I was searching through a file my late father kept for me when i started secondary school. It included in the main receipts for payments that he had made during the period of the sixties and also my less than impressive school reports, a source of much aggravation during the holiday period when he sought to ground me and further pay for me to have extra classes.
I had retrieved this file from the family home the last time I travelled back home. i was surprised that there was a manuscript of a book dating back to the late 1930s that Mr EA Ammah the major authority on Ga culture had put together. I suspect that he must have been asked to review it.
I reproduce the document here for information. Scanning foolscap to A4 is not an easy task at all and it has taken me the best part of the morning to scan these 23 pages.
It is a long read, but it is a good read if you are interested in the vexed question of how the missionaries and educated Ga sought to trample on our customs in the name of Christianity.
What comes across is that there was a conspiracy of sorts that in order for the word of Christ to be spread among the natives, it was important to turn their educated away from their culture. Sadly the same is happening today with several men of God of different sects, titles and hierarchies pronouncing on the culture of our people.
Mr EA Ammah was bold enough in 1939 to take them on in relation to our festivals and the Homowo.
I hope that other scholarly tracts would surface to inform this debate.
I also think that organisations such as Gadangme Nikasemo Asafo should bring a certain urgency to the work and help preserve some of these tracts for posterity.
Read on!!!!
this is published in the book Kings, Priests and Kinsmen by EA Ammah
