People of Ga Mashie in Ghana celebrate 2022 Homowo festival
It was all joy this Saturday morning as chiefs, leaders, families, and people of Ga Mashie started the celebration of this year’s Homowo amidst drumming, pomp and pageantry in Ghana’s capital city of Accra.
Saturday, the main day of the celebration, is when His Royal Majesty, King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II, with the chief priest (Wulomo) and other chiefs sprinkle the traditional food – ‘Kpokpoi’ – at the Ussher Fort, which used to be the ancestral home before the arrival of the colonial masters.
As early as 0700 hours (GMT) traditional leaders were dressed in colorful red regalia and warrior attires, with the indigenes, including visitors clad in red attires for the ‘big day.’
The streets got busy at around 0830 hours with people, mainly young men and women moving from house to house and street to street to meet family members and friends.
Food and beverage vendors had also taken parts of the streets as they revel in festive celebration. The police are visible everywhere, especially at the forecourt of the Ga Paramount Stool House and the Gbese Mantse Palace to ensure safety and orderliness.
His Royal Majesty, Nii Dr. Dr. Ayi Bonte II, Gbese Mantse, as custom demands sprinkled the first “kpokpoi” to mark the beginning of hooting at hunger (which is what Homowo translates into from the Ga language of Ghana) for other chiefs to follow. He did so at the Ussher Fort and some principal streets of James Town.
King Tackie Teiko Tsuru will be the last to sprinkle the traditional food.
Homowo is a harvest festival celebrated by the Ga people of Ghana in the Greater Accra Region. The festival starts in the month of August with the planting of crops (mainly maize and yam) before the rainy season starts. During the festival, they perform a dance called Kpanlogo. The Ga people celebrate Homowo in the remembrance of the famine that once happened in their history in precolonial Ghana.
Learn more about Homowo in this link.
Source: News Ghana
Oral Ofori is Founder and Publisher at www.TheAfricanDream.net, a digital storyteller and producer, and also an information and research consultant.
