Odwira, Food, and Identity

Hi friends.

I’m sorry I’m so bad at keeping up with my blog. So much happens everyday and I get so overwhelmed and further and further behind, so catching up is a daunting task.

We spent September 15-19 (Tuesday through Saturday) in Akropong (an hour van ride from the University). Whoa, that was 2 weeks ago! We stayed, for the second time, at Akrofi Christaller Institute, which is a wonderful seminary. The last time we went to ACI was a “Welcome to Ghana” or Ghanaian Culture Retreat. This time, we went to observe a festival called Odwira that occurs annually and is very significant to the people of Akropong and surrounding areas.

We learned about different aspects of the Odwira festival (rituals and traditions) and then attended the events themselves. Sometimes we didn’t learn about a certain event until after we went to it. This was frustrating since people were speaking in Twi and performing traditional rituals that we couldn’t understand. So, at times, we had no idea what was going on.

Our week away was overwhelming and exhausting, but was also incredibly fascinating and exciting. I feel like I don’t have the energy to talk about details in a way that will convey anything you will understand ☺. No matter how in depth I go, there is not really a way that you will know what I’m talking about…so your impression will not be what it would be if you were here. I don’t mean that in a rude way, I just don’t want you to freak out about what I say. So much of my understanding of Odwira is built on the many days in the classroom, hours of conversation, and a month of living in this culture. There is so much behind this festival—culturally, historically, religiously—and words cannot convey what it was like. It’s just too big to write in a blog entry. I will try to tell you briefly about the festival and a few events that stood out to me (for obvious reasons, as you will soon see).

The word Odwira itself means “cleansing.” In the Twi translation of the Bible, the word Odwira is found in Hebrews 1:3—“Jesus cleansed our sins.” So, the short version of the purpose and meaning of the Odwira festival is that it is a festival the cleanses the people and the town. In the presence of Odosu, a very powerful deity, and the ancestors (who play an incredibly important role in Ghanaian society), the Odwira Festival brings cleansing to the people. There are number of different rituals, events, ceremonies, etc throughout the week that are loaded with meaning and significance to the people. We attended a lot of them.

This is the town of Akropong. People lined the streets to watch the Processional on Thursday. MTN is the phone service that I have. Phone companies have ads EVERYWHERE, including the sides of almost all buildings.

The first part about the festival that really stood out was the Processional on Thursday. Thursday is New Years Day for the Akan people (the ethnic group that the people of Akropong belong to). The processional is sort of reminiscent of a parade. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the people from the area stand and sit all along the road waiting for the action to pass them. The main thing that happens during the Processional is that women carry food to a place called The Mausoleum. The Mausoleum is a tree enclosed by four concrete walls. No one is allowed into those walls except the women who carry the food on this one particular day of the year. It is a significant spiritual honor to carry food to the ancestors—the women who carry often become possessed by the deity Odosu. This was an incredibly interesting thing to watch. If I had seen this processional the first day I had been here, I probably would have started crying and wanted to fly home. But, having been here seven weeks, this procession was exciting and with eyes wide open, I learned even more about the people I live with!

This is a woman carrying food to the ancestors. The men next to her keep her going in the right direction and from hurting people. At this point, she was not violently possessed but started running around shortly after I took this picture.

The second ritual that was a bit more overwhelming was the ritual on Friday that cleanses the Mpeni Tree. The Mpeni Tree is a specific tree that is located in front of the Paramount Chief’s Palace. It is HUGE and is not allowed to be touched. This tree has very significant spiritual power and is cleansed annually during this festival. To cleanse the tree, libation is poured to the ancestors, a sheep is sacrificed, and a new white cloth is placed around the tree that stays up until the following year. This cleansing is done by a family who are called the “Keepers of the Tree.” This was a pretty small ceremony and our group of fourteen made up about half of the crowd. Before the ritual began, one of the women who had carried food the previous day in the processional became possessed. Because she was two feet away from me, I’ll go ahead and say that a bit of fear came over me. She was a strong woman when possessed and three big men had trouble keeping her in one place. The spirit of the tree had come into her and communicated to the Keepers of the Tree that it (the tree) was angry. Apparently this year the tree was highly disrespected—touched, peed on, slept next to, the white cloth and a calabash were stolen, etc—and was not happy about it. The spirit wanted the ritual to be a bit different—or more extensive—than usual. So we experienced an interesting twist to this ritual. After the woman “settled down,” we all watched wide-eyed and queasy-stomached as a terrified sheep’s throat was slit and it’s blood poured all the way around the tree. My knees felt funny. The sheep didn’t die for a long time…too long. It was really hard to watch. Somehow though, the ritual in its entirety didn’t upset me nearly as much as I expected it to, and that is not because I am numb. It is because I am learning.

