Kwahu Easter
To begin with, Kwahu Easter isn’t a traditional Kwahu celebration. Kwahu, like many Akan tribes, celebrates Akwasidae, Kwahu’s festival of transformation.
The Kwahus’ Easter ceremonies may be described as a return home. Actually, this is how the popular holiday season in the Highlands began. It began as a return home for Kwahus in the diaspora, notably those in Accra.
The Greater Accra Region is home to the bulk of Kwahus in comparison to mainland Kwahu. The reason for the transfer to the capital city and overseas was for trade and business. The bulk of Kwahus are traders and businesswomen who travel long distances to conduct business.
It’s no coincidence that the majority of Kwahus live in Accra’s trading districts, like Abossey Okai, Kantamanto, Okaishie, and CMB. In addition to their commercial lives, they dwell in key portions of the capital city, such as Kokomlemle, Adabraka, Dansoman, Pokuase, and Amasaman.
As a result, mainland Kwahu has become more of a “deserted town,” with the majority of its young people and working class departing to work abroad, leaving only a tiny number of them and the elderly behind. Nonetheless, they regularly return home to build mansions, especially magnificent ones, that they want to live in after retiring and returning to their original country.
Kwahus were usually unable to return to their hometown for the holidays because it was a time for sales. As a result, they were unable to travel to see relatives in the mountains because the majority of them worked in Accra’s bustling business districts.
Nonetheless, they recognized that the Easter holiday provided a flexible window for traveling to Kwahu to see their relatives. These trips produced the Kwahu Easter phenomenon over the Easter holiday. They would frequently travel to the mountains with pals from Accra and other parts of the country. Accra-based coworkers began to travel with the Kwahus to visit their family in order to view and experience their distinctive natural attractions and freezing temperature.
It was unsurprising that they would return to Kwahu over the Easter season to attend family and community events. This tradition continues to this day among the Kwahus and other Ghanaians, as well as visitors who come to the freezing mountains to celebrate Easter.
Since the addition of the paragliding event to the holidays in 2005, the holidays on the Kwahu mountains have grown more interesting over time. Pilots from all over the world travel to the Odweanoma Paragliding site to launch parachutes into Nkawkaw’s landmass. This, in particular, has aided Kwahu Easter’s international prominence.
To summarize, Kwahu Easter is here to stay. To make the celebrations worthy of their popularity and reputation as more than just a time for fun and celebration, but also one that supports economic growth and development in the tourism industry, the government and the traditional authority in Kwahu must enact guidelines.
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