The Ghanaian Network

Helping the discerning user discover, taste and enjoy
the variety of Ghanaian culture
on offer in London

 

Past

Customs are still a very big part of Ghanaians’ lives and highly unlikely to change anytime soon. It’s still a man’s world but throughout Ghana’s history women have often held crucial life changing roles. Ghana was and still is very tribal in nature, its tribal influences the thread that knits everything together and dictates a lot of what is carried out in the name of tradition. There is a little bit of snobbery between the tribes with the Ashanti covering the largest region in Ghana, you’d be forgiven thinking they were the only ones with a few others. But there exists about 100 tribes living alongside each other.

 

Present

Though it’s still a patriarchal society, women can be found doing more outside the home, often in positions of power in business and politics. Women entrepreneurs are forging the way forward in how the rest of the world trades with Ghana. They will however, juggle this with family as family still comes first. Women are ridiculed if they are still single over the age of thirty.

 

Prospective

The extended family will continue to play a big ‘welfare’ part in the life of a Ghanaian family. Divorce is till frowned upon and avoided. Due to colonialism English is the national language, running alongside the various tribal dialects. Roman Catholics remain the largest religious group, however this dynamic is changing.

Duty and devotion are required to pass along customs and inform the next generation. To ensure details are carefully recorded and preserved. In way, I guess these are some of the reasons why I created this website.

Holding onto customs are what kept my mum and dad warm in a sometimes bitterly cold country all those years ago. It also helped me to realise the two sides of my upbringing, I’ve even coined a phrase for it - ‘African Violet and English Rose’ ;). Customs encapsulate my parents’ discipline, how we dressed, related to each other as a family and how we saw the world.

Customs or more correctly traditions seemed to me to be a standard to live up to all those years ago and still remains with me today. Even though I spend less and less time with family and even other Ghanaians; customs are still there encouraging, edifying and guiding me. Sometimes in the form of Ashanti proverbs making me laugh out loud remembering what my mum would say. ‘You have eyes bigger than your stomach’ or ‘when we have children we eat too’ are my favourites and warms my heart.

Nothing beats learning about your culture, heritage and ancestry because it teaches you something about yourself. I guess I owe it to myself and others like me to conduct this discovery properly.

I’ll explore more about customs in blogs posts and events.