This is the white cloth, sheep head, and empty bottle of Schnapps (for libations) at the foot of the Mpeni Tree.

Christians that observe Odwira or are from Akropong find it difficult to find their identity within the Festival (especially because of things like sacrifice and possession). Because the cleansing that occurs during Odwira is a Traditional Religion and is not through Jesus, many Christians don’t like Odwira. Some Christians choose to think of the festival as simply a reminder of Christ’s all-encompassing cleansing of our sins. The Ghanaian woman that taught us all about Odwira seemed herself to be very confused about the discrepancy between her culture/heritage/history/ancestors and what Christians are “supposed” to think about Odwira. This aspect alone raised about seventeen million questions in my mind. So much to process!

When we got back from Odwira, I for some reason had a hard week. I felt okay physically (well, I’m never completely normal, but not too bad), but emotionally and mentally, I felt so weird. I was homesick. For my parents and my sister, for my friends, for Grand Rapids, for Fall, for Thursday night Office Parties, for Saturday morning Farmers Market, for work, for easy access to a place to paint, for FOOD…

Last week Monday (the 21st) was a National Holiday to celebrate the day that Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana’s first president after Colonial Rule) would have been 100 years old. To celebrate, a few of us went to a nearby outdoor resort-like pool/hotel and I spent the day getting tan and pretending to be in Florida with my family. I ate hummus and pita and pizza. After that, I went through about a week of grumpiness and fantasy over foods that I wished I could eat. This lead to going out of my way to not eat normal Ghanaian food and to fill myself with foods that at least minimally reminded me of home. The pool started the snowball effect that continued for a week: I ate avocado and cheese sandwiches, pizza, ice cream, cheesecake, a latte, TONS of chocolate chip cookies, made bruschetta and pasta one night, Snickers bars (well, chocolate of any time), an orange float, jelly on bread, peanut butter and nutella, the list goes on… I even called my dad and told him to send me EasyMac in the mail (not realizing it would be confiscated by customs anyway). I never even eat EasyMac at home! Our entire group went “out out” for the first time to a bar called Champs. It felt way too much like a bar at home. But it was fun and felt like home to eat a delicious burrito with guacamole, drink Long Island Iced Tea, and sing Karaoke. Without further detail, let’s just say our group deeeeeefinitely bonded that night!

Today was one of the first days that I felt like eating Ghanaian food again, and I enjoyed it! Groundnut soup with Garden Eggs tasted lovely. That’s good.

I have also been reflecting the last few days on how being here has made me feel like I’m having an identity crisis. So many parts of my identity are at home…people, places, things…and it’s hard to figure out what is left of me and who I am. We read an excerpt from Shauna Niequist’s book Cold Tangerines today about her study abroad experience. She says about being abroad in England for a semester: “They were the days. They were singularly beautiful, terrible days. In some ways, I was never more myself, and in others, never more unrecognizable.” This is freakishly true. At times, I feel misunderstood. Like I’m trying to be myself but failing at it. The people we debrief life with are an expensive phone call away and it feels so far. There is a real beauty in getting to know a group of people in this way, but in some ways it is also really hard to not have people who have known me a while (or forever) be here to hug me. Based on recent conversations with friends here, a lot of us feel this way some degree. I know that this is part of the experience—figuring out who I really am without the people, places, and things that I thought made me who I was. I heard this would happen but had no idea how it would feel or what it would look like. And I’m sure this isn’t the end…

Shauna Niequist also says: “We were young American travelers, stumbling and crashing through [Ghana], falling in and out of love with it, with one another, with ourselves.” This too couldn’t be more true. (Except I’m not falling in love with anyone…haha.) I have seen in the past week this back and forth feeling of falling in and out of love with Ghana. There are days all I want is to sit in my front yard in my hammock talking to Katie Pals who loves me no matter what. Then there are other days when the thought that next week marks the half-way point in our trip makes me want to cry because I can’t bear the thought of leaving this place and these people.

This is getting long. I’m sorry that it’s so hard to put up pictures. I’m going into the Northern Region (“going North” as it is said commonly) this coming Monday. The Northern region is predominantly Muslim, and is much more impoverished and rural than anywhere we have yet been. We are going to learn more about the Muslim community, visit some villages and witches camps, step across the border into Burkina Faso, sit on a crocodile, do a safari ride, and visit a lot of NGOs. I’m really looking forward to the trip (Not the 12 hour car ride on bumpy roads. Pray for health and safety for our group!) I’ll do my best to blog about it soon after…I have a feeling I will, yet again, have a million things to say.

Thanks for reading this!

Love, Annica

P.S. I should have brought Ugly. I miss him.