PASTOR JAMES IS IN THE BUILDING!!!

Greetings from "Little England". Though my return ticket in March has a stop over in London for a couple of weeks, I am talking about Ghana. The area is called Osu Re and it known what people say is Ghana's busiest stretch of road, Oxford Street.

From one end to the next you find restaurants, boutiques, western style grocery stores, and street vendors selling everything from bootleg dvds to African art.

The street is just down the street from the JHR house where I first touched down in Ghana. The heavy traffic (both motorized and human), the insistence of street vendors, and the brazen skam artists who try to hook would be foreign fish with "pssssst, where are you from?" wrapped in a deceptive smile; deceptive because they are usually not smiling for the same reason that the nieve may think...he doesn't really care as that much about where you are from, being from abroad is enough is other Ghanians don't seem to be worthy of thier kind gesture of instant friendship...though most Ghanians know why they are smiling at complexions from olive to ice. My first time walking down this street had me a little uneasy; I really did not know what to think of it all. I didn't know if taking out huge sums of money (100 Canadian is about 840,000 cedis) from the ATM on the street would make me a target, nor did I know how to deal with super-friendly and really pushy skam artists.

Walking down Oxford Street today was another world from my first ventures down the block. For one, I felt very at ease in the chaos (it's only now that I think of describing it as such). After going to the western style restaurant Frankie's with Idrissa and Adwoa for lunch, we were approached by a man his tactic is the cut right into your personal space and confess, "I know stealing is wrong, so instead of robbing I'm asking you for money", then changing the tone to desperate, he adds look at me, "I am starving". I know the script because I have heard it before.

Walking the busy strip alone a few months ago to go and get a family size pizza (which I ate myself - a feat I have accomplished a few times when I have had enough fufu and tzeat for awhile), I was approached by this same man. Thrown off by him in my space, his desperation, and being on the street alone, I gave him 20,000 cedis (about 2.50 Canadian): it was the only bill that I had on me. In a combination of boldness, rudeness and just being IGNORANT, he appeared upset and insisted I should give him 60,000 cedis. At that point I continued down the street. He started to follow me, but stopped.

This time, I put my hand on his shoulder and, in his personal space, told him "I know you, I heard it, we're not giving you anything". He walked away and we continued on down the street.

Aside from my lunch date with the ladies, I also met with Ato, the JHR country director. The meeting went very well, aside from constant interuptions from his phone that does not stop ringing. We are going to be sending stories from Justice down to Joy FM in Accra at least once a week. They will be broadcasting them on air and online at www.myjoyonline.com, so I will let you all know when to tune in.

Yesterday night, I also had an adventure taking the tro tro to the Golden Tulip to meet with Pastor James last night. Kwaku was going to drive me, but Emmanuel was out with the car and did not have his phone with him. Kwaku was also tired so against Mama Ackerson's wishes, and my lack of worry, he escorted to me to the tro tro station. Without incident I found the hotel and headed to the front desk. While I did not find Pastor James in his room, a short walk to the outdoor pool deck led me to him and two companions. While looking for him, my only thought was where would I be sitting. When I looked at the spot that was most attractive to me, I saw Pastor James behind the leaf of a palm bush. While his two colleagues were shocked that he knew me (as they thought they were the only ones that he knew in Ghana, I guess), Pastor and his pastor friends invited me to sit down.

After running to his room to get the package (which included a birthday card, my bank card and a t-shirt commemorating the 50th anniversary of St. Andrews Anglican church - the church that I was raised in while in Toronto, and which, ironically is around the corner from Rhema), we began a conversation on global politics of (pardon the pun) "Biblical proportions".

We spoke about war, human rights, development, slavery, genocide, terrorism, colonialism, among other major subjects. Much of the converstaion touched upon the American agenda around the globe and the nature of the relationship to the Christian church. To put it more simply, is Bush doing God's will?

I suggested that fighting a war against terror fuels it, and that to fight terror we must reduce and eliminate desperate conidtions and vulnerable populations. One of the suggestions made at the table was that as the Israelites had to fight the Philistines, so to God's people had to fight. To this I ask a series of questions:

Would you say that modern "Islamic" terrorism is worse than historical American White supremacy? Is suicide bombing worse than lynchings?

The question is rhetorical.

My next question was why was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. right with his anti-violence approach to fight that evil right over the self-defence of the Black Panther Party or the "By any means necessary" mentality, expressed by Malcom X and adopted by countless others (note: their is a national holiday for Dr. King and not for Malcom, which confirms whose approach was deemed as 'right').

If Dr. King (inspired by Ghandi) was right, then why is fighting 'the axis of evil' accepted. If non-violence was supposed to be used to stop the lynching, bombings, brutality and Jim Crow laws, then why is it not employed to fight terrorism?

One interesting stat that I saw on the BBC documentary about Muslims in the US called "I'm American Too" is that attendance at mosques in the US has substantially increased since 9-11. Terrorism was also not something that many people were worried about before the war on terror - people were more worried about the threat of global warming than Sadam and Osama.

Essentially, I was imagining a nation that would actually stand upon the principles of the gospel: "turn the other cheek", "forgiveness", "take care of the widow, orphan, etc". When you spend thousands of time more on weapons than you do on helping people, are you a Christian nation?

So that was quite the conversation.

All said and done, we prayed together and I headed back to Sakumono. I was so happy to see Pastor James in Ghana!