28-Sep-2008
Ghana Journal: Mfantsi Christianity
For Ghanaians, the intersection between Ashanti and Fanti religions and Christianity is actually very close. Like Christians, these traditional religions believe in a supreme being. Ashantis and Mfantsis (the proper name for the Fanti) believe in a supreme being that cannot be addressed directly, but must be approached indirectly through the intermediaries of lesser gods and ancestors, much like Catholics pray to saints. The other day in my Fanti class Rose was discussing politeness in Ghana culture when she meandered into a story about her family. What struck me was how she did not see any conflict between her Fanti beliefs and her beliefs as a Pentecostal evangelical Christian.
Rose’s maternal grandmother raised her in the royal family compound in Womasi where several generations of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins lived. Her grandmother was a queen in a matriarchal community in which queens and kinds instead of chiefs are the leaders of the community. Her grandmother was the eleventh child born to her great grandparents, but the only child to survive infancy. All of the previous ten children died in infancy, which was not uncommon with all the deadly diseases that a vulnerable infant could contract, from malaria to dengue to yellow fever to small pox to cholera, to name just a few. The Mfantsi believed that evil spirits take new borns because their innocence is prized by the spirits. At the same time, it is believed that when an infant dies, his or her soul will return immediately in the next child born to the parents. The tragedy here is that once an infant’s soul has learned to leave its body it is extremely difficult to get it to stay. The evil spirits recognize the soul and snatch it away even more easily. To counter this, the parents must perform kosanmba, ritual scarring. They cut Rose’s grandmother around the corners of her eyes and her mouth with three slits. These cuts were meant to mirror the crow’s feet around the eyes and the wrinkles around the mouth that people get as they grow old. These scars are meant to trick the evil spirits into believing that these infants are no longer young, but are actually old. As well, it is believed that the evil spirits find these scars ugly and so don’t want infants who have received them. They also give the infants funny names. Rose’s grandmother was named Owu, which means death.
Whether one, the other or both reasons are correct, Rose’s grandmother survived. Rose speaks of her grandmother with a sense of gratitude that she survived and a strong faith in the power of the kosanmba rituals.
Without any transition, Rose then launched into a story about her oldest sister Theresa, who is now the matriarch of the family. This account had the trappings of a folk tale, but the way Rose shared it with me, it was clear that she was telling me fact. Rose’s sister is more than thirty years older than her. Her father, a chief himself, had Rose in his sixties and died shortly thereafter. Her father had eight children, all with different mothers. Since Theresa was the oldest child living in Ghana, she became the head of the clan. Rose, like everyone, called her Nana or chief, as a show of respect for her sister’s position in the community. This year, however, after her brother’s funeral she withdrew that honorific, and in a show of utter contempt she began calling her Sister Theresa, suggesting that she and her sister were of equal standing to her. This came about because her older sister, who is wealthy having lived and worked in America for years before she retired to Ghana, left Rose, a thirty-two-year-old single mother of two, with the bills for her brother’s funeral. Ten months later she is still paying them off.
As Rose shared this with me, she explained that her sister’s behavior was not surprising. She remembered when she was a girl of ten or eleven. Her sister had returned to the palace she had inherited from their father, the chief, for vacation from Far Rockaway Queens where she lived most of the year. This summer Rose was called by her sister to help open the palace for her sister and her family. As I mentioned before, Rose lived with her maternal grandmother about four miles away. After Rose came over to her Nana’s, she worked cleaning and scrubbing all day and well into the night. She worked so hard that she lost track of time and didn’t realize how late it was until well after midnight. Since she was so young, she was afraid to walk the four miles home in the dark without a flashlight so she went to her cousin’s room. Her cousin was already in bed and asleep. She woke her and asked if she could spend the night with her. Her cousin told her she had to ask Nana. They both knew that if Nana found out, she would explode in anger if Rose had not gotten permission first.
