Church, football and syncretism.

Where I'm from, everyone played football. No, it’s not soccer; it’s FOOTBALL! Except for the girls of course; they played ampe. No, I don't have time to explain what that is but I can tell you, we had no gender problems whatsoever. I played for a team called Soccer Revivals (colts division) at Mile 7 (New Achimota). Our home ground was the St. Johns Grammar School Park. We didn’t only have fun as kids, we had some mystical experiences.

Before every match, we would gather in a room with a spiritualist called Hangba (I never found out why they called him that). He would throw eggs around and depending on how many broke, he could tell us how many goals were in the game. He would then build a strategy and tell us how the match could be won. We had to get a certain number of goals in the first half etc. He was right most of the time which must explain why he was always there. He would then give us oils to rub on our feet to make sure we played well and had protection from injuries. Number 9 always got a good helping because most of the goals were with him (I don’t remember who that was). Sometimes Hangba was at our training ground telling both players and coach what to do—he was like a super-coach. I would tell you that we had great players but that would be pointless. There were hardly any footballers I knew growing up who weren’t great.

Hangba had all kids of spiritual gadgets and claimed he could summons spirits. The thing is; every time he did his stuff, you could sense a strong presence in the room. The idea of summoning spirits was not new to me in fact. I had seen it happen in a few other places. Even in churches called spiritual churches (called Sunsum sore). My mother patronized a few. I would tell you have they predated charismatic churches but that’s a different story for another day. Every time we visited any of these churches, the place was full with women seeking one thing or the other. Ok I am leaving women alone. For now!

I left Soccer Revivals at some point and joined a local team  in Dom where I grew up. One day, I fell during training and broke my radius (go find out what that is). My super-disturbed mother took me to see a spiritualist who said I was not to play football again in my life. The witches in my family would use it to destroy my supposed very bright future if I kept at it. With one sentence the dodgy grey haired seer of futures terminated any chance of my becoming the next Abedi Pele. To be honest, I am not sure she caused much harm--  guys on my team who could played 1 million times better than me(including REAL Ayews) never made it far either. 

One day in my grown-up life, I was driving up the road by ABC junction when I saw Hangba. He had gone mad. He had no shoes on and looked like he hadn’t had a shower in months. There was a bit of nostalgia, I hadn’t seen the man in many years. I wanted to stop and say hi or something and maybe relive those glorious years when we toured Accra playing matches that did nothing more than make us feel good. I didn’t. I just kept driving wondering  how a man who could summon great spirits from the netherworld, had everyone wrapped around his fingers end up like this. He was powerful.  Had the spirits deserted him? Why?

Stories about what spirits would do if one failed them in whatever ways was common.  In my many wonderings around religion (and I have wondered quite a bit), I have found no entity (or deity if you like) that was driven by forgiveness. You fail; you die or go mad. Perhaps Hangba had failed his spirits in one way or another. They did their thing. True answers to this problem that every African would tell you is common only came to me when I found Christ. Considering  the fact that colts football was very vibrant in those days, it cant be hard to how estimate how many young boys were exposed to spiritism. It appears many never grew out of it. But that is another story for another day. 

All this time, we were Christians who went to church on Sundays. Most African Christians live the reality of this syncretism and the reason is simple. They do not understand their faith enough. Christianity is just another of the many spiritual things they do and if one thing didn’t work, they turned to another. This a challenge the church does not even consider. Let alone attempt to address. Consequently you would be amazed how many spiritists and idolaters also claim to be followers of Christ. This includes pastors.

A piece from the coming autobiography; I & I testimony in support SD-21—the Sound Doctrine Conference.

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