Donnerstag, 19. April 2012


Bakatue-Festival of Elmina: Part 6 « benefits of festivals »

In the beginning of the festival we wer all so busy that we concentrated on the activities, our eyes don’t want to look anywhere else. In the end of the festival, the chief and the queenmothers in their palanquin, elders and linguists infront of them leaving the parc back to the palace. There the party time starts. All the spots are playing loud music. It is nice to see that even some of the chiefs are dancing towards the modern music coming from the spots.

All of us are exhausted, but with happyness. So we relax and look for a nice spot to enter. Many spots are full already and you can feel how people also relax and enjoy the coming evening.

This will go on the whole night and some of them will even continue till the morning.

We found a good spot and sat down. We meet a lot of people inside. Ghanaians, Americans, British, Chinese, Japanese and people from the Diaspora. As we sat down and enjoy some cool drink, we started conversing with the people in the spot. We were mostly interested of how the people from outside Elmina few this festival. And we always got very positive answers.

A group of young American girls came in and they were beaming as they entered. We didn’t know why, but we felt they enjoyed the festival and they were just happy. They came closer to the other Americans inside and they were all greeting eachother very loud. It came out, that they all were neighbours in America, knew eachother by seeing on the street, but never really greeted eachother or had any conversations. In this evening you saw them there with surprise and happyness  from their faces and their conversation was just flowing and they started exchange their email numbers.

We enjoyed watching them and the fact, that people meet in a festival and start to speak to eachother. We left them and also joined our other friends and conversed with them the whole evening.

This reminded me of some years ago in the same festival, I meet a lot of friends which I knew in my childhood and I lost contact with them, because of travelling. And I remember how happy we were in this day to meet again and talk to eachother.

For me this festival is a place you can learn a lot of new traditional things which you are not familiar with and take part, understand it in a deeper way. This festival is also the moment of a high inspiring time. Specially this evening after is made for thinking, taking and rewinding all what you have witnessed in the last few days. That makes you to understand things.

Come to Ghana and enjoy Elmina Bakatue Festival! Meet our royals and elders! Join the people of Elmina !

 Come and watch our special fishmarket and learn how to bargain and buy your own fish. We go then together to buy the ingrediants and cook the Ghanaian traditional food in the traditional kitchen. It is very tasty! You can experience how your own power produce a nice tasty tradtional Ghanian dish.

If you are interested you can join also the farmers on their fields and learn how they plant and harvest the traditional food.

There are many places to go, specially the village Eguafo has a lot of historical background to understand the central region.
You can watch here the latest video of Elmina Bakatue Festival:
http://www.youtube.com/kofimusicful

general:   www.african-music-dance.com


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