My Visit to Sefwi Wiawso: Part Two!

Sorry for the delay folks - internet's down at work for the past week and a half and gathering the Sefwi Wiawso history caused some delay.

Enjoy!

Gabrielle

The Early Bird Gets the Worm... while cawing at ear-piercing volume

It is difficult to identify the precise sound that woke me up the following morning. It could have been the roosters’ crows. And I stress roosterS as there were several of these menacing creatures competing for the championship title of loudest and longest (and indeed most obnoxious) cockledoodledoo - a game that lasted several hours despite the widely held belief that roosters only crow at the break of dawn. I have no doubt that this yelling match is a cruel and revengeful prank chickens play on their human masters. I believe it to be carefully plotted each and every night.

But it couldn’t have been the roosters as I have grown accustomed to their screeches living in Accra. Yes, chickens serve as Mother Nature’s very own alarm clock even in a busy city like Accra. There’s no snooze button but a heavy rock traveling at high speed usually does the trick. So says the vegetarian...

Back to what woke me up that morning... It could have been the crunching of dried grass gradually increasing in volume as it approached my window.

“If those kids are peering into my window at 5 in the morning, I swear I’m going to-” I peered out the window. Indeed there were kids... but not the human kind. They were literally kids - baby goats. (see what I did there?? Bah dum dum ching!)

Once I heard the sound of a sweep brushing the concrete followed by the creaking of opening doors, the acoustics of teeth brushing and the slapping of flip flops against heels, I knew I had no chance of falling back asleep. It was 5:30am and clearly it was time to start the day.

I walked outside, brushed my teeth and made a trip to the dreaded outhouse where, try as I might, I was never successful at ignoring the orchestra of buzzing flies swarming my body. Yes, I know I’m a bit of a princess.

The Outhouse: door on the left is room with linoleum floor for bucket showering, door on the right, toilet

I asked Rahel, the 9 year old twinkly-eyed girl who greeted me the night before, if I could boil some water on the fire. At this point, I hadn’t yet learned that the family will do everything in their power to prevent you from lifting a finger. This is something I deeply appreciated but deeply dreaded at the same time. I don’t deal with guest treatment very well. I prefer to be involved in the prepping and the doing and the cleaning and the cooking because it lets me feel at par with the people with whom I’m staying. I’m uncomfortable in the role of “visitor” (if you haven’t already guessed from my 900 references to being a nervous wreck everywhere I go). Were I a more aggressive person, I would force myself onto people I meet much quicker in an effort to catalyze my progression from “guest” to “friend” or, at the very least, to “equal.” But alas, like a true Canadian, I hold my reservations at being too forward or pushy. Gd forbid I come off as AMERICAN! Every Canadian’s worst nightmare! Instead, I voice the odd protest in a series of lackluster inarticulates: “but I... Oh no... Well, I... uh, ok.” 

Rahel informed me that “the lady” will be bringing me hot water with my breakfast so I should wait for her. And as if hearing her cue from the wings of a stage, Mata (the woman who provided me with dinner the night before) entered with a basket of goods. Included amongst these goods was (cue the Hayden-esque choir voices) a thermos of hot water!

I was smart enough this time around to bring my own coffee from home. I have learned not to take chances with the items you depend on the most for comfort.

Mata removed the cover of the breakfast plate and there sat a pile of fried-egg sandwiches. Not one or two... or even three. A PILE. Any loyal follower of the Atkins diet would faint at the mere sight of such a mountain of carbs! Or, they would faint from the high cholesterol levels and urinary keytosis that result from choosing to eat a buttered steak in lieu of an apple as an afternoon snack. But I digress...

I consider myself the type of person who will happily force down an extra helping or two in order to please a generous host. Some call it martyrdom but I’m not one for self-aggrandizing labels. The term “hero” would work just fine. But a pile of fried-egg sandwiches, delicious as they are, was a bit excessive. I had two and probably forced down a third before quickly passing the plate around to the kids and other members of the compound.

“You’re invited!” I yelped in a rush. I didn’t want Mata to see that I wasn’t finishing my food. Side note: “You’re invited” is an expression that Ghanaians say when they are offering you the food they’re eating. It’s like back home when we notice someone staring at us eating a delicious meal and we self-consciously snap out of our culinary utopia and with a mouth full of food ask “would you like some?” And just like us North Americans, Ghanaians say this even when they don’t mean it - leaving you wonder, “am I really invited?” End of side note.

Speaking of people around the compound, I think I’ll use this opportunity to to introduce the key players in my experience with the Sefwi Wiawso community.

