Today was heaps better, but still not actually quite productive.
Got up early and went with joseph to his work. He's a photographer, weddings and the like. But he also does passport photos so today i went with to his shop. At about 11am i decided to go off and find an internet cafe. Which i did, but sadly i had not brought my blog posts with me so no postage was possible. After the interwebz i met up with Alex and we went back to New Adiembra which is the suburb of Sefwi that the Jews live in. He told me that this afternoon at 3 i would be able to teach the kids, but at 3 he didn't come to collect me so i found rachel, joseph's 10 year old daughter and had her take me to Alex. We found him and i got him to take me to the shule and to get rachel to gather the kids for the lesson. I think i've learnt by now that i have to push for things to get done here in ghana.
Once in the shule Alex took me through their services. Their shabbat morning one is pretty standard but they don't have a Friday night service. Which i think is pretty sad. They do a translation of the torah portion into twi (the local language) but they don't read with a tune so Alex has asked me to read from the torah this shabz. They don't have a mechitza but men and women sit separately.
At about this stage rachel came back and said that the kids aren't around and we won't be able to have a class.
So Alex and i stayed in the shule and we discussed the history of the community.
Oh and Alex's love life.
So for hundreds of years apaz the community kept kosher and kept shabbat but didn't really know they were Jewish, it was more that these were the rules of the paramount chief in the area and so everybody obeyed but then the missionaries came and gave him lots of pretty things and so he agreed to relax the rules so people didn't have to worship on shabz anymore. Also then a fetish priestess in the original location of the community, adiembra (i think) incited mini-pogroms so they left the village and mowed to this new part, new adiembra. But then the community lost direction and began to convert to christianity. But in the 70s their leader (whose name i forget) had a dream/prophecy that they were Jewish and had to find more Jews. So he found some in America and started writing to them. The community built up but after his death in 1991 the community waned again. That is except for Alex armah's brothers and friends. They convinced people to return to judaism (they hadn't actually gone to another religion they just stoppd identifying as Jewish) and eventually they built a shule. Alex got in touch with kulanu eventually and was sent to the community in uganda where there is a yeshiva (of 10 students) and now he is due to receive some sort of rabbinical ordination.
The only problem is they won't let him become a 'rabbi' or the head of the community until he marries. The trouble is that the community is 10 families much of which are his own family. So how does one find a woman when you are a jew in ghana? Well, he tried his best in uganda but the cultures were simply too different for him to find a suitable wife. He assures me that he's working on it but that he doesn't want to rush into such a big decision. So for now becoming a rabbi will have to wait while he sorts out his marital status.
In the meantime he wants to start a community nursery school with the hopes that from there he can build a primary and eventually a secondary school and thereby really boost the community.
I asked him some questions about observance in the community. Apparently shabbat was always kept though obviously the rules about not using electricity are new (then again so is electricity). But they didn't write or clean or work on shabbat even before they had contact with other Jews. As for kashrut they only ever ate kosher animals and were killing them in a way that they thought was kosher. However, since Alex went to yeshiva he has learnt how to kill chickens. As such until he properly learns how to kill a goat that will have to do. Though he says that there are still some families that kill their own goats their own way. As for matters of milk and meat, turns out to not be an issue since ghanaians don't eat milk. The only dairy products they would have, maybe is some condensed milk in their tea (since there's no fresh milk in ghana), but they don't even have tea very often. They would never have a milk based meal and plenty have never ever seen cheese before.
They import their matzot in from America, they don't have a tradition for matza, but i'm hoping that maybe tomorrow i will teach Alex to make it. i'm also considering making challah, the only issue for both of these is that i've never even seen an oven in ghana. So while i can make matza i suppose on the back of a wok overturned onto a fire (like pita) i feel like challah really requires an oven.
As for tonight, i had jolof rice with an egg for dinner then finished watching 'willy wonka and the chocolate factory' with rachel (i'd forgotten how seriously brilliant that movie is). Afterwards bernard and joseph junior (JJ) joined us. I don't really like either of them. JJ constantly asks me for money and Bernard thinks nothing is more hilarious than things i don't know. Such as that a local god can curse you and make you possessed. I know, hilarious that i didn't know that. Also that i don't speak twi. Totally hysterical. After 'willy wonka' i put on 'shaun of the dead' coz i figured that ghanaians like that type of horror-lite movie. The trouble is that ghana horror-lite movies are about people being cursed by black magic and becoming possessed and the like. Ie: things that 'really' happen. So when bernard saw this movie, he was convinced that there are real zombie attacks in the west just like people 'really' become possessed by the devil in ghana. Look, i don't want to mock their beliefs, but it's a bit of an issue when you can't recognise what's a movie and real life. He only believed me when i said it's not true and has never happened when i pointed out the impossibility of continuing to attack somebody with a giant whole through your centre as was the case with the zombies. After he realised this wasn't true or possible he thought the movie was stupid. Why would you watch a movie about impossible things he asked.
It's interesting, sarah and rachel are josephs biological daughters and the two bys JJ and bernard are relatives who he's caring for. I don't whether it's a boy thing or a genetic thing but the girls are super intelligent (rachel is out-of-control smart for a 10 year old) and competent whereas the boys are more than a little bit slow. Maybe it's a maturity thing?
In any case, bed time now. Who knows what will happen tomorrow.
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