Features
The Ghanaian Muslim community in Finland
Some Ghanaian muslims who are promoting Islam in Finland
Today, I focus on the Ghanaian Muslim community in Finland. As I have said previously, there are many personalities and institutions that contribute to the smooth running of things in the lives of Ghanaian migrants in Finland. The Ghanaian Muslim community is a very good example.
The exploits of such people or groups are laudable and should be acknowledged. I have previously written about the Church of Pentecost (COP) when their National Head, Apostle Eric Nyamekye, visited Helsinki a few months ago.
I have also written about the African Catholic Chaplaincy when Catholics, Lutherans and other worshippers celebrated a Thanksgiving Holy Mass organised by the Chaplaincy at the Kallio (Lutheran) Church in Helsinki, which was a key milestone in ecumenism.
The religious life of Ghanaian migrants in Finland, whether Christians or Muslims, also shows the role of religion in binding them together for positive outcomes.
The Ghanaian Muslim
community in Finland
There is a sizeable number of Ghanaian Muslims in Finland, although this estimation is based on my own rough evaluation and not on any official statistics. The Ghanaian Muslim group is a strong, well-knit one, devoted to building the spiritual and physical lives of its members through prayers at the mosque on Fridays and in other social activities.
The Muslim group has long been in existence. According to Mr Adam Mohammed Naporo, one of the founding members, most of the current members came to meet the group as a small community.
Initially, the members prayed with other nationals at their place of worship. Later, as the number of Ghanaian Muslims grew, they formed themselves into a well-organised group, which has existed for about 15 years now.
They also saw the need to educate the young ones about the Ghanaian culture and heritage. While teaching the tenets of the religion is seen as very important, “many parents felt the need to teach their kids the Ghanaian culture too, their roots”, Mr Naporo said.
Organising themselves
Aside going to the mosque for Friday prayers, the Ghanaian Muslims also organise other social activities that bring them together in unity and cordiality. These are goals that their leaders strive to pursue for the group to achieve.
The group usually gets together to celebrate important religious events such as the Eid ul-fitr and Eid ul-ahda. At such events, other people outside the group are invited to partake in the joyous celebration to mark the holy months of fasting.
The Muslim group also organises classes or a school (makaranta) for the kids every Saturday, Sunday, and on holidays. According to Mr Moro Abdulai, one of the leaders, the group also organises trips to Estonia and other places for its members.
Inculcating values
The new group got together a number of years back to raise their kids and teach them the tenets of Islam as well as values of the Ghanaian culture.
The leaders also try to instil discipline and give the kids the moral upbringing and identity as Muslims and as good citizens residing in Finland.
According to Mr. Abdulai, in their syllabus they also teach lessons on manners. Sometimes, they even invite experts within the Finnish society to talk and thus expose the kids with an education on discipline and integration.
How do they appreciate the Finnish society they live in? According to Mr Naporo, their group sees living as a kind of social contract. “We see ourselves as having a contract of living in Finland and so we should honour the contract by obeying the laws of the country. We let our people appreciate that”, he pointed out.
Unity and harmony
The Ghanaian Muslim community stands for unity and harmony in their group as well as in the larger Ghanaian migrant community in Finland.
The Ghanaian Muslims are very supportive of activities by the Ghana Union Finland, a body representing Ghanaian migrants and devoted to enhancing close cooperation and cordial relationships for effective integration of its members into the Finnish society, while also upholding the good image of Ghana abroad.
Members of the Ghanaian Muslim community prepare popular dishes—waakye, tuo zaafi, etc.—and donate them to the Ghana Union for its events, which are usually well attended.
Ensuring integration
All this also indicate the opportunities for members of the Ghanaian diaspora in Finland to integrate into the Finnish society through religion and their religious activities and affiliation.
As I keep pointing out, Finland encourages migrants’ participation in the planning of issues concerning the migrants themselves, using this strategy as one of the efficient ways to improve their inclusion. Thus, there is an enabling environment created within the Finnish religious ecology that undoubtedly helps migrants, including Ghanaian Muslim migrants, to integrate into the host Finnish society. Thank you!
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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