The deaf god versus (?) the Lutheran church

December 21st. About 4 P.M. I venture towards a compound close to mine, where the shrine of the god Adamorobe Ayisi is situated. A group of men is playing their drums and woman hit together little gongs. A fat hearing woman with white powder over her whole body is dancing and transmitting messages of the gods, but not in spoken Twi. No, she doesn’t speak a word, performs dance steps and begins to sign and depict. “Now she’s possessed by a deaf god”, Akosua and Afua explain. When this fetish ‘becomes’ a hearing god, she speaks again.

Traditional religion still lives around here, and its symbolism is closely linked to the history, the family clans, the harvest, the animals which live here etc. There isn’t just one god, but there are many gods and ‘deaf village’ Adamorobe thus also has a deaf god. The needs of these gods and the deceased ancestors have to be gratified by offering them food and beverages (by throwing/hurling them onto the floor) and by adhering to a couple of rules.

But also Christianity has made its entrance here. Not Catholicism (any more); that’s something which wasn’t and isn’t very successful in Ghana, but all other kinds of denominations: Pentecostalists, Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterians, and loads of others which I had never heard of. Adamorobe has an impressive number of minimally eleven (!). Besides these hearing Christian church groups in the village, a deaf Lutheran evangelist from Accra visits weekly for the deaf.

Because yes, also deaf Ghana has been converted. When you hint to a deaf person in Accra that you don’t go to church, you are often looked at with disbelief, and you become the target of converting attempts which are even more imposing than the marriage pleads of hearing men. A few of the churches in Accra and other places offer translation in Ghanaian sign language, and also songs and psalms are translated in GSL (more SSE when you come to think of it).

A priest who has been trained in Kumasi (another large city in Ghana) applies this approach in Adamorobe. Each week I witness deaf Adamorobers copying songs of this evangelist without even understanding what they are singing. For years, the sermons were, opposed to now, translated from Ghanese sign language into Adamorobe sign language by a deaf person, but this person got ill a few years ago and died.

Another late afternoon in December. Kwasi signs to me that he wasn’t a Christian as a child, and that he cooperated in the traditional rituals. “But I go to church now… so I don’t participate anymore, I do still go and watch, but I don’t eat what they prepare”. You see, during these rituals food is prepared and passed around, and eating it is considered “joining’. During the ritual referred to in the first paragraph, Afua declines schnapps because of her church religion, but Akosua does drink it. Kwadzo, one of the deaf males, is quite active in the traditional religion and gets criticized heavily because of this by the rest.

This criticism does not originate from a belief that these gods are ‘not real’, but by the idea that these are real indeed and that it is dangerous to get involved with them. You’ll go to hell, because it comes down to worshiping the devil: a conviction probably brought over by Christian missionaries. Here in Ghana, however, it is not uncommon to practice both religions, how much of a contradiction this may seem.

Besides that, there are almost daily references to witchcraft: witches are for example jealous family members (like old women) who poison people and a lot of deaths (of deaf as well as hearing people) caused by severe illnesses for example, are explained by means of witchcraft. I get warnings like not to walk on the central (most crowded) path of the village, because “there are too many witches there!”. Or take for example: “Something got stolen from my land, so I threw some eggs and a bottle of schnapps in the river and the thief got mortally ill”. That’s an example of divination. Also, magic is practiced: objects and things like hairs and fingernails are manipulated to serve a goal, so one time a deaf girl told me: “my underwear got stolen, so I was scared to death”.

Those are things come to my attention in stories and conversations and luckily I’m able to interpret them because of my anthropology studies, because otherwise I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to see the larger picture: the Christian god in the heaven and the Akan gods – amongst which a deaf god – who live in and around Adamorobe. The ghosts of the deceased ancestors which wander around us. Witchcraft and magic which are practiced by real people. This world is filled with invisible beings and ‘devilish’ practices, organized in a cocktail which could be very unbelievable to western eyes, but which is very real for the deaf and hearing people here.