A Who’s Who Guide to The Sefwi Wiawso Jewish Community as Reported by Someone With a Horrible Memory (someone with a horrible memory but I don’t remember who...)

The compound

In the compound (Joseph Armah’s compound, that is) we have:

Joseph - the father

Gladys - the mother

Anthony - eldest or second-eldest son (around 21)

Patrick - eldest or second-eldest son (around 20)

Grace - Either Joseph’s daughter or niece (about 18 or 19 years old)

Joshua - Joseph’s son (around 12)

Bright - Joseph’s son (around 10 or 11)

Rahel - daughter, the youngest of the siblings (9 years old - she told me her exact age)

Frank - technically a nephew to Joseph I believe, but he was pretty much treated as one of the children. (around 7 years old) 

Mata - Not sure how she's related to Joseph but she lives on the adjacent compound. Her husband, Joseph Nipah, is the community's kosher butcher. He is in charge of slaughtering the animals for the Passover seders.

David - Mata’s son (around 11 or 12) and Joseph’s nephew. Lives with Mata on the adjacent compound.

Joseph’s brother - I’m an idiot and forget his name. Let’s call him George for now. Lives on the compound.

A mother and her teenage daughter - Again, I’m an idiot and forget their names. They live on the compound as well. I’m not entirely sure of their relationship to Joseph.

Seven goats - kinship unknown

Eight chickens - kinship unknown but their crowing suggest that they belong to the “Annoyingberg” family. Or the “annoyingBIRD” family for that matter! Ha!

One cat - cute as a button but the unfortunate home to a family of fleas, mites and other disreputable allergens.

And a partridge in a pear tree!

Jokes aside, I actually have no idea how many goats, sheep or chickens belong to the Armahs but at any given time of the day they could be found roaming the compound getting into trouble. Not like felony trouble. I mean, they didn’t break into our rooms and pull a knife on us or anything. Nor did they try their hand at any white collar crimes like coordinating a Ponzi scheme with my life savings. No, no. They drew the line at petty crimes - loitering in the kitchen, trespassing into food baskets, snatching a piece of fish or plantain out of our hands, indecent exposure. Harmless creatures really.

The Kitchen

In addition to the folks above, a few other lovely community members deserve honourable mention:

Samuel - Joseph’s elder brother. A tall and skinny man in his 70s, Samuel constantly wears a wide smile on an otherwise narrow face. He looked to me like an African Laurel from Laurel and Hardy. And he was equally as entertaining and comical.

Kofi - A friendly and personable character who leads services at synagogue. I met him at his shop on one of the main roads in town.

Akiva - Another key person in the community who assisted in services at synagogue and

There are, of course, others who make up this Jewish community, some of whom I met only in passing at Synagogue. I am also still finding out to this day about new members who are porminent leaders in the community - so this is by no means a complete list. 

When it comes to the community as a whole, however, I can't imagine the community itself being too large. Judging by the size of the congregation in attendance during the Rosh Hashannah services, a figure I estimate to be around 30, I have a funny feeling that after several visits to Sefwi Wiawso I may be able to state with confidence that I have met every Jew in Ghana. Quite the feat!

A Trip to Town

Joseph and Patrick run a passport photo business in town. I was invited to join Patrick on his day at work which I found to be a great opportunity to get out and see this quaint place in daylight. Patrick notified me that before leaving for town, he had to take George’s passport photo as he had promised the day before (good ol’ nepotism). I went into the room to gather my bag and when I returned I fell witness to the cutest sight!

You know the old rhetorical question “how many [insert demographic group here] does it take to screw in a lightbulb”? Well a similar pithy expression could be applied to passport photography.

The scene stars George sitting on a wooden bench, posing for his passport photo. Across from George we find our star photographer, Patrick, crouched over holding a vintage quad-lens Polaroid camera. His close proximity to George suggests that the camera is without a “zoom” option. Behind George, a dancing bed sheet held by two children, arms outstretched as high as they can possibly go, struggling on their tippy toes to hold up a white backdrop. I advised the group not to move and snapped a photo. I wish my passport photo had the faint imprint of a child’s face in the white background too!

Passport photography: Armah-style

We took a taxi into town and after a brief visit to Kofi’s shop, Patrick and I walked down to a private medical clinic where he set up his passport photo station. Why a medical clinic? I suppose it’s because it’s an area of heavy foot traffic. Other vendors followed the same logic, setting up their kenkey, boiled eggs, biscuits and fish at the entrance of the clinic. 

