Another missed Kwahu Easter adventure

For as long as I can remember, I have been going through an annual ritual of a strong desire to visit Kwahu for Easter, when Kwahuland comes alive and many of its citizens, both elsewhere in the country and abroad, troop back home up the scarp for a weekend of festivities.

The desire usually peaks around January, the season of resolutions for the new year.

I keep promising myself, and like the proverbial ‘kokosakyi’ (vulture) that keeps promising to build itself a nest as soon as the dark clouds gather, I keep shouting hoarse that ‘as for this year, I must find my way up the scarp’.

Yet, somehow, by the end of February, this boiling vigour is usually reduced to a mere simmer, and ‘Kwahu oh, Kwahu!!’ ends up as quite as a spent volcano, throwing up tepid lava and coughing putrid ash, to be energised again the following January.

I am not quite sure what deflates my eagerness.

Indeed, around this time last year, writing dreamily on this page about Easter in Kwahu, I promised myself, rather sternly, that “one of these fine Easters, I will haul myself up the mountain, find my way to the paragliding venue and allow myself to be strapped into one of those contraptions that will enable me to float in the Kwahu atmosphere, gliding effortlessly and dreamily.”

Sadly, that glorious ‘fine Easter’ dream is yet to manifest itself.

Kumasi trip

On Good Friday, I left Accra for Kumasi with a friend who was driving there for a wedding the following day.

I had not really planned to be in Kumasi for the weekend, but the temptation to hop in for a free ride was too alluring to ignore.

Graciously, he agreed I could join him for the return trip to Accra on Sunday.

With the Kwahu scarp looming in the distance as we approached Nkawkaw, the first pangs of real regret at failing to join the Kwahu bandwagon hit, and I almost cheekily asked my friend to drive up just so I could get a feel of the season.

I have always been quite fascinated about how the early settlers of the scarp made their way up along its steep slopes back in the day.

It must have been quite a trek on foot.

Of course, it being Good Friday, it was obvious there would not be much happening up there, or indeed anywhere else in the country, as it was time for deep reflection on the day of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.

The fun would come with the Resurrection.

On the way back in the afternoon on Easter Sunday, knowing what must be going on along the top of the scarp, from Mpraeso to Abetifi simply hurt.

I was tempted to call my Kwahu friends who I knew had escaped Accra, get down from my friend’s car at Nkawkaw and haul myself up to the scarp for some serious fun and partying until late on Easter Monday.

Some posts I saw on friends’ Facebook walls told me that over the weekend, Kwahu was the epicentre of the Easter holidays, with the streets jam-packed as people partied away as if there was no tomorrow.

Fetu Afahye precedent

If I have some confidence that sometime in the future, my entire Easter weekend will be spent in Kwahuland, it is based on my relationship with the Fetu Afahye of Cape Coast, a one-week-long affair which climaxes on the first Saturday of September each year.

You see, Cape Coast, with its quaint, fascinating history, and which once served as the capital of the then Gold Coast, had always been on my mind as a place I had to visit.

As a child, my trips to Accra from Tarkwa or Prestea always took me through Cape Coast, and I wondered what the castle, that I had read so much about, was like.

It was not until I had relocated abroad that I once came home on holiday and decided to tackle Cape Coast head-on one weekend, taking on the Kakum National Park trail, with its rather scary canopy walkway.

It was a wonderful weekend.

When I returned to Ghana in 2011 to live permanently, I kept getting quite good reviews about Fetu Afahye.

Back then, as I have been doing with Kwahu Easter, I kept dancing around the Afahye.

Again, I was not quite sure why.

Then in 2013, I decided to take the plunge.

Without much ceremony and quite spontaneously, I simply headed for Cape Coast on the eve of the grand durbar and had the time of my life at the festival.

It became quite a bug and I kept going almost every year, until quite recently.
Cultural hubs

I was rather startled the other day when a friend told me that most of the towns she knows outside Accra are the result of having had to attend funerals there some time in the past and could not wriggle out.

The more I thought about it, the more it hit me that domestic tourism has quite a number of snags, including the sheer cost of accommodation, that it is completely out of the league of many Ghanaian pockets.

This is quite a shame, because there are so many beauty spots and fascinating areas to visit in the country at least from some to the material I have come across on online sites and from friends’ experiences.

I do wish I could see far more places in Ghana than I know, and I do not want to do so through the prism of a black funeral cloth.

It is quite disconcerting for me to know that I have foreign friends who know my country more than I do.

Cultural festivals (I think it is arguable that Kwahu Easter has morphed into a quasi-cultural festival) and other big social events across the country provide, in my view, important cultural hubs to learn other ethnic groups in the country and appreciate better our beautiful diversity.

Ultimately, this goes a long way towards social cohesion.

Essentially, therefore, the various festivals are not  and should not be seen as belonging solely to the natives of that ethno-cultural enclave but rather for us all.

Pledge

On festivals, I admit I score rather poorly, and I need to draw up a bucket list and ramp it up.

I am yet to do the Kundum, Hogbetsotso, Damba, Bakatue or the Aboakyer festivals, among others.

I believe the Aboakyer in May is the next major festival.

On Kwahu Easter, I definitely will be exorcising my demons, and God willing, I expect to bring you sizzling news from atop the scarp next year.

Like the Black American civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther king Jr, I have a dream.
So help me God.

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng

Head, Communications & Public Affairs Unit,

Ministry of Energy,

Accra.

E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com