LEADING A DOUBLE LIFE_005

Leading A Double Life

LEADING A DOUBLE LIFE__EPISODE 005 Religion, Marriage, and Murder Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode 5 of my podcast Leading A Double Life. I’m Kwei Quartey, a physician and author of the Inspector Darko Dawson novels. On my podcast, what it’s like to be a medical doctor and a writer. This episode, Religion, Marriage, and Murder. On Tuesday, August 29, 2017, a little under three months from now, my fifth Detective Chief Inspector Darko Dawson novel will go on sale. It’s called DEATH BY HIS GRACE, and like the other books in the detective series, it’s set in Ghana, my birthplace. Here’s my elevator pitch: Katherine Yeboah’s marriage to Solomon Vanderpuye is all the talk of Accra high society. But when it becomes apparent that Katherine is infertile, Solomon’s extended family accuses her of being a witch, hounding her until the relationship is soured. As some of Inspector Darko Dawson’s old demons resurface, he investigates a case of marital bliss turned deadly. If the fourth novel, GOLD OF OUR FATHERS, took Darko far from home, this one comes too close. Darko’s wife, Christine, is Katherine’s first cousin. So, as Darko wrestles with the case, family members inject their emotions and opinions into the investigation, including and especially Darko’s consistently annoying mother-in-law, Gifty. DEATH BY HIS GRACE is based in part on the real-life events of a Ghanaian friend of mine. The story has three major components: first, the ostensibly fairytale marriage of accountant Katherine Yeboah to lawyer Solomon Vanderpuye; second, religion, which plays a major role in the life of Ghanaians; and, third, of course, murder. Can’t write a murder mystery without a murder. Now Katherine’s and Solomon’s extravagant Accra wedding was a society event—one of those occasions at which anyone with social standing would want to be seen. But a year later, the marriage has lost its magic as it becomes apparent that Katherine is sterile. At that point, life turns hard and ugly. Solomon and his extended family begin to hound her, calling her a witch. In Ghana, fertility is very important, and having children in a marriage is the norm. In the West, we generally don’t disapprove if a married couple chooses not to have children, but in Ghana, that would be regarded negatively, and an infertile woman would fall under great suspicion. I say suspicion because one of the reasons some Ghanaians give for female infertility is that a witch or someone else has cursed the woman, or that the woman herself is the witch. One theory goes something like this: at night, the woman’s witch form, I guess you could call it, carries the fetus out of the uterus to her coven of fellow witches, who join her in devouring her baby. I know—not a pretty visual. Incredulous as it may seem, belief in witchcraft is still alive and well in Ghana, including among educated people. You might ask how that’s possible, but deeply held beliefs are often dissociated from education. I’d venture to say that there are educated Americans who believe God made the earth in seven days and that Adam and Eve were real people living in the Garden of Eden about 3000 years ago. And there are also lots of Americans who believe in ghosts, which I personally don’t. Anyway, back to Ghana—bottom line, try to avoid being designated a witch there. That might be funny if it weren’t so serious because Ghanaian women perceived as witches can be physically attacked, hurt and even killed by their accusers. Or these women can be subjected to dangerous traditional treatments of all kinds. In fact, as in my novel, if a woman is murdered and there was talk about witchcraft, take a look at the people who leveled that accusation because there may lie your suspects. If the marriage of Katherine and Solomon are front and center in the novel, the backdrop is religion. In 2013, a WIN-Gallup poll found Ghana to be the most religious country in the world. Not one of the most; the most. The poll used something called the “religiosity index,” defined as, “the percentage of the population who self-describe themselves as ‘a religious person’ in the following question: Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person or a convinced atheist?” Some of the other countries on the “most religious” list include Nigeria at number two; Armenia, number three; Fiji, number four; and Macedonia, number five. On the other end of the scale, China is 47% atheist. Shifting to the US for a moment, a Pew Research Center study finds the top five most religious states are, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas. I don’t see any surprised looks in the room. California, my home state, is number 35. The least religious state is New Hampshire. One of the important takeaways of the Gallup poll is that the poor are more religious than the rich. People in the bottom income groups are 17 percent more religious than those in the top income groups. I think you can see this on a macro and micro level wherever you go in the world. In Ghana, religiosity is everywhere. Some people go to church not just once a week on Sundays, but on one or two weekdays in addition. These may not be brief services either. They can be up to four hours of worship. If you are imagining small, humble churches, yes, there certainly are those, but Ghana also has a mammoth Pentecostal movement that involves mega-churches of the kind seen in the United States—huge structures that can seat the thousands flocking to their revered evangelist. Prayer vigils and so-called deliverance services take place in large venues