Homowo: Echoes of Survival – A Pre-Colonial Ethnography of the Ga People's Sacred Harvest Festival

The Ga people trace their origins to a great migration from Cush, through Sudan, Ethiopia, Ile-Ife in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo before settling along the coast of modern-day Greater Accra. Written history about the Ga dates to at least 1600, though oral traditions place the migration far earlier. During this long journey, the people were struck by a devastating famine, the Nmaa Daa, in which many perished. When they finally settled and planted farms, the first harvest was so bountiful that the entire community gathered to ridicule and jeer at the hunger that had nearly destroyed them. In the Ga language, "Homo" means hunger and "wo" means to hoot or jeer, and so "Homowo" literally means "hooting at hunger." The festival thus commemorates not merely survival but defiance, a communal declaration that hunger had been defeated and would never again hold power over the Ga. Daniel Tetteh Osabu-Kle of Carleton University has noted the intriguing parallel between the unleavened bread of the Ga people, called akpiti, and the unleavened bread of Jewish tradition, a connection the Ga themselves acknowledge in their oral histories. The festival became an annual harvest celebration, timed to the Ga native calendar provided yearly by the Damte Fetish Priest of the Damte Dsanwe people in the Asere Quarter of Ga Mashie. The Ga native year commences either on the last Monday of April or the first Monday of May, with the Nmaadumo sowing rite marking the beginning of the calendar and all celebrations within it.