Chipping Away at Aspects of Akan Culture

KOFI AYIM

Culture defines a people’s way of life through language, diet, clothing, dwelling, religious beliefs, and name structures, among others. Thus, culture is the sum of the expressions, beliefs, and mannerisms of a people.

No group of people living in the earthly world exists without a modicum of culture.  Culture plays a significant, if unheralded, role in a nation’s development.

The most common language of the Akan of Ghana is Twi, with its varying dialects. There is a common thread of culture among the Twi speaking people.

Akan names, like those in different cultures, identify persons as integral members of a community or family.  In the modern day of GPS navigation, names place people on the international geographic map.

The weighty fufuo dish typically eaten at dinner time might immobilize a person of different cultural persuasion whose dinner usually consists of rice or spaghetti. Fufuo is heavy and may not sit well in an unaccustomed stomach.

Traditionally, siblings and other family members eat from the same bowl to encourage and accentuate the spirits of sharing, togetherness, and trust. One cannot poison the food you are also eating. The art of eating itself has cultural underpinnings.

Most important of these is the fact that left-handed, or right-handed, one must eat with the right hand!  Who knows where the left hand has been? Of course all must wash their right hand before eating without cutlery.

Aspects of Akan culture is in the throes of an endangered institution.

Some elements of Akan culture, have or are losing their appeal. Worrisome are those that are slowly but surely being pushed into oblivion.  To list a few, few bother to understand the meanings of symbols and use rich proverbs, which base Akan philosophy, in parlance.

Naming Ceremony

In Akan kingdom, a baby is welcomed into this earth by performing a naming ceremony one week after birth. The seventh day of naming a baby was not arbitrarily selected; it connotes socio-religious characteristics.

The ceremony, usually executed early in the morning and before sunrise calls for very few relatives and away from prying eyes. A one-week-old baby is too vulnerable to viruses that may be passed by others. The process calls for two clear liquids: water and liquor.

The water symbolizes virtues of life, largely, character and integrity. The reverse is presumed to be associated with liquor. The two liquids may look alike, but certainly, their effects are anything but similar.  

The elder doing the naming could be the father, uncle, or any elder. The elder shows the baby the two liquids while talking to the baby. The content is an emphasis on knowing the difference between truth and falsehood.

Letting his/her YES be yes, and his/her NO be no. The elder lets a drop of each liquid fall on the baby’s tongue to introduce the reality of knowing differences even in look-alike situations.

These days, some religious leaders often utilize salt and sugar that also look alike but different for emphasis of differentiation. The elder usually pours libation, asking for blessings for the newborn and those gathered.

As the practice of Christianity becomes more Africanized, we are seeing the usurping and bastardization of the sacred and meaningful Akan naming ceremony. Gone is the liquor, substituted by a soft drink such as Sprite. The family elder has no place.

Libation is added to the list of idol worshipping. It has no place in the church. As the European missionaries condemned everything African as superstition and idol worshipping, so are the new breed of African church leaders, continuing where the Whiteman left off.  

Marriage

A new wave of self-made “experts” is astonishingly taking over traditional marriage rites. The role played by a typical Akan family head or its representative in marriage ceremony is taken over by these “marriage contractors” who know next to nothing about the family they represent.

As such they prefer self-introduction of family members present. They play the role of a Master/Mistress of Ceremony and family spokespersons simultaneously. And they don’t come cheap.

While most do not bother to explain the procedures and rationale of items presented to the bride-to-be and her family, others would simply play ostrich and refuse to listen to directions from the family.

Relevant questions that a family may pose to the groom-to-be and his family and vice versa are lost in the process. The process becomes mechanical and robotic. The contractors use the occasion to make money and advertise themselves, trying to entertain while teaching nothing.

Younger generations and those new to Akan marriage rites learn little to nothing at such events. The act of contracting a non-family member to initiate a marriage ceremony is an indictment on the family. The shine is taken away from the family elder or his assigns.

In contemporary Akan, the mode in which most grooms-to-be enter the house/compound of his potential in-laws is unAkan and an act of comedy.

This “gallant” yet unorthodox entry of the yet to be married suitor and friends is characterized by blaring songs and at times compromised and teasing dance in the presence of soon-to-be in-laws. It makes mockery of a hitherto, sacred and serious rites.

In times past, marriage could be discontinued and annulled in the process for anything untoward from either side of the family

Akan marriage rites are now advertised as an Engagement. But a relational engagement from the Euro-American point of view, is the first step to marriage and is basically between two people, that may take place in a beach, movie hall, a stadium or on a curb by the roadside.

The Akan equivalent of engagement is “Knocking” whereby two or three people are sent to inquire about the “availability” of a lady in a house for marriage. It is usually accompanied by a gourd of palm wine or a bottle of liquor. Marriage proper then follows if the lady is not already “engaged” and if she consents to marry the suitor.

The introduction of the Bible and the ring in Akan marriage rites is a recent phenomenon. The act and art of slipping a ring on a bride’s finger is non-religious and has no meaning in Christianity.

In fact, it was an ancient Egyptian practice transferred to Greek and adopted by the Romans. The ideograph of the O-shaped ring that is slipped unto a bride’s finger symbolically means an “opening” enacted for a stretched finger (phallic?) to enter!

Funeral

In times past, Akan funeral was age/status and mode of death dependent. The protocol of mourning the loss of a first-born child or a first death of a couple is different from that of an aged person. Similarly, the funeral of a priest/ess is different from that of a hunter, a suicide or accidental death.

These days death notices for young to middle-aged people are announced with screaming headline of Celebration of Life. What is there to celebrate for the death of a 40-year-old who was beginning life?

Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern one funeral from another. With the exception of a bereaved family, modern day funerals have almost assumed the status of a celebratory bash. The only exception is probably the mode of clothes or attire worn at funerals. Even then, most dress elaborately and elegantly with ornaments on every conceivable part of the body.

The belief is that a dead person renders loved ones left behind “naked” and vulnerable. As such the living mourn their dead with a sense of humility, emptiness and nakedness.

During this time, comforts and vanities of life are given up. The nakedness and emptiness that for example, dictated that a widow/er must walk barefooted is a thing of the past.

Further, Akan culture does not encourage public eating at funerals. Mourners were discreetly served with food but that cannot be said about contemporary Akan funeral. No one, including chief mourners, observes fast during funerals.

The belief was that going without food translated to giving the food to the spirit of the dead person.  It also conveyed to others that your loss is so hurtful that you do not desire food nor have the time to prepare same.

In retrospect, as culture is being shredded into pieces, so is national development.

With no respect for culture that hold rivers and forests sacrosanct (of course, they feed us), the youth of today, aided by greedy winks, are destroying Ghana’s rivers and lands in the industry called ‘galamsey”. Cocoa production is low and will soon be a thing of the past.   

Children are being born deformed, and all lives are threatened. If this is not the prologue of national disaster, what else is? 

Go figure!

This article is dedicated to Opanin Kwaku Brogya