Ghanaians are well known to copy blindly anything so far as
it’s coming from the ‘obroni’ (whiteman). It’s true that the world is now a
global village hence cultures could easily be adapted; however, my worry is
whether the said cultural practice when adapted will have a positive impact in
the lives of Ghanaians. Sadly, most of these cultures when adapted add
virtually nothing to lives of the Ghanaian who doesn’t even know the origin or purpose
of the culture.
I am used to my ‘bronya’ (Christmas), Easter, and a few
holidays and celebrations to help me skip school and work. Suddenly, I heard a
new celebration has been added to our celebrations – Halloween. How do they
expect my grandma to mention it. Halo-what? As to who started it, I have no
idea. A lot of people made noise about it, event organizers coined events out
of it (of course for their personal gains) and some naïve Ghanaians were glad
to participate. I had the chance to speak to a few Halloween lovers and none of
them even knew what Halloween stood for. “As for me they are doing it so me too
I am doing some” one lady dressed in a costume unknown to her said. I would
have been happy if I had seen anyone dress as Kwaku Ananse or Nti-Kuma, but no,
all were dressed as characters from American movies and cartoons. Halloween is
celebrated on the night of 31st October, which is the Eve of All
Saints’ Day. Ghana isn’t known to celebrate All Saint Day, so how does
Halloween come in? (You tell me). Let’s just leave it here.
As if not enough, BLACK FRIDAY steps into the picture. As Ghanaian
as I am, I know of only one Friday, but never knew Fridays had colors to the
extent some could be black. Black Friday is basically the name given to the
shopping day after Thanksgiving. The question still remains, do we celebrate Thanksgiving
in Ghana? If not, how then do we put the cart before the horse by celebrating
Black Friday instead? (Don’t answer). Amidst the fun, Black Friday comes with a
lot of mayhem such as traffic accidents, violence and sometimes stampedes. In 2012, two people were shot dead outside of
a Walmart shop in Florida. They were fighting over a parking space. A woman
also pepper sprayed a crowd because she was trying to get an item with 60%
off.( I could go on and on).
Prior to Black Friday yesterday, I saw on social media, promos
of some retail shops in Ghana offering massive discounts to customers with
Black Friday as the theme. Customers later found out to their utter disbelief
and disappointment that those outrageous discounts were not real. Some even took
to twitter to express their disappointment. This happened not only in Ghana but
other neighboring African countries. It goes to show that these shop owners
have no idea the rationale behind Black Friday so does the customers. This is a case of deception and
such shops could have been sued anywhere else but not in Ghana. ‘Antoa’ (River
god) would have been an alternative but Antoa also has issues.
These and many other foreign celebrations will continue to
flood our system as it appears we can do nothing about it. These celebrations could be more beneficial if celebrants took time to understand it Turning these
celebrations around to the betterment of our culture will do us more good
rather than just imitating blindly for some ‘sheygey’ reasons.
Next year who knows- Ghanaians would be celebrating St. Patrick’s
Day. Just saying.
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