Kwei Osei-Bonsu: Ghanaian no stranger to visiting Othello

OTHELLO — When Kwei Osei-Bonsu makes the arduous, day-long trip from Ghana to Othello, he doesn’t really feel like he’s leaving home.

Or going to a strange place.

“I have been coming to Othello for a long while,” Osei-Bonsu said. “I feel part of the community here.”

Osei-Bonsu, who has frequently visited Othello over the last 25 years, told the Othello City Council on Tuesday that he has watched young people he got to know grow up and have children of their own, and that makes him feel a bit like “a grandfather.”

The 57-year-old pastor is visiting Othello for a couple of weeks as part of the city’s long sister city relationship with Wulensi, a farming village in north-central Ghana. While not from Wulensi — Osei-Bonsu hails from Asaasefofoom, a village in the south of Ghana — he has been instrumental in forging the relationship.

“We fly the Ghanaian flag here in the city council chambers,” Mayor Shawn Logan said.

“Agriculture has linked the two,” he told The Columbia Basin Herald after the meeting. “We grow maize [corn], rice, yams, sorghum, and millet.”

Osei-Bonsu told the city council that he has big dreams for his country of nearly 30 million people. Ghana is relatively stable — it has not suffered through a brutal civil war as have Liberia or neighboring Cote d’Ivoire — and has tremendous potential as a major agricultural producer.

“We want to make Ghana the breadbasket of West Africa,” he said.

However, sporadic clashes between members of opposing political parties since last December’s election have plagued Ghana, and a dispute over succession following the death a chief in north-central Ghana is also contributing to instability.

“It is very volatile and not yet peaceful,” Osei-Bonsu told the city council. “It is hard to work in that condition.”

But the farmers of Ghana continue to work, he added, clearing land by hand and planting crops. Osei-Bonsu appealed to Othello city council for prayers and help, not only for the county, but for the farmers of its sister city.

“We need an irrigation pump and some solar panels to power it,” he said. “It’s simple things we need. We have water. … We just need a little help.”

Osei-Bonsu said helping Wulensi with what it needs right now would take around $10,000.

“The country is good, we have our challenges,” he told the city council. “God is with us, and we do all we can to make the relationship with Othello work.”