In response to the question of “wo ho te sen?” (or “how are
you?” in English), the most common response I receive in my village is “nyame
adom,” meaning “the grace of God.”
The full response of “nyame adom, me ho ye” (by the grace of God, I am
fine) has been clipped for either the sake of expediency or coolness, one
cannot be sure.
What one can be sure of, however, is that the missionaries
in Ghana have done their jobs, and done them well. There is not a single Western religion that I know,
which I have not seen represented in some form whilst here in Ghana. There are even many Christian churches
of which I’ve never heard, and had to google to verify their existence.
To put this into perspective, I live in a village of 1,600
to 2,000 people (census schmensus) and there are eight churches. Yes, eight. This does not count those who subscribe to traditional
beliefs. Some of my fellow PCVs
live in much smaller villages and have the same number of churches.
In my village, we have the Pentecostal, Anglican, New Apostolic,
Harris, Methodist, Roman, Seventh Day Adventists, and Deeper Life
churches. On my tour d’eglise, I
have been to the first four. You
see, I decided that as part of my integration into the community, I should
visit each one at least once.
Woaahhoooaahh, I’m halfway there… *
Off to church (my house is to the back-right)
During most of the services, I have no idea what they are
saying. I can pick up “nyame” and
“adom” because of the aforementioned greeting response. From there, I understand when I need to
stand up (“soree”) and every once in a while I catch the cue for when I should
say “amen” in unison with the congregation.
Somehow, I never fail to know when it’s time to dance. If there is one thing that I have in
common with Ghanaians, it’s a shared love of dancing. I’m fairly certain that if I were to attend many of the
churches in their country of origin, there would be far less dancing, if any at
all. It seems the missionaries
learned the lesson of adapting to local customs to increase sustainability some
time ago.
The usual means of dancing is in line to the front of the
congregation, round and round in a few circles, then back to your seats. This held true for the Pentecostals and
the Anglicans, but with more drums in the latter. Staying true to their German roots, the Apostolic did not
dance, but they did sing some lovely hymns.
The Harris Church had a special joint congregation with
surrounding communities that lasted nearly five hours. (My counterpart insisted I take a 30-minute
lunch break, and I happily obliged.)
Despite its length, I found this service to be the most enjoyable. The singing was nice, spirits were
lively, and the dancing (oh the dancing!) was fanfreakintastic.
There were several calls to do a “line dance” and I even had
a special dance where the men shaking the axatse got down low and so did
I. Not that low, it’s church,
after all. Though I’ve always been
a drum beat kinda dancing girl, the axatse is quickly becoming my favorite
instrument in Ghana. It’s
basically a “shaker” made from a hollowed out calabash and the players hold the
woven beads on the outside with one hand and shake with the other to produce
music, beautiful music.
After a little more than four hours of service, we all got
up and danced through the streets.
Not in the overly choreographed manner of Westside Story, but in a sort
of parade, led by about ten girls waving flags in unison. We all did our own versions of the
walking dance, which can often look like the running man in slow motion, and
with less knee action. Sometimes,
the old women have the best “scoot” moves that are remind me of soul dancing --
my favorite.
During our parade, many people joined from the sidelines, if
for no other reason to coax the oboruni (me) into doing the azonto dance. I respectfully declined and continued
with my scoot scoot down the market road, by the taxi station, around the
football field, and finally to an open clearing where they sang and we shuffled
our feet some more.
After about an hour, I was dripping in sweat and exhausted
from the African sun and decided to take my departure. I was told that I needed to pay my
respects to the priest, who put his hand on my head and said a prayer in Twi
(or Sefwi, I dunno) for about five minutes as I knelt before him. Though I was spent and on the brink of
dehydration, the last hour of the Harris Church service was easily one of my
most enjoyable experiences at site.
I have four more churches to attend, and will update you
with how it goes. I also have a great video from the Harris Church service, which I hope to upload when my connection is faster. In the meantime,
be well and many thanks for reading.
* Finish the line for the full (ahem) clever effect.
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