Please excuse my recent absence. The death of a hard drive is a trying
occasion in every man's life, but time heals all wounds and money most
mechanical malfunctions.
Anyways, this past Tuesday was the week anniversary of the president's
death. The seventh day after a person's death, which precedes the
funeral, is apparently a major event in the grieving process here. To
express their sense of loss, people, particularly young adults, street
vendors and taxi and bus drivers wore the funerary colors red and
black. Many tied red bands around their bodies or side view mirrors.
Accra is a very international city, a fact that becomes evident after
not much time walking or riding around. You see the faces of
people from other continents, from Chinese businesspeople to white NGO
volunteers to Pakistani beggars. You hear French, usually spoken by
people from Côte d'Ivoire and Togo. You see secondhand vans from
Germany, Holland, Korea, and China used as buses and you read the
proverbs and biblical references written on their back windows in
creolized English and local languages. There are billboards for local
branches of universities from India. One popular street food is a
soup-free version of ramen and another is the sliced hot dog kebab.
Ghana is also a deeply Christian nation, and in spite of a Muslim
minority, Christianity seems to appear in almost every area of life. It
often colors public discourse, not only in politics (like in the US)
but in the news media as well. Many nights you can hear all night prayer sessions in residential neighborhoods and preachers often stand in the aisles of the bigger buses to preach the gospel as commuters travel across town. I had been wondering at the connection
between Christianity and internationalism here since I arrived. Of the
people I've talked to, most Ghanaians with connections abroad have a
family member who immigrated to another country, but the second most
common avenue for an international connection has been through the
church.
When President Atta Mills died, I got to thinking about this more. He
had apparently promoted Christianity abroad, and not long before his
death he had announced plans to visit Nigeria, a trip he never made
whose purpose turned out to be a consultation with a spiritual adviser.
On TV last Tuesday, the major networks ran a number of programs
dedicated to Atta-Mills's memory. One featured a Korean pastor who
through the former first lady had made a plan the day before
Atta Mills's death to visit him and pray for him the next morning. As best
as I could tell, he was the last clergyman to pray with the late
president. It struck me then that religion is not just a window into
the world for so many of the people I've met but for the president
himself too. Of course, commerce is the biggest driver of internationalism
in Ghana, but religion more often seems to engender a sense of
fraternity between Ghanaians and foreigners. I hope to bring you all more insight into this connection as I learn more about Ghana.
During his televised account of the president's final hours, Pastor Park
Ok-Soo described the last moments that he spent with the man. He said
that he prayed with Atta Mills and counseled him to give himself along
with his sins up to God. When the pastor reported that the president
promised to keep those words in his heart and then announced that he
would go off to rest, the crowd burst into applause.
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