i wrote an article...for jesus.

Well, sort of. I wrote this small piece on religion in Ghana for a newsletter my mom puts out through the Presbyterian Church of Canada. It's a little treacly - did you know you can't swear in articles for the Presbyterian Church of Canada??? What cheek! - but the sentiments are heartfelt. Mostly. And yes, I was born and raised in the Presbyterian Church. So I wrote this piece from the perspective of a lapsed religious person. It's not particularly offensive but I hope it doesn't offend anyone - particularly the Ghanaians who might read this blog. To them I say this is just my way of saying, "I wish I could be invited to your party."


I am sitting in a rickety, cramped VW van in a parking lot filled with hundreds of rickety, cramped VW vans, in a giant dusty parking lot, in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, a country on the coast of West Africa. The van is called a “tro tro” and it is the most prevalent form of public transit in the city. It is 30 degrees Celsius in the middle of the dry season, and the driver will not take us to our destination until the van is stuffed to the brim with commuters. Sweat drips off my nose and onto my jeans as I sit with the other passengers and wait. And wait. We sit stock still, trying not to move. I wonder if it is possible to be any more uncomfortable. And then suddenly, a man leaps onto the bus with us. Despite the heat he is dressed in a grey suit and tie. He is smiling. His eyes gleam huge and brown and ecstatic.
“May the Lord be with you!” he roars.
A silence follows - as thick as the hot, polluted air.
The man’s expression is inscrutable. He pauses, and then, more insistently:
“MAY THE LORD BE WITH YOU!”
“And also with you,” murmurs the crowd on the tro tro. Finally full, the vehicle is set to move off. The man remains with us. For the entirety of our 45-minute ride, he remains. And he preaches, and preaches, and preaches, at the top of his lungs, looking at all of us in turn. And the people in the tro tro sit, and some of them listen, and most continue to murmur their assent when he pauses in his lecture; “Ah-men.”
At the end of the ride, before everyone stumbles out into the hot, swarthy streets, hands reach forward to take some of the damp pamphlets our preacher has been wielding throughout the drive.

I’ve been here for six months – but it took me all of two days here to realize that this type of Public Display of Piety was omnipresent, and constant, and would take a great deal of getting used to.

In Ghana, faith is everywhere. It floods onto the streets from stalls selling gospel CDs. It lights up buildings at three in the morning as members of the charismatic church wander around the room, speaking in tongues to each other as you walk home from a night out. It causes the country’s electoral commission to consider changing the day that the country goes to the polls to elect Ghana’s next president in December – because that day happens to fall on a Sunday. And yes, sometimes it rides with you to work and back in the form of an evangelical tro-tro preacher, and there is no way to get away from it.

And the pervasiveness of religion in Ghana is by no means exclusive to Christianity. I recently took a trip to the capital of Ghana’s northern region, Tamale, where the population is overwhelmingly Muslim. I visited a colleague’s workplace only to see reporters leaving halfway through the day to pray at the mosque. During a break on the 14-hour bus ride to the area, I sat on a bench and watched as dignified Muslim women, their heads wrapped in scarves and eyes lined with kohl, spread out a mat in the parking lot, removed their shoes, bent their heads to the earth and worshipped in silence. And, more disruptively, I was awakened every morning by a four-thirty am call to prayer broadcast from the mosque right beside my rooming house.

Although we pride ourselves on our tolerance for different cultures and religions in Canada, I can’t help but wonder how we would deal with a presence as impassioned - and inescapable - as the tro-tro preacher. No doubt he would have subject to an onslaught of rolling eyes and irritated glares from other passengers – and maybe even forcibly ejected from the car itself. Canadians – and in my experience, Presbyterians – keep their love of God to themselves. When we pray in church, we bow our heads in silence as the minister recites the benediction. We sing nicely arranged hymns in a reverent and orderly fashion. We rejoice, sure, but our rejoicing happens on the inside, or in privacy.

In Ghana, the opposite occurs. The people in this country celebrate their faith in a completely open and unselfconscious manner, and quite often, it’s beautiful. Sometimes, it can be annoying. And it’s especially jarring to see this element in the newsroom where I work. Generally most of us don’t think of newsrooms as the most pious of places. Most journalists I know in Canada haven’t been to church in years. Not so at JOY FM. Every morning before the editorial meeting, we begin with a prayer. It was easy enough to get used to this – until the day that we switched newsrooms and a preacher was brought in to christen the new working space. As he sang and asked for God to bless the pristine white walls of our working space, my colleagues whispered, shuddered and shouted beside me. It was an intimate moment and I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Afterwards, I was ashamed by my reticence. Why is this awkward? I asked myself.

Although I lapsed into lazy Presbyterianism when I hit my twenties, I was once a good Presbyterian. I did youth group. I sang in the choir. I taught Sunday School, for heaven’s sake. There’s no need for embarrassment. So I reigned in my confused expression, smiled and went along with it. I feel anything else would be....rude. And yet, these completely open displays of faith will forever retain an elusiveness that makes this erstwhile skeptic wistful, and maybe a little sad. Despite myself, I wonder, "Why can't I feel like that?" It's like when you go to a party at your friend's house and all their friends are there and you don't really know any of them. Meanwhile they know all the same songs and inside jokes, and are laughing their faces off. You try to join for some of the time, smiling goodnaturedly. Sometimes the people invite you in and are really quite hysterical and you are having a riot and loving everyone. And then some of the time you feel awkward and sad and wish more of your own friends were along for the ride. For me, that's the crux life in Ghana.

One Sunday, my roommate and I took a walk around the dusty red roads of our neighbourhood. We literally stumbled across the ruins of a half-completed building – the neighbourhood church. Inside, men and women in beautifully patterned traditional clothes sang their lungs out while a preacher swayed at the front of the room and a man banged out the melodies on an old piano. A woman pulled us onto a bench and we stood quietly with the congregation in our jeans and tank tops. We felt grubby and conspicuous in this humble setting and didn’t know any of the words to the hymns. And yet, as the gentle unadorned voices rose around me in one sweet melody, and as the women held hands and smiled at us, I didn’t feel out of place in the least. It was a nice way to feel.

Although I don’t entirely understand expressions of faith and devotion here, I know it all comes from a place that is good, a place deep down that provides release and for many, some kind of enlightenment. I haven’t resolved my own dealings with my faith and I’m not sure I ever will. But as a stranger in this country, wandering far from home, I do feel I’ve been privy to something that is as intimate as a secret and really quite powerful and inexorable all at once.
And to take that away with me, I think, is enough.