"God's pencil has no eraser"

I have been thinking about this a lot, not just in Ghana, but in Guatemala and even at Clark. Especially after spending a Ghanaian Passover I think about it even more and this thing is RELIGION. 

Ghana is a very Christian country, from Catholic to Pentecostal, and I put RELIGION in all caps because in this country, like many others, it is in all caps, always important, constant overwhelming presence. I see Christianity in the names of stores, on posters, billboards, in the words of sermon preachers on my 7am bus ride, on signs in the campus library that reads "Please be quiet. Don't forget to pray," from strangers when they greet me with "Hello, how are you? What is your name? Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" I chalk these experiences up to cultural learning. I often ignore them because, even though I don't like to admit it, all the religion stuff freaks me out because I have no context in my own life to explain so much devotion to a single ideal by so many people. I try to reason out how people can believe in Christ by relating it to something that I believe in, such as medicine. Is it not true that if someone told me Advil did not relieve headaches, I would fight them on it, listing my experiences with its success and advocating for its use, even though I have no idea how Advil works? So how is that any different from religion? Just as I assume medicine and science explain the world around me and how my body functions, isn't that how religious individuals justify God's word?

But I cannot ignore the hypocrisy, the propaganda and the hate that I see perpetrated in the name Christianity. (Now, before someone gets offended, I am talking about Christianity specifically because that is what I have been experiencing. I understand that other religions and traditional practices hold similar stances but I have not encountered them in this way. I also am talking about Christianity as it has manifested itself in my experiences, which may not represent other forms).

For example, what strikes me about Christianity in Ghana is the mix between Christianity and spirituality, which presents itself with speaking in tongues, demon possessions and over the top sermons in community spaces. In Ghana in particular, God is not a part of your personal life, but a fixture in communal life that is not open to other options. It is a stark contrast to New England, where I would be surprised to see a single billboard advertise a religious event, of which I see at least 10 on my commute into Accra. 

I have been trying very hard to be open minded and culturally tolerant in my perceptions of religion in Ghana. But, if I'm being honest, it makes me annoyed and sometimes really angry. I don't like that I feel I have to avoid the topic when people ask me if I'm Christian because I feel they will judge me. I don't enjoy watching preachers on Christian television chant at people, sending them into a seizure, curing them from an obsessive eating of uncooked rice. I don't like it when a little girl tells me she doesn't like Obama because he is the anti-christ. But I have calmed these minor annoyances from become anger or elitist frustration, with some exceptions. I cannot avoid being angry when a 3 year old boy comes to the Police Hospital with a broken leg and whipping marks all over his body because his step mom had a vision at her church he was possessed by the devil, and decided to take care of it through violence.

But I understand that I cannot judge any society and the people within it from a superior lens. My way is no better than anyone else's. Because everyone perpetrates hate, but perhaps not everyone uses a book and a prophet to back it up. Everyone fears the unknown, dislikes uncertainties and is selfish, but some conceal these sentiments behind the curtain of Jesus and others don't. It was very timely that I stumbled upon this article while I was mulling over these conflicting emotions: Im Christian, unless you're gay  because it captures the religion conundrum much more eloquently that I can hope to. 

Despite all this - the hate, the propaganda, the violence perpetrated in the name of a belief, the is most important thing to note is that all Christians are not the same. They are not all conservative, creationist Republicans that push their Christian agenda as a vehicle for political sway and bigotry. Now written out that seems obvious, but I don't think this understanding is often put into practice. If you have ever read Half the Sky you will learn that we would have no charity and very few people traveling around the world trying to help those less fortunate, were it not for religion. There would be no Martin Luther King Jr., no Mother Theresa. What I have learned more than anything is that there are many remarkable people that do not fit the stereotype but are very devote believers in Jesus Christ. I met these people in Guatemala, I met these people at Clark and I am meeting them here in Ghana. These people defy my own conceptions that to be liberal you must be secular. That to be conservative you must be preachy. These are people that are using faith to do great things while being tolerant and culturally understanding and without imposing their beliefs upon those they do good work with. It is those people that I feel are misrepresented in our society, in the media and in highly religious countries. 

