Religion and language

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Three days. Three attempts to contact God. I don't know if He was listening, but apparently it's the thought that counts.

On the first day I succumbed to peer pressure and curiosity about my physical limits, and agreed to do a day of fasting with the family. For Muslims, Ramadan is 29 or 30 days of fasting from dawn until dusk, no food, no water. I barely made one day, let alone over four weeks. At the moment it is light here from just after five until just before seven, so I had almost 14 hours without water. In Ghana. Which is quite warm, in case I haven't mentioned it. I was up by half four for breakfast, then back to bed for an hour or so. I got up for the second time and cycled to work. 30 minutes of light exercise under the morning sun left me pretty thirsty. But still more than ten hours from my next drink. I can honestly say I wasn't hungry all day, but the thirst got worse and worse. With a happy knack I had picked one of the hottest days since I arrived. By midday I was struggling to concentrate on work. After the complete non-event that was lunchtime I gave up trying to do anything productive. In the afternoon I alternated between dozing, playing solitaire on the computer and talking to Seidu (for whom this was only one day out of 30, and no big deal). The bike ride home was quite unstable and I had a few near misses with the local drivers/wildlife/children. But I made it home and was greeted with great delight by the family, as it was almost time to break fast, and most of them did not think I would make it through the whole day. I sat in my cool room sipping water and forcing down a little watermelon. I was so dehydrated it took two more hours before I felt hungry enough to eat properly. 'Would you like to do another day?' someone asked. I was too tired to express my full and colourful feelings on the matter, and could only manage a weak 'no'.

The next day a Christian lady at work offered to take me to the church her family attend for a mid week service. Given what I had heard about the boisterous nature of West African churches, this seemed too good an opportunity to miss. On the way there after work we made an unexpected stop for some street food for dinner (more on that later) then I sat with her kids in the small church room whilst enough amps and items of sound kit were wheeled in for a small rock gig. In summary, the gospel singing was good, if a little loud, but I found the repeated standing up and pleading the Lord to enter our hearts, shouting 'Thank you Jee-sus' and waving arms around a bit much. It was all a bit more impassioned than the C of E church I occasionally attended as a child. The whole thing lasted over 2 1/2 hours (having started late, like everything else here) of which the senior preacher gave a sermon for about forty minutes. The subject, righteousness and God's grace, was interesting and well thought out, but I struggled with the delivery. The best description I can give is to think of somewhere in between Martin Luther King and Hitler. That's probably a little harsh, but hopefully it gets the message across. He certainly did.

And the third day? Hunched over the big white telephone begging God or whoever else would listed to make it all stop, courtesy of the previous night's street food. Actually it was mainly the bin in my room, but in these days of mobile communication you don't need to be plugged in to send a message. Clearly someone was smiling on me as, after a day at work where the ratio of time-at-desk to time-in-the-bathroom had inexorably moved in one direction, I arrived home to find that the water was back on after being off for three days. I have never really been one to count my blessings, but on that day a working flush would have been top of the list. I'm sure the family would have agreed. On a serious note, the dehydration that followed all of this was even worse than the fating day, to the point where the family were wanting to take me to hospital as they thought it might be something worse than food poisoning. Thankfully I made it through an uncomfortable night and, after much rest, I am now back to full health.

In between all of this I have been trying to learn a little of the local language. I realise at this stage that it will be tricky to describe as I haven't really attempted to learn the written version, but hopefully the phonetic spellings below will be OK. The main language of the Northern region is Tahballi, one of around 45 officially recognised in Ghana. The system of greetings is complex and important here. Everything is pretty hierarchical, so it is essential to know who you are addressing before you start. Fortunately 'Foreign white guest' puts me a fair way up the ladder, which means it's ok for me to mess it up with most people. The absolute basics were quite straightforward, as the response to most initial greetings is 'naaaaa' - a word that conveys it's meaning through it's length, tone an volume. I can now get through an exchange of 5 or 6 greetings and responses without too many issues. I even managed to communicate pretty well for the two days when the English speaking members of the family went to Kumasi, as I could say 'I'm going out', 'your food is delicious' and similar basic phrases that supplemented the usual arm waving and talking slowly and loudly of any Englishmen abroad.

In general the standard of spoken English is pretty mixed, generally depending on how long people spent in school. Most of the kids are pretty good as education is on the up in this area - school is certainly taken very seriously in this house. There are some English phrases that are peculiar to the area - for example nothing is ever 'little or 'short' or 'close', but always 'small small', eg "how far is it?" "only small small". I particularly like the way people confirm that they plan to return from any short (small small) journey they are about to take - it's always "I go to (...). I go and come back". I don't know if there has been a spate of disappearances or absconsions around here, but I guess it's reassuring. I actually think that the local use of 'tomorrow next' is a bit neater than our 'the day after tomorrow', but I doubt it'll catch on.

I can actually follow quite a lot of certain conversations thanks to the limited vocabulary that exists in Tahballi. It has no complex political or economic words, football terms, numbers or time descriptors and, given that politics and football have been frequent topics for conversation, I have been able to gather the general feeling from the English words, tone of voice and body language.

The phrase I have heard most of all is 'Sehminga hello', shouted at me several times a day by the children as I cycle past. It translates as 'Hello white man' - once I had checked the translation I felt much happier as I been merrily waving and responding without a clue what it meant. I figured from the huge grins and waves it was unlikely to be rude, but it was nice to confirm it.

Next time, I go out of Tamale to visit a village you could literally throw a stone or shea nut across, and I'll tell the full saga of getting to Mole National park. Journeys here aren't quite as straightforward as back home.

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