This was the final part of the orientation for the semester in Ghana that I am participating in. It was refreshing to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city of Accra and spend some time preparing…
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Travel Diary
I am here! In Accra. At the University of Ghana. I have been adjusting and getting acclimated the past couple days. It has been very fun! And I am very excited about the upcoming semester and the adventures I will experience. I decided to keep a travel log about my few days of travel to Ghana. Over…
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Christian Economics
Last week someone asked me what studying economics in a distinctly Christian environment, like Calvin College, looked like. To be honest I was a bit taken aback. It was a good question. A question I had not fully answered for myself. So I slowly felt my way through my answer. I said something general like themes…
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Destination as Journey
Watch this… Did you catch it… “… the journey is the destination.” The punch line of this comercial caught my attention. The comercial seems trivial at first (I mean lets face it, we ran out of creative ideas to sell cars about 10 years ago) but I realized this was scratching the surface of something very…
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Book Review: “Nudge”
I recently finished reading a fascinating book entitled Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. The most basic idea behind the book is everything matters. Humans are constantly influenced unconsciously by seemingly trivial details. Put simply we are always being “nudged”. This book aims to harness the ways humans are nudged and use “choice architecture” in increase our quality of…
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Jeffrey R. Bloem 