Thursday

In the tro to town this morning, I bumped into Emmanuel, a guy I met last week who is my age and the son of the chief of a nearby village. Sitting between us was this old man who started talking to me. His third and fourth questions (after name? and where from?) were ‘are you a Christian?’ and ‘have you accepted Jesus as your saviour?’ Faith is not as personal of a thing here as it is at home! I had to move back a seat soon because someone got out but I got to listen in to an interesting conversation between him and Emmanuel, who is pretty religious, but not pushy in the slightest (at least not yet!).

Seeing as it’s Easter Weekend, religious activity seems to have reached a fever pitch. There are commercials on TV showing the crucifixion with no obvious sponsor, posters everywhere for various events, and it also seemed like all of Ghana was in Kumasi today! This is a very religious society, at least superficially. Fittingly enough: “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum came on as I was typing this paragraph.

On Sunday, Emmanuel is supposed to take me to a durbar in his village, which is near where I live. They are commemorating a new palace for the chief (his dad) and the King of the Ashantis is supposed to be there, but he might just send his deputy. I’m looking forward to it. Should be a little different than a normal Easter Sunday in Canada—I don’t think there’s going to be an egg hunt, but I’ll let you know.