Religion, Relaxing, Retiring

The best lecture we've had so far has been on religion in Ghana. I don't know if it was just the speaker or what. . . . yeah; it was him. He really just put everything into perspective and explained things very well. I think people were a little confused by the whole traditional medicine, herbalists, animism (I hate this word) and popular religion. The one thing that he said, which I think explains a lot about AFricans, is how people merge their indigenous (another word that . . . .yeah) beliefs with main stream religions such as Christianity and Islam. The breakdown he gave on the percentage of Christians, Muslims, etc was what the State department and other sites have given. The only difference was, according to the professor, was that they were all useless: everyone practices some type of traditional practice. He mentioned the fact that the more traditional practices, especially customs, were not being as widely practiced as before. Thats a shame. Again, what can be done? He also talked about disabilities and religion and how people believe if your child is born with a disability that the person probably did something wrong and was paying for it through their children. There's also the idea of witchcraft that is highly believed in. What does that remind you of?

One thing I should have mentioned was that the place we stayed in at Elmina was fab-u-lous. I'll just post pictures for you to see, but it was better than I had imagined. Mmm. Now I have to go back to Ghana and go back to Coconut Grove Resort just so I can get the full experience of the place. Dang!