THE WEEKEND IN TAMALE

It is Sunday afternoon in Tamale, and I am hungry (and it's not because I am fasting, because I am not). I have been at the internet café for a couple of hours, and I need to go for lunch. The reason I am here is to edit and send two articles to Toronto: one is on k-os’ new album Atlantis and one is for Rhema’s newsletter on the Next Dimension Conference. It’s cool because I these articles for the northern region of Ghana during Ramadan…you would think I wasn’t on another continent.

I was supposed to be done these articles yesterday, but the power was out in the downtown core (rotating government power shut downs to ‘conserve energy’) and when the power was back on, the internet connection was down.

So this morning I went to church and then came here. The church that I attended was different than usual. In the past I have attended Winning Life Chapel, but today I went to Lighthouse Chapel. I had been invited to a youth night being held there by some people from Accra who were passing out flyers in the internet café in Tamale.

That service was something to remember. It was all performances: dance groups, solo singers and choirs. The energy was intense. Until you have seen a few hundred Ghanian youth jamming hard to gospel rock (real gospel rock…I am serious) and then see the place break out into even more hysteria once the rock rhythm broke down into a hip life beat, you can only imagine. People were jumping up and down, lifting their plastic chairs over their heads, and dancing to sweat. There was also a play that I really enjoyed illustrating the protection of having your hand in Christ’s hand as you walk through life. One of the personal highlights was when they finished off the night with a reggae gospel set which had me feeling like I was in Revival Time Tabernacle…in addition to songs like, “Goodbye world”, “Born, born, born again”, try and think of the melody of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” and replace those very words with, “No Jesus, No Life”. After the service I crammed into a tro-tro and made my way back home.

Saturday morning, I slept in, did some writing for the articles, and had a great conversation with a PhD student from Harvard about the PhD project that I want to do. He thinks it is a great project, and offered some good advice about it all, but that is a conversation for another day.

Later that evening, I walked around Tamale, and then took a seat right in the centre of the town. The sky was threatening some of the heavy rains that we have been seeing as of late, and those selling their goods along the street were scrambling to get home and out of the path of the coming rain. I sat there, just watching it all. The rain did not actually come, but I admit, I thought it was going to pour.

When I got home around 10pm, I went by Auntie and Layata and watched some Kevin Costner movie that was on TV that I have never heard of. He played a illegitimate child of Elvis Presley that had organized a casino robbery.

After a nice rest, I got up and changed my plan for the morning. Initially, I was just going to stay home and rest, but I really wanted to go to church, so I went to Lighthouse. Turns out, I was very glad that I went as the praise and worship was the nicest that I have been to since I came to Ghana. I realized some new things in that time and actually began writing a poem. Once I finish it, I will post it.

So, that brings me to this present moment, where – as I said at the beginning – I am hungry and need to get some lunch! Hopefully, I can find Masumi who I was supposed to meet and we can get something.

P.S.
I know Melody does not even have an email address, but during that Christian rock jam at Lighthouse, it was like she was right there.