I came to Accra because life back home was choking me. Work was slow, opportunities were limited, and everyone kept telling me, “Accra is where the money is.” They forgot to add, “But it is also where your destiny can sleep on someone’s couch.”

I didn’t have a place to stay, so I called my childhood friend Regina. We grew up together and played ampe together. I was there for her during her first heartbreak from a boy in our class. She was excited to hear from me. She said, “Oh Joyce! Just come. I’m living alone in a chamber and hall. You can perch with me until you find something.”

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I was relieved. I packed my small bag, hugged my mother, and took a bus to Accra. When I arrived, Regina hugged me like an old suitcase she had missed, but nobody warned me that I had walked straight into a spiritual-romantic war zone.

There’s Joshua, Regina’s boyfriend. He’s a pastor of a mini-church with about nine members, including two children and one woman who only comes during testimony time to give testimony you usually don’t see the head and tail of. Joshua is a struggling man of God, financially, spiritually, and logically.

The first night I met him, I thought he was nice. He smiled too much, spoke like angels lived in his throat, and walked around with a Bible bigger than my pillow. But that night, something shifted. Regina whispered to me, “Joshua is staying over tonight.” I said okay. After all, where two or three gather in the Lord’s name, peace should be present. But no. That night, there was no peace. There was noise.

Around 11pm, they started their “worldly fellowship.” They were very loud, as if they were acting in an adult movie for angels. Every hmm and ouch and huuuh were in my ears. I was on the couch in the hall trying to sleep. The wall between us was thin. I could hear everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Even the soundtrack of their actions. Then at dawn, when I was finally falling asleep, they started praying. That was also very loud, with the same voice they moaned with. Joshua spoke in tongues while Regina backed him with “Holy Ghost fire!”

I just sat up on the couch, staring into the darkness like, “God, so this is the land you promised was full of milk and honey?”

Every time Joshua visited, this was the pattern:

Night: sinful melodies.
Dawn: prayers in tongues.
Morning: more sinful melodies.

And yet he would climb the pulpit on Sunday and shout, “Flee from sexual immorality!” I wanted to scream, “Pastor, we can hear you through the wall oh!”

When Joshua didn’t come around for a few days, you would expect me to have peace, but no. Right next to me in bed, Regina would engage with her little loud demons; the toys. All night, these little things would be working nonstop. She would try to suppress the moan so I don’t hear it, but no, the moan will still moan and she would be quivering as she gets to the mountain top of ecstasy. It’s not easy for me during the night. Sometimes I go to work and doze off there.

Despite everything, Regina is completely blinded by love. Joshua could tell her to stand in the rain and she’d ask, “Should I take an umbrella or go raw?” That girl loved that man like he was Moses. At first, she didn’t pressure me much. But one day she came to me with her hands on her waist like someone asking for rent. “Joyce, you live with me so you have to support Joshua’s ministry. You can’t be here enjoying and not helping my boyfriend’s church grow.”

Enjoying? As in, sleeping on a couch and listening to free midnight noise? That one is enjoyment? But I didn’t want trouble, so I agreed. I told myself: “Let me just go once and escape next week.” That Sunday, Joshua preached for one hour. The message? “Holiness in the House of God.”

I couldn’t hear a word he said because my mind kept replaying the night before. The sin, the shouting, the holy prayer, the morning continuation. The hypocrisy choked me more than the sermon. After church, Joshua hugged me as if I had been added to his spiritual CV. “My sister Joyce, I’m happy you’re here. God will use you.”

Use me how? As a witness on Judgement Day? I left church that day and told myself, “Never again.”

When Regina realized I wasn’t following her to church anymore, she started acting differently. She would sigh loudly when I was in the room. Roll her eyes. Whisper something with a fake smile. Pretend she was too busy to talk. Even the toys got louder during the night, as if to say, “You won’t have a peaceful night until you agree to come to church on Sunday.”

I understood her. Her loyalty was not to me but to Joshua. Even if Joshua said the sky was orange, Regina would say, “Yes baby, even I saw it.”

Then Joshua started his own campaign. Each time he visited, he would ask me: “Joyce, why haven’t I seen you in church?” Or “Joyce, are you backsliding?” Or “Joyce, don’t let the devil use your discomfort to separate you from God.”

The worst part was that Regina started making me feel like a burden. Like I owed her loyalty simply because she gave me a place to perch. The girl wanted me to attend a church where the pastor was performing nightly crusades right in her bedroom. What kind of forced discipleship is that?

Meanwhile, I still don’t have money to rent my own place. Accra rent is not for the gentle-hearted. Every time I see “Chamber & Hall, 900 cedis a month,” I ask myself, “Do I look like someone whose father is Dangote?” So I’m stuck between hypocrisy and homelessness.
Stuck between a friend who thinks love is worship and a pastor who sins at night and prays at dawn like he’s sweeping away evidence.

Every day I wake up exhausted, spiritually confused, and emotionally drained. Sometimes I cry quietly on the couch so nobody hears me. Sometimes I wonder why life always puts me in situations that test my patience and belief in God. Most nights, I lie there listening to them; the giggles, the whispers, the thuds on the bed and I ask myself: “Is this how my story will continue?”

I’m not trying to judge anyone, but if a pastor cannot control himself, then what exactly is he pastoring? And if Regina truly cared, shouldn’t she consider how all this affects me? But no. It is Joshua’s way or no way. And here I am, a visitor in someone else’s house, carrying burdens I didn’t pray for.

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I’m tired but what can I do? I bought an earpiece recently. When Joshua comes around, I put them in my ears and play “Osor ne me fie.” When he doesn’t come and the toys start to threaten my peaceful night, I put them in my ears and play, “This world is not my home.” Very soon, I will get my own place and all this will be over. Accra life will humble even the strongest of us.

—Joyce

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