Hello friends! It has been a while, but I found time to share some more of my experiences. It’s funny because I started writing earlier, saying how I realize now that I’m writing another blog that I am experiencing things in Ghana differently than before. Where I was observing everything so much in the beginning, being here starts to feel more like it’s my everyday life (which I guess it is). However, I joined Bernice to church this weekend, and what I said above is completely opposite of this experience. I literally came home mentally and physically exhausted from all these new impressions. Now, I am sitting behind my laptop, completely in shock from what I just experienced on my way to work. I will tell you about it, but first: church. We came to church a bit late, so we had to wait outside because they were in the middle of worshipping and that’s when they close the door. Everyone else waiting outside looked so dressed up. All the ladies are wearing heels, many were wearing lots of make-up, everyone’s hair was very well done. Then, when we were allowed to go in, I felt like I entered a dance party rather than a church session. There was a band playing and in front of the stage people were singing and dancing. All the chairs were set up in a U-formation around it, and in the middle lots of people were dancing and having fun. Bernice, who I went with, seated me somewhere in the middle of the crowd, while she went to sit in the back. The first hour was great, I was dancing with the people around me, so fun! After this all settled down there was a welcome during which they asked if anyone was here for the first time. Obviously I couldn’t really pretend that I wasn’t, so when I raised my hand he asked me to stand up and everyone clapped for me. He welcomed to to the church and made me feel very included. Afterwards I felt less like an outsider. The only thing that I felt a little uncomfortable by is that afterwards he asked everyone in the church to pray for me. I just didn’t really know what to do standing up there, I have never experienced this before where an entire church was praying for me, but it was obviously very kind as well. Maybe it also felt a bit more awkward because I’m not raised religious, which is something that you can’t really explain here. I usually just say I’m Christian to people I don’t know very well, but with people that I know better it is very interesting to talk about what religion means to them and to Ghana. Most people cannot understand my situation at all, but some others do, usually more educated people. I try to explain that I don’t think I need to believe in God in order to be a good person, and treat others right, that I have my own motivation from within to do that and that my parents taught me the basics of what is right and wrong. Just like it is hard for Ghanaians to understand this about me, it is hard for me sometimes to fully grasp and understand how e-ve-ry-thing here is explained by religion to some people. I respect it, want to understand it as much as I can, but it is definitely an aspect that makes Ghana very different from the environments I’ve lived in before. After 2 hours of moral lessons in Twi, I witnessed the most intense religious event I've seen. The pastor was saying some things (in Twi) that made everyone start screaming, praying, reaching up with their hands, stamping with their feet on the ground, walking around. One lady came up to the altar in the front, fell down, and was praying so intensely she was shaking and moving so heavily. People are clearly very, very moved by the services. I was a quite in shock by what was going on around me, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Then today, on my way to work, wow. I thought I witnessed the same thing, but turned out I didn't...
I was in the taxi with Stephanie, driving on through traffic, when I looked out my window and saw a young man lying on the ground moving heavily. My first thought was, wow I didn’t know people prayed this intensely in public. The way he was moving looked much like the lady in church that came up to the altar. But quickly I realized that this looked like something I can understand, this man was having a seizure. I told Steph and the taxi driver to stop, because we needed to help this guy. The driver said no no, he is taken by bad spiritual influences, we can’t go up to him because it is contagious, they will spread onto you. In my head I was like, WHAT?! How can you possibly think that if you can see that this guy was clearly uncontrollably shaking throughout his whole body! The driver was very nice though, so he stopped the car and Steph and I walked up to him. The driver came too to be an Twi-English translator. It turned out he had been having this issue for 8 months. He was walking with his friend, selling plastic bowls, but then this happened and his friend left him on the side of the street (like what?!). We really wanted to take him to the hospital, but all he wanted was to go home. It was hard to decide how much to push “what we think is right” versus wat he personally wanted. If you’ve been having seizures for so long, I would really think it is good to get that checked out… He said his health insurance was expired, but we told him we would pay for him to see a doctor. He was very grateful, but eventually he said he really needed to go home to clean up first. He was all covered in dirt from having a seizure on the ground, and his clothes looked like he had been wearing it for a while. I understood this point, because in Ghana the way you look really determines how soon and well you will be treated. If you look like you have money to pay for medical expenses, they will help you much sooner. We ended up paying for a taxi for him to take him home. He took the number of our taxi driver (who is our friend), so he can call us to tell us how things were going once he got back. It was hard to really understand the guy, but our taxi driver was explaining that he think his seizures are a spiritual thing. In response Steph and I tried to medically explain a seizure, and he said he understood that point but in Ghana people have seen that you don’t die from a seizure (wonder what they base that on…) so they don’t see it as a medical problem. Crazy! I see a lot of good things that religion brings to this country; it connects people, makes them willing to help each other out etc. Situations like today however, show the downside of it (in my opinion of course). It makes it so clear that it is not that easy to “just improve providing medical care”. People can be so convinced that medical issues are a spiritual case, they are not going to want a medicine to fix it. It is scary to me to see how worshipping, praying, and having a seizure can look so similar. It also really makes me think to what extend “we”, Western people, have to try to change things. To what extend should you push to change the beliefs that people so strongly have, if they don’t want to?
1 Comment
Marten Jan
10/11/2017 03:57:26 am
Impressive experiences, really makes that you look at the world front another perspective
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2017
Categories |