Keeping the Faith

Hello loyal readers. I have to say I love hearing from all of you that read the blog and show your love. Daps especially to Anti-S who is now in charge of the sweatpants freelance fan club get sign up with the fan club and send the 100 cedi registration fee to Me and Anti-S will send you a pair of sweatpants (this has not been discussed with Anti-S but I'm sure she will except the roll, also if you send me 100 cedi you won't actually get sweatpants). Ok so of course I have been busy and now that I have been getting questions to answer from family and friends (i love getting questions, things that I think are just normal will probably blow your mind.) this is sure to be a big post. My co-workers at Peace-Fm have taken a liking to me. I am pretty much their clown for entertainment as they throw jokes in twi at me because I am so confused all the time. We have a good time. Some things you should know about my co-workers and Ghanaians in general is that they are religious. They love Jebus and they want everyone to know about it. All the Tro Tros have stickers on the back window with slogans like: "Praise Jesus" "God time is the best time" "God's Son" "Jehovah" "The Rock is in the building" well not that last one but I think you get the idea, and Jay-Z is actually pretty big here people wear rocawear and Ive seen some barber shops with paintings of Hova on the signs. Not just the tro tros praise Jebus but all the shops and stores in Ghana have some sort of religious name: "Praise be the Lord cell phones" "Blessed is God Chop Bar" "Fizzling blood of Jesus restaurant." Gospel music is also one of the most popular types of music so people always ask about Boise, Idaho because apparently they produce a lot of popular Gospel tracks in Ghana. So being a Jew kinda separates me from the rest of my Jebus loving co-workers. They love asking me questions so the religion question came up and they were shocked when I said that I didn't believe in Jebus and that I was a Jew. Anyway so the long battle of trying to convert me to Christianity is something that i try to avoid with ambiguous answer to unanswerable questions. One of my co-workers Akua, who is my home girl, invited me to go to church with her on Sunday last week. I have respect for all religions and I heard that Ghanaian church is a party so i decided to go and check it out.



Grandma reassurance break: I'd just like to address my Grandma because I know that she reads this blog and say that I have not been brainwashed and turned christian. I am still a happy and Jewish boy who would pay 50 cedi for a corned beef sandwich and a bagel with lox. Some would even call me mensch. So no need to worry Jew tang clan aint nothin to... well Ill just leave it at that. Love ya grammy.



Now that we got that out of the way. I went to church early on Sunday with my friend Krista. Akua and her sister Akua met us there. They have the same name because they were born on the same day. The day you were born is a big deal here and everyday has a different name more on that later. So when we got to church the building was filling up and as usual Krista and I were the only obronis in the place. People were singing some gospel tunes while a band jammed and the bass player especially kept some funky riffs going to start off the worship. Then different preachers would come up and lead a prayer or say a sermon. The service was in English and they used a twi translator but I couldn't understand what was going on most of the time so Akua (the one i work with) would help me out. For one of the songs Akua told me that it was about how their ancestors worshiped to the wrong gods before the white man came and now they sing out the praise of the white man for bringing them Jebus. Kinda crazy. One lady during the service had the holy spirit come over her and started to shake on the ground as people at the church came over to help her out. It was all like the televangelists that you see on BET. One of the preachers would spit such fast rhymes about Jebus he was like Lil Wayne, i couldn't really understand what he was saying but i knew it was fresh. Towards the end of the service after more praise and worship and some dancing and singing the preacher asked everyone who was visiting the church for the first time today to stand up in the front. So Krista and I head on up to the front standing with about 15 other new guests and the preacher gave us all a blessing. As if it couldn't get any weirder. After the blessing we were taken up stairs for another blessing from another preacher and asked to fill out a form if we wanted to join the church. I respectfully declined seeing that I have trouble waking up early on a Sunday and accepting Jebus as my lord and savior. So instead Krista and I were given the one time only form to fill out. It had the standard name, address, phone number, ever been baptised questions, and also the last question was for prayer requests. I decided not to waste an opportunity to have the paradise way church and congregation to all focus their efforts in granting any prayer I had. So i thought hard and long about what i pray for the most. Of course world peace, cure for cancer and a mountain of ice cream came to mind but those things never seem to work out. So i instead wrote down the only thing I truly pray for on a regular basis with a passion that only G-d can understand, Ducks Victory! I know what most of you are thinking. 'this is shameful how could you do that blah blah blah' because of course G-d is already a huge ducks fan and to request that prayer puts G-d's love for the ducks in question.
Anyway sorry for the ducks tangent. There is still more...ahh ill try to make it quick. After the service we got some ice cream and headed over to my friend Akua's house. I was really excited cause I wanted to see at what level the people I work with were living at. She lived with her parents in a nice house and only has one sister which is a very small family for Ghanaians. The house was nice though and they had satelite TV and nice furniture. It was however not like my rents house, still felt like Africa. So when we got there Akua had her momma make us some kenkey. Kenkey is this pastey yellowish stuff that you eat with your hands and mush it up and dip it in this awesome hot pepper sauce with goat (ya i eat goat meat now) and chicken. Its real messy. I usually have to force down the local food and hold myself from joshing (booting (throwing up)), but i actually really liked this meal for some reason maybe cause it was real home cooking which i haven't had since I left for college (ya i said it momma!). Just joshin my momma cooks for me every once in awhile. So after the meal we were leaving when Akua let me know that her mom was, well i forget what she calls it but a person who makes prophecies, like the old lady from the matrix (she looked a lot like her too). Anyway so told me that she thought I was going to make a lot of money and that I would travel the world and help people at the same time. I was all like wow that's awesome once less thing for me to worry about. She told Krista that she would have lots of blessings. A little less specific but still good.
This weekend I went to the Volta region and I have stories about that too but I mean look at this beast of a post so I'm gonna quit.
I know that people have asked questions on the food and other such goings on but this is getting long and I promise to address all questions on the next blog... hopefully. Go Ducks!