I have a few friends and colleagues who are either atheists or who believe in God but do not regularly go to church. I admit I fall among the latter, sometimes I forfeit mass for the extra 2 hours sleep, but I don’t think that going to church is a measure of how much of a good christian you are but a place to reconnect with the maker, but I digress.

Yesterday, at 6.30pm when the lights finally came back on, I found myself saying “thank God”. Which gets me thinking, why does the average Ghanaian or even African refer to God in everything they do. Well that’s all you have. To live in Africa you just got to have the faith.

With the dodgy water and electricity supply, you end up thanking God when its working alright.

When you leave your house in the morning for work, you have to pray to God that you don’t ge into an accident with a lunatic driver (especially a commercial driver as chances are you will not recover the damages to your car). People in Ghana (and Nigeria) drive like they are competing with Michael Schumacher regardless of whether their car is fit to even pass 50 mph or they drive like they are scared of the road and break at the most awkward places do you need to keep your eye out that if you are behind them you break too.

You have to also thank God if you can go through the whole day without a complaint from a family member (or some random) expecting you to help them out with their childs school fees/sick mother etc…like your bank account tops up automatically after you withdraw the cash.

If it rains heavily. You pray that it doesn’t come carry you away.

The list goes on. You see in the west, the country runs pretty efficiently so you don’t need to pray as much, but here, a disaster can happen at anytime here, natural or otherwise, but we live with it, and all we have got it the faith that things will get better so we pray and we go to church on a Sunday and thank God that we made it through another week.