On Tuesday night, I sat on the beach and managed to get devoured by a hungry army of sand flies: I have over 300 bites on my feet, hands and arms. They're almost gone now, but they were really itchy/painful so on Thursday I went to a doctor to get some medication (plus I was worried cos apparently sand fleas can burrow under your skin). The doctor, however, declared that I had chicken pox. How was she so sure? Because "if they were insect bites they wouldn't itch", and "because they're not just on your feet, hands and arms, they're on the rest of your body too [
pointing to the 3 bites on my torso, compared to 300 on my limbs]". She was convinced it was chicken pox and was admirably unfazed by all the evidence to the contrary. The fact that over 300 'chicken pox' appeared all at once was because I hadn't noticed the original 3 on my torso that they had all spread from. And it didn't matter that I've had chicken pox before, because if it's not treated properly it can come back. So what is the proper treatment? Well, she prescribed allergy pills, painkillers and calamine lotion. The plus side is that that's just what I needed for my sand fly bites!
Before that, I'd spent the weekend with the Jewish community of a small town called Sefwi Wiawso, in the Western region of Ghana. It was pretty random to go to a synagogue in the middle of nowhere in Ghana, with a group of villagers who only decided they were Jewish less than a generation ago. Their story is that all the people in that region have always had traditions similar to Judaism: they don't work on Saturdays, don't eat pork, circumcise boys whem babies (as opposed to teenagers), and - randomly - separate man and wife during menstraution (which religious Jews do). Then, about 40 years ago, someone had a dream with a vision that led him to contact some people in the States and discover that the community must be in fact Jewish (if you're interested in the community, look
here).
My illusions of just how random it was to visit this community I'd found on the internet, were shattered when my host showed me his guestbook. It seems I'm not the only Jewish visitor to Ghana who uses the internet, and they have a steady stream of visitors. As a result, they also have lots of prayer books etc, and are trying to practice mainstream Judaism. But they can't read Hebrew (which the prayers are in), so the service consisted of the 'rabbi' and congregants stitledly reading the (Biblical) English translations - which they won't have understood much of - with a few songs and the torah reading in Twi and Sefwi (local languages). It was strangely sedate compared to the singing and dancing of Ghanaian churches, but I think that's because they're unconfidently trying to adopt Westernised ceremonies.
There's a bit of a power struggle going on there (as seems to often be the case in African organisations, and also in many synagogues everywhere) - the community had ousted their 2 leaders for 'financial irregularities' after the money for building their new guesthouse (for the steady stream of visitors) ran out. Now the leaders have taken the congregants to court to regain control of the community, and of course the bank account.
I had one really cool moment in the village; it's difficult to communicate why but I'll try. It was watching some kids playing football on the dirt track in front of the house. In the background were mountains, mud huts, and a woman grinding yams for 'fufu'. They were playing with a small plastic ball, but of course to them it was the world cup. Some were in flip flops, some barefoot - one kid had one flip flop one bare foot, and one of the keepers had flip flops as gloves. They had a ref, with a bright orange plastic saxaphone whistle, and thier skills and positional play were impressive. A small boy carrying a jerry can on his head stopped to watch, then decided playing football was more important than his errand so set down his load to join in. Can't explain, but it just seemed to me the kind of scene that travelling is all about.
Yesterday I went to a very different Shabbat service, with the African Hebrew Israelites of the
Kingdom of Yah (nope, haven’t been smoking any funny stuff). They’re a group that I thought would be interesting because they claim their roots in the Israelites/Jews of the Bible. They’re a bit cultish – they started when a guy in Chicago had a vision and led 350 African Americans to Liberia, then onto Israel, as the ‘chosen people’. They now consider him to be a messiah, and most live in a kind of commune in the Israeli desert. They see themselves as a kind of 'anti-religion', returning to the basic principles of Genesis. There was lots of interesting emphasis on healthy lifestyles - they're vegans and use lots of herbal remedies.
The service was singing and dancing (like the churches here), and some lectures. There was lots of bits of Hebrew sprinkled throughout, which was weird for me (for those of you who know some hebrew: lots of 'shabbat shalom' and 'todah', chants of 'hallelu-yah' and 'yah echad', and when a cogregant liked what a speaker said, they'd shout 'ken!'). One part really burned me up though - a speaker hald up a genetics textbook, saying it had proof of their lineage from the Jews of the Bible. He read a section about how the origins of humanity have been traced to Ethiopia, saying that this is also stated in Genesis (kind of true, it can be inferred from Genesis). He followed this with an unrelated section about genetic research that had shown that 'a group of Jews called Cohenim, who are said to be descended from the priesthood, share many genes, more than other Jews', and that 'the origins of these relationships can traced to a single person 2,400 - 3,600 years ago'. See, he said, it says the African Hebrew Israelites are descended from the Jews in the Bible - as everyone nodded along. Rubbish. The research is about people with the surname Cohen, in mainstream Judaism. It was amazing to see how unambiguous science could be twisted in such a simplistic way, and people just accepted it. The only benefit of the doubt would be that he genuinely didn't understant the context of what he read. Hmm.
I'm stuck in Accra (the capital of Ghana, which is dirty, smelly, ugly and boring), waiting for my visa for Iran. I've jumped through every hoop they've put before me, so it's just a case of seeing whether they refuse anyway, drag their feet so long it's not worth it, or give me a visa. I'm getting really frustrated, and my optimism is fading...
By the way, the photo at the top is from a 'stilt village' I visited in the middle of a lagoon. The boat ride there and back was beautiful, and the village was picturesque - but the tour of the village was really uncomfortable, the villagers staring at these white people who'd come to see them in a human zoo. Love that photo though.
