Kwame
and I went to Day One of the Aboakyer festival in Winneba, on the ocean about
an hour west of Accra. The guidebook says it’s the oldest (300 years) and
probably most famous festival in Ghana. Its roots are in the days when, like
ancient Greece, the gods ran pretty much everything, and they tended to get
cranky, so it was important to keep them happy with a sacrifice now and then –
in the case of this tradition, a young antelope from the forest.
Yes,
the theology of one god who is not amused by sacrifices, particularly to
upstart pseudo-gods, has taken over in Ghana. But the matter of beliefs is a
big tent in this country (see previous post), and the ancient gods still have
their followers. For most people, the Aboakyer festival has turned into
something more like a sporting match – two fraternal organizations compete to
see which one can capture an antelope – but the poor animals still suffer in a
sacrifice to those cranky gods on Day Two, overseen by priests who remain true
believers.
The
hunt takes place at the crack of dawn, and one of the rules laid down by the
gods is that the animal must be captured by hand and not hurt in any way, not
the slightest bruise, much less a drop of blood. By the time Kwame and I
arrived, the hunt was over (both groups caught a deer, so there would be no
bragging rights this year, and I suppose the gods will be especially happy) –
and from what we saw in the next few hours, the essence of the festival involves
a frenzied explosion of mostly young men, many dressed in bizarre outfits (with
a fair amount of cross-dressing), racing around in clumps and yelling,
eventually making their way through the streets of town from the central field
to a final destination a couple of kilometers away, where there would
undoubtedly be drumming, dancing, and excited merrymaking, as at all festivals.
We decided not to follow them all
the way there because, honestly, it was so incredibly hot, and the bursting
testosterone (no doubt already fueled by something liquid) made us not want to
venture into some of the extremely constricted places along the route. Or maybe
it was the truckloads, busloads of riot-equipped police that aroused our
caution (the festival has been cancelled the last few years because of violence
related to chieftaincy disputes – a frequent thing here). Anyway, we decided we
had gotten the point, and headed home. These people, we agreed, are indeed a
little crazy, much more so than in the festival we had attended last fall in
Kwame’s Volta region. (For more photos use our Ghana photo link on this page.)
Along
the way we visited one of Kwame’s distant relatives – he and she grew up
together – in a tiny village along the main road where she is caring for her
90-year-old mother. It is more of a settlement than a village; the people who
live there specialize in making gin out of sugar cane, so we saw a few
distilleries. I also had one final chance to make a stir as a rather unusual
visitor, to nod and smile politely to people speaking a very different
language, and to walk around with a small boy fastened to each hand, wide eyes
staring up at me.
And
then, home. The most amusing part of the day, really, was that Kwame let me
drive his taxi for about half the trip – well, not just allowed, nearly
demanded. At one point we were moving slowly in traffic and a tro-tro driver
and taxi driver in the oncoming lane both leaned out their windows yelling in
hilarious amazement, “Obruni taxi driver!” This is not, really, a very normal
sight in Ghana.
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