This is a heavy one, I'll follow it with a light one in a few days (lets be honest, it'll probably take me over a week) where I'll share all my favorite things about Ghana!!

REALLY QUICK UPDATE:

Kumasi was great - I bought too many gifts! This weekend we celebrated my friend Rachel's birthday! This week is my last week of classes to be followed by a trip to the Volta Region where we will visit Kekeli Inc. among other things, and then I have my Traditional African Dance exam and Twi exam!! Yikes, it's like real school. Yebishiya bio! ("see you later," not the correct spelling). 

Just another Passover...

This past weekend a group of us traveled to a rural Jewish community in the village of Sefwi Wiawaso.   I think I mentioned this in a previous post but if not here is a website that explains how what why when of the Jewish community: http://www.kulanu.org/ghana/visit_to_ghana.php

After traveling from 5am-7pm which included 3 hours waiting, 2 bus rides and 2 taxi rides, we arrived at the village in time for dinner and the evening service. Upon arriving we met this group of 5 gap year students that had been in Ghana since September. They spent the first few months in Accra and since January they've been teaching in a rural village outside of Kumasi. Although they are getting such an amazing cultural experience, they are having issues with their directors and are really cut off from other American students. We also met a student who is on the NYU Ghana program, which is very different from CIEE. They have their own campus near Accra and have all of their classes on site, which would seem very structured, but apparently they have very little programming after orientation. It was interesting to see how different each program is and it definitely made me appreciate how wonderful CIEE is - both the programming and the staff!

So after chatting with the gap year students, who I think were really happy to talk to other Obrunis for a change, we went to the seder. The village itself is beautiful. It was so interesting to see what parts of Judaism are practiced by this community and which aren't. Unlike seders I'm used to, this seder was with the whole community, so it was more like a service with a seder plate. The plate had the egg, but everything else was different. Instead of horseradish there was pepper sauce, instead of charoset it was honey, instead of parsley and salt water it was this spinach-like vegetable in dirt-tasting water (I'm not even going to try to figure out what it was) and instead of the lamb bone it was legit lamb/goat/sheep. We never got a straight answer when asking what the various livestock were wandering the village. The village has a very large children to adult ratio. There were about 30 children to maybe 6 adults, 4 of whom were men, so it was a big mystery whose children they were.

I feel weird complaining about this but I was really excited to do a rural home-stay: I saw us staying with families and carrying buckets of water on our heads etc. However I was mistaken and we stayed in a very nice guesthouse for the price of the average hotel, which was equipped with running water and electricity. Despite my initial excitement, I quickly got over it when I didn't have to pee in a hole in the ground but a lovely (usually) flushable toilet.

The next morning we had passover services, which I have no idea how closely resembles American passover services since I've never experienced a conservative service in my life, but our more Jewish friends had to read the Hebrew parts of the service, so I know that Hebrew is not often used. After 3 hours we retired to our guesthouse with the instructions to return for the 2nd seder at 3pm. And surprise surprise the seder was not until 8pm, but there was a reason for this bout of Ghanaian untimeliness - they needed to slaughter a goat/lamb/sheep first! And of course, silly us, showing up at 3:30pm for the seder, got front row seats to the slaughter show. I will refrain from posting photos or going into detail, but it was really cool from the wanna-be-nurse perspective, but really sad from the animal-lover inside me. One interesting thing is that they follow the kosher law that the lamb is supposed to die in one knife stroke. However this tribe does it a little bit differently, purposefully not killing the lamb instantly. The butcher (probably not his real title) told me through a translator that they do this so the animal is "giving its life voluntarily" and so the spirit/energy remains in the animal instead of leaving the body when it dies instantly. So we stood there watching this poor animal die slowly for five minutes (it felt like an hour), but the process of roasting and cutting the meat was really cool!! The whole weekend was realy interesting, especially to see of how their Jewish practices have altered to fit their cultural context without the influence of the global Jewish community. I'm sure I am leaving stuff out but this post is already getting long. Leave a comment if you want to know more!