like sports stadia and the Independence Square in Accra. The most famous and prosperous evangelist religious leaders, like Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, who also has churches in the US, are able to pack these audiences in as well as any music celebrity. Although religiosity spans the different levels of society, anyone going to these events will be struck by how many poor people attend. I think this correlates closely with the global findings of the Gallup poll. On a daily basis, Ghanaians don’t fail to remind you of their belief in God. When you say to someone, “Hello, how are you?” you’re likely to get the response, “By His grace,” which is shorthand for, “By God’s grace, I’m well,” or nowadays with socio-economic circumstances in Ghana so tough, you also hear, “By God’s grace, we’re managing.” Someone once quipped that Ghana has a lot of managers. I borrowed this ubiquitous Ghanaian phrase, “by His grace,” for my book title, DEATH BY HIS GRACE. I’ve thought a lot about what the title means. It could be asking: while God’s grace bestows good fortune on some, did He forget to protect others, like the perfectly decent, upstanding, and churchgoing Katherine Vanderpuye, who suffered an awful murder? A fundamental issue is whether a so-called man of God can be under the same level of suspicion of murder as an outright sinner. DCI Darko Dawson apparently thinks so, much to the dismay of some of his family members. I guess my novel raises the question also whether religion and belief in God, professed by so many people in Ghana, influences moral behavior there. From what I see for myself when visiting the country, the answer is no. If such a religious nation is seeing rising corruption, fraud, armed robbery, murder, and vehicle theft (of which I myself have been a victim), there’s either no connection between religion and crime, or there’s a negative correlation. On the other side of the coin, some non-religious countries have low rates of corruption and crime in general, the obvious example being the Scandinavian nations. During my research in Ghana for DEATH BY HIS GRACE, I went to religious services held by these prominent men of God. These events can be quite spectacular; particularly the deliverance services in which healing of the sick and casting out of demons take place. Also, speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, is characteristic of the Pentecostal and so-called charismatic churches. Most dramatic are the congregation members who become slain in The Spirit—that is, when the Holy Spirit presumably enters their bodies and causes them to collapse. For that, professional catchers are dispatched throughout the church or other venue to prevent people from hurting themselves as they drop to the ground. From a logistics and medical point of view, though, I don’t see how everyone falling to the ground can possibly be caught before impact. It’s doubtful then, that these are genuine instances of loss of consciousness because a lot more people would get hurt if that were the case. The casting out of demons can be extraordinarily violent and creepy. A person may writhe around on the ground screaming and sweating while a pastor yells at them in order to expel the demons. One girl in a church setting was worked on for more than an hour straight and the bishops trying to exorcise her had to take a break because they were so exhausted. At a service I attended run by a bishop called Boniga, there was a mother with her infant who suffered from epilepsy. The story was that the mother’s sister, presumably out of jealousy or hatred, had cursed the child. So mom came to Bishop Boniga with her baby to have the demons cast out. The so-called healing I witnessed by Bishop Boniga wasn’t terribly impressive either. An old man who was said to be wheelchair dependent from crippling arthritis threw his cane away after being touched by Boniga, and walked off the stage without the cane. However, I noticed later one of his family members came back to get it. The old guy probably endured the short walk off the stage, but I bet once he had done that, he felt overcome again by the arthritic pain. So, why all this piety with poverty in Ghana and other countries like it? It’s a question I put to myself all the time. Is it belief for the sake of belief? Is it that the charismatic faiths hold out the promise that God in His wisdom and at some point of His choosing, will bestow blessings and financial success on the worshipper? In other words, the harder you pray or speak in tongues, the more likely you are to get rich? Or is it that prayer, churchgoing, Bible study and so on, are lifestyles in which poverty-laden people experience a sense of power and fulfillment in a life that otherwise gives them precious little of that? I don’t have those answers, but that’s part of the reason I wrote the book. Writing a story with a backdrop I don’t fully understand is a way to explore it through the lens of murder, and that always renders it more intense. That’s all for this episode. Again, thank you for listening. If you’re hearing this on iTunes, please also check out my website, kweiquartey.com. That’s k-w-e-i-q-u-a-r-t-e-y dot com. There’s a sign-up bonus, so to speak, right now. If you subscribe to my email list, you win a beautiful Page Anchor exclusively from the lovely nation of Sweden. It’s a unique, pocket size device with both form and function that holds your pages open for you. The podcast episodes are also available on my website with accompanying show notes. I’m on Twitter as @doublekwei, one word. Until next time, be happy and healthy.