Thanksgiving Festival – Nandom Style

There are rocks in the millet. Not exactly something that seems like a cause for celebration but that is the meaning of our harvest festival “Kakube”. The millet harvest has been brought in and spread out on the ground to dry before being collected for storage. There are invariably small rocks mixed in at this point. Millet is an important local crop used for a porridge and, as mentioned earlier, the local alcoholic brew consumed by men and women – pito, or daa.

Kakube was started about 30 years ago in Nandom by the Paramount Chief of the area. Previously the local communities had their own harvest festival and there was no common gathering to celebrate the harvest. The idea of Kakube was to bring everyone together. The local celebrations have moved to Christmas time in this Catholic area.

The local soccer (football) field is converted to the festival grounds in about two days. Chairs and tents are placed around the festival grounds. The Paramount Chief and/or Queen Mother sit on a raised platform on one side with the community Chiefs and Queen Mothers sitting on the opposite site. The lone white man also sat on that side. I got a front row seat on both Sunday and Monday.
Grounds before the final dance competition.  The raised platform for Paramount Chief or Queen Mother and Ghana Flag in distance.  The Paramount Chief presided on Sunday.  The Paramount Queen Mother presided on Monday.
A major part of the festival is a cultural dance competition of the regional high schools and other groups. The festival starts on Saturday when people start arriving but things don't start happening in a major way until Sunday. The big day is Monday with the final competitions and other activities.

Paramount Chief, Queen Mothers, and Land Owners


I will go into more details about the local officials in a future post but I'll briefly explain them now. There is a Paramount Chief who is over a sizable area along with local chiefs for each community. I've been told that position was instituted by the British government to simplify governing the locals. The position has continued after independence and these men, they are typically men, have a lot of power. The president has power at the country level, but the local chiefs have powers over local matters that cannot be overridden by the president.

The chief is generally selected for life from a particular family. The process varies but is sometimes controlled by the Queen Mother. The queen mothers are not married to the chiefs nor from the same family as the chief. These women are primarily responsible for the concerns of the women and exert their own power in the community.

The landowners are the family that first settled the area and they continue to control the land – granting rights of use to others. Land ownership is tricky in Ghana as written records are not always available and rights to the land that has been divided among family members generations back may be convoluted. My friend and neighbor Roger is one of the land owners. In some communities the landowners also play a role in selecting the chief.


Back to the festival with Dancing, Beauty Queen, and Celebrities


The xylophone and gourd drum are the major instruments for the cultural dancing.

Nandom Senior High dance group, the local favorite, with gourd drum and xylophone highlighted

Another shot of the dance moves - not enough bandwidth to upload the video :-(

Another dance group in the competition in the background.  There were 15 groups - with three competing each round

And what sort of festival would it be without a beauty contest? Miss Kakube with a the two runners up were presented on Monday,

Miss Kakube and the runners up.  "DKM" is a relatively new long distant bus company and one of the sponsers.

Local celebrities popular at the national level also gave shows on Monday.

Nationally know signer (but unknown to the white man) was one of the performers at the festival

Selling Things


Finally what would a festival be if not a chance to sell things? Sunday is Nandom's market day and so the market moved from the normal position to the festival grounds. On Friday trucks delivered huge quantities of fruit and other merchandise. We are so far from where things are produced or imported and at the end of the road in Ghana that we don't normally get much fruit – so I bought watermelon and pineapple which are not normally available. Bananas, plantains, and oranges were also unusually plentiful. There are times when none of these are available at market. (Thus the reason I want to build a solar dehydrator.)

Picture of the market

There were fewer trinkets than I expected. I was hoping to find something to send home for Christmas, but could not find anything other than a few cheaply made things that I did not care to buy. I'll keep looking and find things to bring back next year.

They did have a nice selection of pottery that I found interesting. Some are used for watering poultry, cooking, serving food, or storing water. Pots that are lightly fired remain somewhat porous. In the hot dry season such pots will keep the contents cool by evaporative cooling.


Some of the pottery for sell



















I did find a replacement hat.

Replacement hat with map of Ghana in the background


Things are fine here and I'm hoping all is well stateside.  I'm off to Church soon and hope to visit a friend volunteering for short term USAID project in a town about an hour away once the tro starts moving.


Love always,
John

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