I knew coming here that most shops are sponsored by Jesus. Tro tros, taxis, motorcycles are too. “God Saves Rasta Do” “Let There Be Light Electronics” “Jesus Sauve”… It doesn’t really phase me anymore.
Jane, a seamstress, comes every few days to Volta Hall to sell clothes and take orders if we have something we want made. She also sells really cool colorful quilts with African prints so I bought one, which she brought for me the next week. As it turns out, the middle quilt square is the Virgin Mary.
This morning I was on the balcony and I thought Halie had come back into the room but instead there were three women standing there, closing the door behind them. They wanted to talk to me personally about talking Jesus Christ as my savior. So they sat us down on the couch and gave Halie and I the talk. The problem with offering ultimatums…God or damnation…is that when you don’t believe in either, there really is no pressure to make a decision. Strangely, right after we told her we did not believe in prayers, she asked me to pray for them before they left. I wished them to find peace in their mission. What else can you do? After, Halie mentioned, o how the roles have reversed. How ironic is it that Africans are sitting us down, trying to save us, using a tool of colonization that my ancestors used upon their ancestors? (well not all my ancestors and not them specifically, but there is one great something grandfather…)
It gets even more interesting when you add in the witchcraft factor. I wouldn’t say witches are real in the U.S., but they are definitely real here. If everyone believes in them, it sort of makes them real in a way. The fusion of Christianity and witchcraft is fascinating. “If you are a good Christian, the witches can’t touch you.”
When I practice in the morning there are people outside the guys dorms preaching from megaphones. This is before the sun is up. There are also people walking around the field praying and talking in tongues. It definitely makes you run a little bit faster.
The other night I heard this crazy siren outside my room. Which was really strange because you really just don’t hear any here. But then a voice on a loud speaker starts talking about Jesus. He reminded me of “A Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God,” the one that says we are mere spiders God is dangling over the pit of hell and that he really doesn’t even like spiders anyway.
So now when I say I don’t go to church, and have to explain it by saying I am not religious, which I have to explain by saying I do not believe in Jesus, which I have to explain by admitting I don’t believe I can ever know anything about a higher power, thus I don’t believe I know a God exists…I pretty much feel like I just took a machete to their mother, from the way peoples faces contort.
When I first got here I didn’t understand how people could embrace Christianity so much when it was used to control them and justify their enslavement. And it is not like there is an absence of mental slavery either. It so strange to see family photos on the wall, black faces amongst a famed whiter than white Jesus. But then it sheds light on why people do crazy things here to their skin to make it lighter. All the advertisements have very very light skinned black people too. Some people here have the idea that everything African is bad and everything European or American is good, which I can’t even imagine how African Americans feel if they come here looking for a sense of homeland.
On a side note, their reaction to my skin is also interesting. Nobody notices my hair. It is freeing in a way to be so strange in the first place that it doesn’t matter what color my hair is or what I wear. Only two Ghanaian people have said anything. One said I had nice brown hair, and the other said I had nice blond hair. They don’t really get the concept of freckles here. The kids think I am dirty. The older ones think I am sick. Adults suggest I go for treatment or recommend a cream (that I think they probably use to lighten their own skin.)
Tro Tros usually same something religiously inspired...
Wassa Domma river crossing. We were supposed to go down, but it was flooded so we just went accross.
Kakum National Park Canopy Walk
Hike near Boti Falls
Aburi Bike Ride. I lost a shoe. A woman with yams on her head and a baby on her back dug it out for me and washed off my leg while Halie and Kristen took pictures...
