Football hero Stephen Appiah

Soccer boys, Accra, Ghana, Greg Marinovich

A man watches evening traffic in Jamestown, Accra. Greg Marinovich

Back street, Ussher Town, Accra, Ghana.

Labour, Accra, Ghana.

A new church founded by a man in Accra, Ghana. The man was called in a vision, but has yet to attract congregants. Greg Marinovich.

I was having an unusual breakfast of spaghetti and meatballs at my hotel in Accra, Ghana, gulping desperately at the fourth or fifth cup of weak coffee when I noticed that the entire kitchen and wait staff were riveted to the television set.

Instead of the usual CNN or soccer on the massive flat screen, there was a Ghanaian station broadcasting a religious service.

The massive church auditorium was packed with evangelical Christians singing and praying. They were led in their adulation by a short, well-dressed man, his handsome face hinting at a touch of cruelty.

A young girl of about ten years old is carried shoulder high to the stage, her eyes closed, could she be dead or unconscious?

There is an uproar as she is presented to the pastor, the entourage that carried her in tears, hysterical.

“Is she dead?” I ask the room at large.

“Yes, she is dead,” comes the reply, but none of the Ghanains can drag their eyes away from the screen.

By now, nor can I. The child is held aloft, clearly dead. The pastor starts to pray loudly, laying his hands on the child. Others join him in a rush of divine healing and the child is hidden from sight and the camera by the moaning religious fervour of the church elite.

Then the crowd clears and we see the child coughing and spluttering back to life, hugging the pastor.  The church goes wild, ecstatic. The pastor now struts around with the child hugging him tightly, his face set with a restrained and proud delight that he attempts to cover with a  righteous scowl. The girl’s mother tries to touch her, but the sobbing child pushes her away – all she wants to do is hold onto her saviour.

The tension has evaporated from the hotel staff. They amble back to their work. Priscilla, one of the waitresses, turns to me and asks.

“Do you believe it?” a mischievous smile on her face.

“Well, I’m not sure what I just saw, what happened?”

“The girl was taken to a hospital, but was dead when she arrived. The nurse there said they should take the child to the pastor immediately. And he brought her back from the dead.”

“So this happened right now, live on television?”  Priscilla nods and takes my coffee cup away.

Someone switches the station back a rebroadcast of a European football game.

So now, I have witnessed either a most amazing miracle that should challenge my absolute lack of belief in gods, or a callous con among the plethora of scams perpetrated by greedy and unscrupulous dream merchants.