VESTIGES OF A RUINED CULTURE

A friend sent me a damning text after her wedding, calling me ‘anti-social’;my crime was my refusal to attend her ‘church wedding’ the Saturday after I had attended her traditional marriage rites on the Friday. Despite my pleas, my friend insisted I had done the unpardonable thing of not being present at the marriage ceremony. I insisted she got married on the Friday and I was there and was therefore surprised at her disgust. I had missed an important detail. To my friend and many young Ghanaians, a marriage was only classified as ‘marriage’, if it was a church wedding. Our beautiful traditional marriage ceremony has now been reduced to an event of mere formality, wrongly christened ‘engagement’.Whatever that means, I’m yet to find out.

On a quiet Sunday evening, I was hauled to a thanksgiving service of a man I barely knew. For quite a long time, I had stayed away from such social gatherings to keep my sanity. I must say it was quite a spectacle.

I cannot for the life of me understand why a group of people will give up their cultural identity for any reason whatsoever: religion, colonialism, modernity?

Talk of homosexuality or feminism in Ghana and you’d get some people shouting the usual invectives; ‘it is not our culture.’ That has always gotten me wondering; what exactly is our culture? The concept of culture which becomes the rallying cry of some ‘social conservatives’ against homosexuality in Africa suddenly turns to a contentious concept once you try to apply it to our modern day ‘marriage, naming and funeral ceremonies. I agree with the over-used trite, ‘culture is dynamic’.Culture is a fluid evolving concept, especially when it comes into contact with others. I believe that cultural practices such as trokosiwere inhumane and bad. But our culture also had very good success stories such as dipo, our festivals and names.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised in 2015, when an elderly friend of mine in Somanya told me none of his three daughters had undergone the dipoinitiation rites. His reason was simple; it was a pagan ritual which had no place in his new found faith of the Basel missionary. He then proceeded to explain how such pagan ritual practices were the cause of our under-development. Don’t be scandalized, he was being real.

Then there was the case of a mother who insisted on speaking English Language to her kids at all times, even when they were at home on vacation. I was curious to know why my friend insisted on speaking the English Language with her six-year old daughter. Her response was rather simplistic and befuddling. To her, that was good for the academic development of the child.  Needless to say the mother’s grammar was as terrible as the state of the eastern corridor road in my native Ghana.

If there is one thing I find curious about my Fante folks, then it is in the area of our names.  I stand accused in this regard because I have not yet had the courage to swear an affidavit to change my ‘biblical’ name. Perhaps, it is out of respect for my old man. He named me according to his understanding so I must bear the cross of his ‘salvation to the Jewish god’. I would however make sure none of my children, if I’m fortunate to have any, won’t bear any name that is alien to my Fante identity. That name could be a ‘Morrison, Anderson, Addison etc.’ but certainly not a ‘Nathan, Geoffrey, Stephen etc.’. Make no mistake, I am no traditionalist. I consider myself a modernizer and can’t regard myself as any sort of social warrior in defense of cultural purity.  However, is there not a limit to the level of appropriation and modernization?

Funerals are supposed to be sacred rituals in Ghana or so I thought. Well, apparently that too has changed. What happens when one dies as a Christian? What role does the family play and what is the role of the church? What if the deceased was a royal?

I attended a funeral of a friend’s father over the weekend. The old man was a member of one of the thriving charismatic churches in Ghana, however he was also a heir apparent to a royal stool in his village. I must admit I really admired the way both the family and his church handled the burial rites. What I found amusing though were two events that happened before the body was taken to the royal cemetery. The Christian pastor had to offer his last prayers since the church wasn’t going to accompany the body to the ‘pagan’ cemetery. It was a spectacle seeing the zealous young men and women praying in tongues for the departed soul while the family and sympathizers in the village looked on amused. Then there was the time for the offertory. It was an interesting spectacle seeing the ‘okyeame’ in his outrageous dance moves holding the totem of his clan and moving towards the offertory bowl. I was later to learn his enthusiasm may have stemmed from the fact that the family will have a share of the offertory which by the church’s tradition goes to the deceased’s family. Can we make this up? The real point though is, what’s it with the fusion of “Judeo-christian” burial practices with our indigenous culture? I realized libation was not even offered at the funeral. And the totem of my royal Oyoko clan was subjected to tongue bashing Christian rituals. If there is one thing I’m certain of in death then it should be the fact that when I die, I want to meet my Creator as the Fante man as I’m and not a Jew…