October 5, 2008
October 5, 2008
Ghana Journal: Except the Lord
I’ve now been in Ghana for two months and will be here for three more. Until yesterday my two favorite signs were “road works aheard” posted on the corner of my street and “Man! Know Thyself Pharmacy”, which is the name of a pharmaceutical business in Kotokraba market. A close third, but it wasn’t really a sign, was the program for the retirement party of Mr. Gogovi, honoring his thirty years of service as a professor of the Department of English. One of the events listed in the program for the evening was the “Presentation of the Plague.” Since this does not actually constitute an official sign, I’ve had to relegate Mr. Gogovi’s program to a mental appendix of notable phrases noticed and read in and about Ghana. Mr. Gogovi’s party was located in the basement of the library, which is noted for its shelves being a sort of jazz-fusion between the collections described in Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel” and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Even though all of the volumes are meticulously catalogued on their spines with Dewey Decimal numbers, none of the books are actually placed on the shelves in any kind of order. Space and convenience seem to be the determining factor of maintaining the collection’s order. Higher shelves contain few books, while low shelves are packed tightly. Shelves closest to the aisles are packed tighter than the shelves deeper in stacks.
Today, however, as I walked along the road from the main post office in Pedu to the old section of Cape Coast, I noticed a building on a hill with very large letters inscribed on its front proclaiming “Except the Lord.” I read this sign and re-read it and then read it one more time before taking out my camera and taking three photographs of it. (I wanted to make sure I preserved the proclamation adequately. Hence, three, not one, photos. (See link: http://picasaweb.google.com/labanhill/ExceptTheLord#) At first, I thought perhaps someone had misspelled “accept,” and I chuckled to myself in a sort of superior way at the thought that the author did not know the difference. Smirking I quickly deduced that in a primarily oral society, such as I imagine Ghana, the difference between these two words might be difficult to differentiate.
As I passed the building, I let this thought percolate. My thoughts roamed to other signs I had noticed over these two months: the Precious Choice auto dealership, the four God Is Great furniture stores, The Message Clothing Boutique, the Come Closer Ventures, the Is Not By Might Construction and numerous other businesses that seemed more interested in promoting a philosophy or an ironic assertion than carving out a market niche. I thought about the cross dressing men and clowns who crash traditional Akan ceremonies to mock the solemn events and how the priests and priestesses embrace their play. (See links: http://picasaweb.google.com/labanhill/ExceptTheLord# and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvL05ImNlVg.) Still, it took 24 hours and a conversation with the Ghanaian playwright Victor Yankah for me to realize that a joke was being played on me. “Except the Lord” had to be the result of something more intentional than simple ignorance. Otherwise, the sign would have been corrected long ago.
Like most countries in the world, the line between church and state does not exist in Ghana. The notion of religion is fluid here. No public event begins without an opening prayer and a closing prayer. People’s conversations are sprinkled with Akan proverbs and quotes from the Bible. The lines between the Akan religion and Christianity are even blurred. Most Ghanaians have no difficulty incorporating Akan beliefs about ancestors, lesser gods, and spirits with their deep-held faith in an all-powerful Christian God. The knotty problem of the Holy Trinity, which has rent Christianity for two thousand years, is not an inexplicable contradiction that needs to be resolved. It just is, just as you pray to your ancestors to intercede on your behalf with the Christian God and you pray to the god of the lagoon to make the fish plentiful.
When I put “Except the Lord” in the context of Ghanaian culture, I realized the author of this sign was mocking me, a reader who was not in the know. For those who were cued into this tradition of proverbs and public expressions of philosophical and religious musings, would immediately recognize the phrase for what it is: the beginning of quotation from the Bible. While gently mocking the ignorant, the abbreviated statement leads the knowing to the first verse of the King James translation of Psalm 127.
1. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. 2. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. 3. Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
This psalm is titled the “Song of the degrees of Solomon.” Unlike the “Songs of Solomon,” this psalm parses the degrees of difference between man and God. In particular, this verse seems to be reaching out to all those who misread the abbreviated sign. In its ironic and insidious way, the words mock and gently scold the reader. If you are the kind of person who reads “Except the Lord” as a statement of ignorance, then you are the kind of person who believes you are in control of your fate, who believes you are “the master of your domain” to appropriate what is perhaps the epitome of this perspective, the television show Seinfeld. As the ultimate play on your ego, you will never understand how much you toil in futility unless you “accept” the Lord.
Finally, after having googled “Except the Lord” and discovering its true reference, I read Psalm 127 several times. Then I clicked onto Saint Augustine’s commentary on the psalm. Now, I am torn between my new enlightenment and my dogged, intractable belief in its refutability. Nevertheless, I am humbled by the complexity, sophistication and certainty of its message, but remain unchanged.