Rose was terrified of Nana so when she approached her, she didn’t ask outright to spend the night. Instead, she told her Nana that she was very tired and didn’t realize how late it was and how dark it had become. She was hoping that her Nana would invite her to spend the night like any polite and hospitable Ghanaian would do. She couldn’t imagine that her sister would make her walk the four miles in the dark. Rose, of course, was wrong. Nana told her that if she was tired then she better go home and sleep. She added that she wanted her back at the house at dawn because there was still a lot to do. Rose swallowed hard and left. Outside the palace she noticed a man standing by the gate. She tried not to look at him because if you look into the eyes of an evil spirit he will take your soul away. She hurried along the dark path trying not to stumble or trip. Behind her she heard the footsteps of the man. She increased her pace, but as you would expect, the man behind her kept pace. When she was nearly halfway home, she realized that the man was now walking beside her.
As he began to ask her questions about her life, she noticed that he was dressed in the ceremonial robes of a chief. He carried a gold staff of a chief as well. She found his voice comforting, but when he asked her where she was going, she told him the village just beyond her own. He said that he was going to that village as well. Rose felt good that she had tricked him so that she might reach home before he decided to steal her soul. When they arrived in her village she stopped and pointed to her home. She told the man that this was where she lived. Then man then responded by saying that he wanted to make sure that she got home safely and that someone was home to take care of her since she was so young. He would walk her to her door. As they got to the house, he asked her which room her mother lived in. Rose was so afraid that she didn’t correct him and tell him she lived with her grandmother. Instead, she went to the window beside the front door. The man shook his head and said her mother doesn’t sleep in that room. He was right, of course. In her panic, Rose had forgotten that her mother had recently moved to the back of the house. She took the man around to the back of the house where the man rapped on her grandmother’s window. He called to her grandmother to let Rose into the house. They then walked around to the front door again. When her grandmother opened the door, Rose turned to the man to explain, but he was no longer there. He had gone.
Rose described the man and what had happened to her grandmother. Her grandmother smiled and said not to worry. That was no stranger. That was her father and he was watching over her. Ever since, she has felt his loving presence guiding her and protecting her through life.
As Rose recounted this story, I was struck by how the way she shared this experience I could understand how her Fanti beliefs could never conflict with her Pentecostal Christian beliefs. These are both stories of the holy spirit coming down to protect the innocent. I was reminded of standing in her church’s sanctuary a few weeks back and how the spirit in the room uplifted even me, someone with only a few dried crumbs of faith upon which to feed. Whenever I think of my lack of faith, I am often reminded of Winnie the Pooh, a bear of very little brain. Like Pooh, I am a person of very little faith, but what little I still have I hope is kind and generous so that when I hear a story such as Rose narrated I can share in her conviction and outright certainty without any hint of condescension or irony. I am humbled by stories like these because they speak so honestly and openly to the contradictions that we all live with in negotiating our lives each day.
Alone now in my chalet after four days of visiting Ashanti shrines in the central region, I can’t help but think of Rose’s story of her father’s spirit protecting her and how she doesn’t even consider it necessary to resolve this traditional belief with her Pentecostal faith. I find myself reflecting on my own incongruities, which are certainly more than I can ever be conscious of. I turn to thoughts about my stay here in Ghana. I wonder about the insanity of such a journey, or perhaps the extreme hubris of leaving my family and traveling to another continent, of coming to a place that provides little comfort and deep loneliness. I miss my daughters, Ella and Natalie, beyond comprehension. I miss Elise in a way that language cannot contain. I know that my absence causes them pain as well. Despite this fact, I am here. Did I exile myself? Or is it something else that I have done? Perhaps I chose displacement to learn something about myself. Most likely it is both as well as a dozen other reasons that I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand. Certainly, some sort of delusion combined with hubris has played a role. No matter how much I try to examine this, I find myself returning again and again to Rose and her story. I find myself lost in her narrative and am humbled to have been present when she shared it. Somehow, through some sort of alchemy of the human spirit, something happened that I am reluctant—not because of some romantic sense of self importance but rather a cold and rational understanding of my own inconsequence—to attempt to name.
