Ghana 7. Mormons & Malaria

The sign on the door of Louisa’s hospital ward read:

To minimise the inconvenience of noise making to others, praying with patients on the ward should be done silently

This doesn’t fill you with confidence in Ghana’s medical system when your nearest and dearest is lying half comatose in a hospital bed, hooked up to a quinine drip fighting severe malaria.

In Ghana every headache or fever is assumed to be malaria until proven otherwise, which is a pretty sensible position to take in a tropical country filled with mosquitoes. I had two blood smears over Christmas and New Year that both came back negative while I spent several days in bed fighting off some virus or other.

The severity of malaria cases is ranked 1 (weak) to 4 (dead in a week). Louisa’s not only came back positive but a 3+ at that. Thus began the unpleasant business of finding a hospital to check her in to (a taxi ride away with a stop for her to vomit on route) and starting the bureaucratic wheels turning with our insurance company back in the UK.

The whole experience was made a lot easier by the reassuring presence of our flatmate Dr. Ben, an American hospital doctor doing part of his rotation in Ghana. While I did battle with the insurance company (thank god for cheap calls to the UK) Ben diplomatically gave the medical staff a pop quiz with questions such as “should her eyeballs be rolling back in her skull like that?” and so forth.

In all fairness, Nyaho Medical Centre – the hospital where we ended up – turned out to be one of the better ones in Accra. The place was comparable to many British NHS hospitals (make of that what you will), and once they moved the infant with suspected typhoid down the ward Louisa had a room all to herself. I set up camp next to her and no one took issue with me sleeping in one of the spare beds.

So there we stayed for four days with Louisa being pumped full of quinine and fluids via an IV, getting up to wee every half hour and then collapsing back into bed. Unfortunately the side effects of the quinine are as unpleasant as the malaria itself; amongst other things Louisa developed acute tinnitus rendering her deaf as a post, unable to hear anything that the doctors or nurses were saying to her, let alone talk to her worried parents on the phone.

Having recovered sufficiently but still weak as a kitten, Louisa was discharged with a bag of quinine tablets and instructions to return for further blood tests later in the week. Unfortunately, only days after her return home, I had to leave her in the care of friends to go off on a sound recording job for a week.

We had been contacted several weeks previously by an American producer-director who phoned us from an Angolan oilrig saying that he was coming to Ghana to shoot Mormons and could we sound record for him? Louisa was lined up to do this, but with her convalescing at home I had to go in her place.

The American turned out to be an interesting mixture of LA-based Hollywood TV type and down-to-earth devout Mormon, which were most definitely the ying and yang of his personality and no mistake. He’s in the midst of making a promotional DVD for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or COJCOLDS for short, an acronym they seem curiously unwilling to adopt), depicting Mormon congregations around the world and explaining some of their theological beliefs.

Now, all I knew about Mormonism at the beginning of the week was that Mormons tend to dress like IT technicians, and that at some point previously they practised polygamy (probably as recompense for the terrible uniforms). Hoping to bear witness to at least one polyester-clad group sex ritual during the week, I was disappointed to find that the multiple wives thing went out over a century ago (although it still plays havoc with their image) and that they’re really no more devoutly nuts than the next Christian faction claiming to preach the One True Faith.

Moreover, other than several spotty American missionaries doing their religious equivalent of a gap year, all the Mormons we met were Ghanaian – a determinant of character that outweighs religious influence like a transvestite in a knitting circle. For the fact that everyone in Ghana believes in god in some shape or form (“Washed in the Blood of Christ Hair Salon” anyone?), Ghana’s Mormons just read a slightly different religious text to the rest and then get on with the usual pan-Ghanaian concerns of being loud, gregarious and a bit disorganised.

Okay, so there are a few aspects of their beliefs that put Mormons at loggerheads with other branches of Christianity. For instance, they believe that their founder, a 19^th century American called Joseph Smith, was visited by God and by Jesus who instilled in him the divine right to preach their gospel, lost since the death of Jesus’ original apostles in Biblical times.

In contrast, the Catholic Church lays claim to unbroken papal lineage from St. Peter, who was appointed divine leader of the church by Jesus himself. For Joseph Smith, trumpeting an alternative claim to having divine right to preach the gospel was like telling the biggest bully in the playground that he smells of poo. Accordingly, Mormons have historically been shaken down for their lunch money on a regular basis.

Ghana is pretty easy come, easy go where religion is concerned. Everyone professes to be devoutly something – usually Christian or Muslim – but finds room in their beliefs for a bit of traditional African spiritualism at the same time. It’s a bit like enthusing about Bjork’s latest album at parties, then going home and listening to the Best of the Carpenters – you’ve had it a lot longer and the words are easier to remember.

We spent much of the week filming at the Yamoranza church in Cape Coast. One member of the congregation, Ebenezer - a middle aged pharmacist with a gammy leg – talked in detail about how the church was built. A neighbouring family had to be persuaded with a cow and sum of money to move their sacred altar rock as it was right where the new driveway was going to be.

Nothing unusual there; however, he went on to say that the family’s god Akatakyiwa (pronounced “Akatichiwa”) takes the form of a dog and thus no dogs have been permitted in the village for generations. One night many years ago he woke up needing a leak. As he relieved himself into the gutter outside his shop, across the road in the darkness he saw the biggest dog he’s ever set eyes on. He stared at it and it stared back at him before melting into the darkness.

On a muggy Sunday morning, standing on the steps outside the Mormon Church he attends at least once a week, Ebenezer maintained with blithe sincerity that the dog he had encountered had been none other than Akatakyiwa. He pointed out the small shack next to the church where the family’s altar rock now resides. Then, with a “God bless” by way of farewell, he ambled awkwardly off, dragging his bad leg behind him.

Louisa was only prayed over once while in hospital (by another patient’s visitor who thoughtfully included her in her very vocal prayers, sign or no sign), but God nonetheless came to her though an IV drip and a secondary course of tablets. This morning, a further blood smear declared her finally free of the malaria parasite and once again fit for human consumption. It’s a weight off both of our shoulders; this evening we will offer up a coconut to our sacred chicken before putting a few coins in the local church collection box - just to keep everyone happy.