View from one of the main roads in Sefwi Wiawso

The town centre

I sat amongst a large group of women varying in age. While business was slow, I asked Patrick to teach me some Twi which I would then test out on my female audience. I learned quite a bit, including how to say “please don’t cry” - an important tool for obronis when they come into contact with fear-struck Ghanaian babies. It’s a bit of a shot to the ego when your smile can morph a calm baby into a petrified squealing monster. If I could speak baby, I imagine I would hear them anxiously asking their mothers why the lady smiling at them is missing her outer-layer of skin?

Trying my hand at passport photography. my subject's resentful expression ended up out of focus and off-centred

So the expert took over....

During a particularly long lull in business, I asked Patrick if he could relate to me the story of the Jewish community in Sefwi Wiawso. I sat and vigorously took notes on the history of this young and fascinating community. Below is my attempt at their story. The facts are gathered primarily from Patrick’s rendition of the history but patches were filled in by Joseph and a few others. Though, I should warn you, there remain some holes in the story and for this I apologize (Ugh! Get the story yourself if you’re unhappy GEEZE). These holes are the unfortunate casualties of a language barrier and the tenuous nature of oral history. The Kulanu website I mentioned in the previous blog posting contains a historical narrative that you may find more reliable than mine. I hope during my next visit or on the phone with Joseph that I can clarify some of the gaps. But here it goes:

A Brief History of the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso as Recounted by Someone with a Hearing Problem and a Personal Rule That Restricts Them From Asking “Can You Repeat That?” More Than Three Times

For over a hundred and fifty years, a pocket of Ghana’s population located in the Western Region were following customs that differed from the majority: circumcising boys eight days after birth, holding the sabbath on Saturdays rather than Sundays, separating women and men during times of menstruation. Whether by sheer fluke or through some unrecorded cultural exchange, it happens to be that these customs are also held by Jewish people. Further reading suggests that these customs arrived in Ghana with the migration of “crypto-Jews” from Ivory Coast (Ghana’s neighbour to the west) over 200 years ago. The crypto-Jews of Ivory Coast were said to be migrants from Mali fleeing persecution around 400 years ago.

Fast forward to the 1970s, when a new chief emerges in Sui, a village in Ghana’s western region near Sefwi Wiawso and home to the Ghanaians following Jewish customs (though they were not labelled as Jewish at the time). This new chief issues a change from the traditional customs (the Jewish-y ones) to more modern Christian customs. This meant, for example, that the sabbath was no longer to be held on the Saturday but on the Sunday. People were expected to work on Saturdays and it became customary to treat the Sunday as Gd’s day of rest. 

One Ghanaian, a man by the name of Aran, found the move towards Christian customs a little bit unkosher, if you will. He decidedly stuck to the Jewish customs despite the widespread change initiated by the new Chief. His stubborn pursuit of the traditional customs invited much criticism by villagers... but this was nothing to the chastising he would face in the coming years.

One night in 1977 (isn’t that line the start of all great stories?), our protagonist Aran was sitting in his room with a friend when he was suddenly met with a vision from Gd. Both Joseph and Patrick Armah used the same simile to describe the incident so in the interest of tradition I will employ it as well: “the vision appeared to him like a videocasette was playing on the wall.” 

Much to Aran’s surprise, the friend accompanying him was unable to see the vision playing out on the wall in front of him like a veideocasette. Aran carefully watched and listened to what Gd was saying to him.

The vision told Aran that he and his Sefwi ancestors were Jews, members of a lost tribe of Israel. Aran learned that he was in the right by sticking to his traditional customs but there were many more laws he should be pursuing. The vision instructed him to follow Jewish law as it is laid out in the Old Testament. He was to keep kosher and to worship Gd and Gd alone - all other messianic figures were false. Gd instructed Aran to use the Old Testament as his guide to spread the word to surrounding communities and redirect his community to practice Judaism.

After this vision, Aran paid a visit to the Chief in Old Adiembra (the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso now live in the area known as New Adiembra) to ask if he could spread the message of what he had learned. The Chief allowed him to preach to the community where he was met with resentment and anger. Mostly because the gospel he was preaching denied the acceptance of Jesus Christ as a messiah or the savior.

All was not lost, however, as Aran’s preaching managed to touch the hearts a small group of friends. Those inspired by Aran’s words included Joseph, Kofi, Samuel and a man by the name of David (David was not mentioned in Joseph or Patrick’s story but is mentioned in the online sources). Together, these five or so men formed the beginnings of a Jewish community. 

