Aburi, Classes, and Village Life III

This weekend my family and I went up to the village of Awisa. Thats where our family is from. The reason for the occasion was to attend the funeral of an Uncle. He died at the age of 42. And just a year before that another one of the uncles died. So, its been a sad year for the family.

One the way to Awisa, we stopped by the biggest tree in West Africa. It was pretty big, but I've seen bigger in Oregon. I told them about the tree in California that is big enough for people to drive through. They were trying to imagine a car going through the center of their big tree. While we were at the tree, a guide told us about some dwarfs that live at the tree and keep it clean and protect it. They told us about how people come to the tree to make offerings to the dwarfs and ask favors. I was thinking 'alright, some traditional african religious worship happens here.' But, i wasn't expecting that it happened very often. However as we were leaving, two men came up and took off their shoes in preparation for their ritual. We didn't get to witness their ritual because they waited for us to leave prior to starting. A lot of the things our guide told us about the tree was spiritual. There were stories about men trying to cut down the tree and being rewarded with death. They also showed us a line in the tree where a chainsaw had attempted to cut the tree. They say the cut has healed completely and did so within a week.

A lot of that sort of mythology/mysticism/superstition happens here in Ghana. Not so much in Accra, because its a pretty cosmopolitan city. But once you venture out, everyone believes it. Another stop that we made on the way was to the Brin river. This river is also considered a deity and there are stories about it being the nasty sister(out of a group of rivers in the area). A man once tried to reunite the Brin with one of its sister rivers by digging a canal and the river turned him into a tree. My host parents are so afraid of the river that they wouldn't allow us to go near it. That's why my pictures are of other people in the boat/swimming in the river... not anyone i know. And the whole family here is very Christian, church on Sundays, Bible study during the week, and my brothers are nearly all confirmed, plus one of the uncles is a priest. But in Ghana they have kept their traditional beliefs, while converting over to Christianity. Its the similar to the way that those in Latin America merged their beliefs while they converted, only in Ghana it seams like the two religions are side by side rather than one. If you ask around, or if the government takes a survey the whole country will saw that they are either Christian or Muslim(with just 10% practicing traditional beliefs) but in practice i'm guessing most people don't forget their theological african roots. For example, Lexis's mother(he's one of my brothers) died recently. She died in Guinea so not many were able to go to her funeral. So after the funeral when one of his aunties had a stroke everyone was convinced that the mother's spirit attacked the auntie as a sign to the family that she was angry. This weekend that part of the family went to a Christian holy man who didn't do anything for them, so then they went to a local shaman to see what could be done. I'm not sure what happened after that because Lexis is the only person from that side of the family who lives with us and he didn't go to the shaman because Christianity is against that sort of thing, but he was also just scared of it.

This post is pretty long. Perhaps i should start a new one. And I'll write more on Ghanaian faith as events come up.