God and Ghana

Here in Ghana God plays an important role. The country is mostly Christian although a substantial population of muslims live in the country as well. Everywhere you go you will see small shops, taxis and tro-tros (minibuses) with names such as “God is Good”, “Praise the Lord”, “Jesus Saves” and so on. On Sunday morning people go to church and there’s a wide array of different ones aaall over the country. The church which most of my host family attends belongs to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. The Sunday preaching is actually performed in one of the classrooms of the school, with the pastor standing beside the blackboard. People put on their best clothes and go there at 9am. And so did I, a non-believer, for the first time in almost 12 years.

I thought it would be culturally interesting to go there, and I would have an opportunity to meet people from the community. After all, going to church in Ghana is not the same as going to church in Sweden. Here there´s a lot more singing and dancing, which makes it a quite fun experience in between the Bible readings. This Sunday however, the pastor didn’t arrive so we had an improvised ceremony of about two hours. But even though it was interesting to dance in a church, 2 hours of God-praising in Twi isn’t really my cup of nescafé. But I was lucky, other volunteers complained about 5 hours of Bible-Twi at their churches.

When meeting a Ghanaian you are bound to sooner or later be asked the question “Are you Christian?” or “Do you believe in God?”. If, as in my case, the answer is no, the next question would be “Muslim?”. Then maaaybe “Buddhist?”. After each negative response the general Ghanaian will be more and more surprised and might even become disappointed. It’s for them very difficult to grasp the fact that an obruni (white man) doesn’t believe in God. After all, it was the obrunis who brought the Bible to Ghana in the first place.

The reason why I haven’t written in a bit is that I’ve been travelling for a week, to Accra and the beaches of south-western Ghana. Very nice indeed. However, now I’m back in New Legon and am looking forward to working. I’ll prooobably, most likely, almost certainly write more frequently when the teaching starts next week!

So long

Marcus