Cape Coast Festival (Oguaa Fetu Afahye)

Once again they rounded all 50 or so of us EAP students up, put us on a bus, drove us to Cape Coast for the weekend. Cape Coast is a moderately sized fishing village in the Central Region once infamous for its critical role in the transatlantic slave trade, and now famous for playing host to United States President Barack Obama. We were there for the Oguaa Fetu Afahye or Cape Coast Festival; one of the most outrageous festivals in Ghana (in my opinion at least). Here's a brief background on the significance of the festival:

Harvest festival to pay homage and respect to local dieties responsible for the continued abundance of important resources (i.e. fish).

Time to give thanks for everything that happen during the last year and celebrate the beginning of the new year (September-September).

Common to witness men dressed as women, people wearing animal costumes, masks, and young people dressed as chiefs and kings- in order to show that during the festival time all normal traditions and social norms/rules are forgotten for a while and people are free to act as they please

Generally, like most public celebrations it is a time for the community to come together celebrate life and forget about the troubles of everyday existence

My personal note and a universal one at that: A time for young males to get ridiculously drunk (sauced if you will) and act like complete idiots with zero inhibitions... sound familiar to anyone?

Anyways, we arrived at the Savoy Hotel on Thursday night and walked around town for a bit eating dinner and checking out the beginning of the festivities. Celebrations wouldn't get into full swing until saturday morning. About six of us stayed in a lodge/house with three rooms and one key to the main door. Unfortunately, we had an unwanted visitor in the middle of the night who decided to take Travis's digital slr camera and about 50 Ghana cidi from Joe. It was partially our fault because the last person home failed to lock the main door. It was a pretty terrible way to start the weekend. It's too bad that a festival that is supposed to be a time to celebrate the common good of people is also a time when dishonest people take advantage of the influx of people, especially foreigners.

The religious ceremony takes place miday on Friday and culminates in the slaughtering of a bull. Once the bull is sacrificed it is dragged through the streets for everyone to witness. Once ther ritualistic part is taken care of its time to party. Saturday marks the social aspect of the festival. It starts with a overflowing procession of the various companies (neighborhoods) that make up Cape Coast and their respected Chiefs and Queen Mothers. The procession is absolutely insane, people dancing, waving flags, banging drums, and men carrying the Chiefs on top of their heads in sled-like contraptions. We watched for a few hours and then made our way past the parade to get lunch and meet up with it once again at the fair grounds, where the procession culminates in a massive Durbar. I didn't know it, but the President of Ghana John Atta Mills was present as well. I didn't stay to watch each of the Chiefs and the President give his address, but I later found out it was entirely in local language so I guess I didn't miss much.

All in all, the experience was incredibly fun, exhausting, overstimulating, and helped to bring me one step closer to understanding Ghanaian culture. It was impossible to observe and take every aspect of the festival in...it was really just too much. There is a proverb that says something along the lines of, ' foreigners are like children who have very big eyes, but cannot see.' I think that really sums up my experience at the festival and my experience in Ghana as a whole.