With their newfound knowledge and religious inspiration, Aran and the others travelled to surrounding towns, preaching to communities about Judaism in an effort to uncover more members of their “lost tribe.”

As you can imagine, the group was not well received. Many of them were humiliated and beaten. There was even a plot amongst locals to have Aran killed. However, at this time (late 70s early 80s), Ghana’s Constitution protected the individual right to religious freedoms - which includes preaching. So Aran and the others had the law on their side.

I found myself a little bit uncomfortable imagining Judaism being preached to the masses. There are very few instances in Jewish history where attempts were made at mass recruiting or conversion. This is likely because traditional Jewish law believes Judaism to be something passed through bloodlines (specifically through matriarchal lineages) rather than through a conversion process.

Though I enjoy the thought of a Jewish history without the proselytizing that is seen in other religions, I tried to understand the motivation behind Aran et al.’s preaching efforts.

Both Joseph and Patrick, when describing this portion of the story, quoted the passage from the Old Testament that describes Jews as being “scattered to the four corners of the earth” (For the sake of metaphor let us refrain from commenting about the earth’s spherical shape). Their reference to this passage suggests to me that the preaching of Judaism was done to revive the suppressed traditions of a community rather than converting people into a completely alien religion. Aran and the others were seeking to resuscitate the customs that their ancestors were practicing for a few hundred years - customs that, as far as I can tell, were adopted quite naturally by Ghanaians in the region. The “conversion” element to this story comes with Aran’s vision which identified these customs as Jewish and sent him on a mission to unveil more Jews.

Slowly but surely, a small Jewish community began to sprout. Aran and the others would hold services at each other’s homes or in school classrooms until they were sizeable enough to pool their money and build a synagogue.

At this point, services did not follow the traditional format that Jews around the world would be familiar with. Not having grown up attending Synagogue or even seeing a practicing Jew, the group simply prayed in the way they knew best - in their local langauge, Sefwi. The songs and the format of their worship were heavily rooted in the charismatic stye of Christianity - the only other religion they really knew up until this point. The way Patrick and Joseph describe it (and based on my own observations in their synagogue) the congregation found ways to alter Christian worship to make it more Jewish... let us call this a “Jewification” process. One example would be removing references to Jesus Christ in their prayers and songs, replacing his name with that of Gd. 

Though much of their worship was built on a mix of Christianity and traditional African practices, over time the group was able to piece together some of the rituals, customs and laws of Judaism through study of the Old Testament and any other texts available to them (from what I understand, there weren’t many). By the early 90s, kosher practices were firmly established in the community. As with their worship, the practice of keeping kosher was altered to the unique local context. In other words, keeping kosher in this the community wasn’t as easy as planning weekly trips to the Kosher aisle at the local supermarket. Though I am not downplaying the pain that arises from this challenging experience. My heart goes out to anyone who has been subject to some kind of speech about the price of Kosher products (“how could they charge me $6 for a box of crackers? What is it? It’s flower and water with a little salt. And because some Rabbi talked to it while it was on the conveyor belt for a few minutes I have to pay double the price?” Nope. Kosher, in this community, meant pursuing as many Kosher laws as possible:

-   No mixing milk and meat

-   No shellfish

-   No pork

-   No bushmeat or any animals with split hooves... or unsplit hooves... what’s the rule again? Who decided it was important to look at animal’s feet before eating them?

-   All meat was to be slaughtered and prepared in a kosher way by a Jew in the community.

-   No consuming meat from people outside the community.  

A word of caution to those considering a career as a kosher butcher in Sefwi Wiawso:  I didn’t see anyone in the community eat one piece of meat while I was there. The community tends to live on a steady diet of fish, plantain, eggs, yam, casavah, bread and rice.

Perhaps you are wondering what I was wondering at this point of the story. How did the families of the Jews react to their conversion? In Patrick’s words, Joseph’s father and mother thought he had gone mad. Indeed, the Jewish community faced quite a lot of discouragement in the beginning, much of which came out of concern - the same concern we would display if someone close to us abandoned the norm and rigorously pursued a unknown religion. However, as time passed, the Jewish community gained legitimacy and eventually its members were received much of the same respect that Christians and Muslims offer each other in Ghana.

Clothes drying on the Armah's fence

***

Okay folks, I am working hard at continuing the story so stay tuned! It’s a bit difficult to compile all the recordings and notes I took into one linear narrative. In the next entry I will continue the history of the Jewish community and explain how they got in touch with Jews outside of Ghana.