Even in God's house, Ghanaian men rule

When you're homesick for Ghana, there's nothing more heartwarming than visiting a Ghanaian church. I took to doing that a few months ago. You enter the church and suddenly, you're in Ghana. Everyone is dressed in traditional wear. The music is Ghanaian and loud. The people are dancing, laughing, including the pastor and children. After church, and I kid you not, you come out to find people selling homemade Ghanaian snacks like 'sweet bad', fried, crunchy chips, and beoflot (Ghanaian doughnuts) and groundnut cake. The Ghanaian worshiper is pragmatic. People get hungry after singing and dancing, so why not make a little money as well as worship? But this past Sunday, I saw something that was tragically funny.

The pastor announced that a couple had a testimony to share about the goodness of the Lord. Said family lined up in front of the stage and the pastor handed the microphone to the husband. The husband talked and it was about how his wife entered some sweepstakes or something and won a car. I mean the wife WON. Then the pastor gave the mic to the wife because she had something to say. She had received a call that armed robbers were in her parents' house. She talked about how helpless and frightened she was, how she knelt to pray, how her father had no weapon but grabbed the Bible and said to the robbers that he would use it as a weapon, how the robbers, typical of Ghanaian criminals, decided to leave him alone and left without hurting him. While the woman was still talking, her husband just reached over and grabbed the phone from her and talked about the goodness of the Lord. He was a bore. The woman had no other reaction than to smile and start dancing. I'm glad there was no conflict, but I wondered if she would even consider telling her husband later not to disrespect her in public. Did she even know it was disrespect? I doubted it. If someone like me mentioned it, I would only be told I was a trouble-maker by my fellow women. Women have made some strides, but we still have a long way to go.

Wetting my feet

I'm new to blogging, but I'm going to do my best!

Last Saturday, my best male friend in Ghana got married. Good luck to him! I really like the bride. But you know what's funny? The wedding was yesterday although they were already married. Ghanaians are so funny. They do traditional marriages, called an "engagement", a rather elaborate and expensive ceremony unifying the two families. The man has to buy all kinds of things for the girl: clothes, ring, Bible, jewellry and booze for the family. That's marriage. But thanks to past British colonialism, Ghanaian girls don't feel properly married unless they've said I do the western way. Which is why half the time, the girls are pregnant at the altar, something that makes foreign missionaries frown--yikes, they had sex before marriage! Anyway, congratulations twice to the not-so-newly-weds!