Chief, priests and schnapps – oh, my!

Warding off evil with white clay paint

“Everything here is a National Geographic photo,” says Bill as he stares at chiefs in tiaras, fetish priests, dancing women in wild headgear, trembling drums and offerings of schnapps. It’s true: Our eyes pretty much pop out of our heads all day as we finally get to one of the traditional Ghanaian festivals.

 Last weekend we took a trip to the lower Volta to see the Hogbetsotso (sounds like Ho-be-jojo) Festival in the little town of Anloga.  The festival has not happened for 5 or so years because of a dispute over who was the true king of the Anlo people. But now that it’s back, everyone turned out – chiefs from all over Ghana paraded into the festival grounds trailed by supporters, some carrying huge colorful parasols to shade the important men. (Even the president of Ghana showed up – though we didn’t see him – the crowd by that time was HUGE.)

The festival marks the exodus of the Anlo people from Togo. The story is that to fool their enemies, the people walked backwards into Ghana. Pretty smart.  But, no, they didn’t walk backward into the festival grounds, much to our disappointment!

Chiefs come marching in ... with the band

“Colorful” was the word of the day. Chiefs traditionally wear individual patterns of kente cloth (woven in strips and then stitched together into a bed-sheet-sized cloth); the fabric usually includes diagonal or zig-zag patterns in bright, contrasting colors, though some are white with black swirling patterns. They wrap the cloth around their body and over one shoulder so that the other shoulder and part of their back is bare. Of course, their smooth chocolate skin is perfectly set off by the colors of Ghana – bright oranges, blues, and greens. With dozens of chiefs at the festival, if you squinted it seemed like one big sea of kente.

My twi teacher (that’s another story!) told us that when one chief greets another, he lowers the cloth to his waist to show that he doesn’t have any weapons hidden on his body.

It is traditional for those who have been helped by the chiefs – or want to be helped – to bring offerings to them, mainly bottles of schnapps. And so, knots of people carried offerings on their heads and then set them in front of the chiefs. In one metal tub there were bottles, but also a child’s doll. Probably that meant a child had been cured, or the person was asking for help bearing a child.

Chiefs and their entourages

The spectators – who are really participants – were equally brightly dressed, some painted with white clay or powder to ward off evil spirits. Others were traditionally dressed in bold-patterned dresses and shirts, with some men in the woven smocks of the north. Drumming and dancing was everywhere. And everyone – men and women - wore necklaces and bracelets of ceramic beads. (Even Bill!)

The fetish priest oversees the drummers and dancers

Oh, and the fetish priests. Well, there was one in particular that we stumbled upon and gratefully sat down on a shaded bench to watch. He was surrounded by a circle of believers and the curious. In the circle were dancing women, some with bouncing babies strapped to their backs. And 4 or 5 men who were dancing themselves into a trance. One man fell down and they carried him to a bench,  his eyes rolled back in his head. It was pretty scary, and some men threw a cloth over him until he came to. Another was in a frenzy and kept coming up to us to shake our hands or slap us roughly. A little off-putting, but people around us yelled him off.  

We came to the festival with Kwame, a young man who is a driver for the libraries and comes from the Volta region. Kwame told us the fetish priests and their followers sometimes are in such a trance that they use a cutlass (machete) to make cuts in their arms and the cuts don’t even bleed. But, he said, the priest was watching to make sure that didn’t happen at the festival, which was “not the place for that.”

Bill playing monster

The festival was so hot we were in a bit of a trance as well, so we left in the afternoon and visited Kwame’s village and his brand new grand-niece. We were swarmed with kids as usual - at one point, they pulled Bill outside the hut, where he promptly pretended to be a monster and chased them around, he roaring and the kids all squealing and running. Our friend Carl got into the act too, and there were two white men chasing laughing black kids around cisterns and over wooden wagons until everyone was exhausted. 

If we had any doubt about where we were, that day – between the festival and the village – proved that we are, indeed, in Africa.