:Jpanyin: The Ideal of Elder in the Akan Culture of Ghana Resume

45 Pages·2012·2.84 MB·English

:Jpanyin: The Ideal of Elder in the Akan Culture
of Ghana
Sjaak van der Geest
Resume
Les proverbes ont ete utilises comme des catalyseurs pour permettre de sander
le concept opanyi.n (les anciens) dans la culture Akan du Ghana. I.:opanyin
apparait comme une personne ideale "parfaitement adulte," un gentleman/
une dame honorables, d'un age certain, pleins de sagesse qui offrent leurs
conseille aux autres, bien eleves, pleins de tact, patients et genereux et qui
consacrent les dernieres annees de leurs vies au bien-etre de la abusua
(famille). Cet article interprete la glorification des anciens, pratiquee
essentiellement par les anciens eux-memes: c'est la une strategie pour faire
face a leur tragique perte de prestige et de pouvoir a notre epoque. Rares sont
les anciens, exception faite pour ceux dont les vies ont ete un succes sur les
plans social et materiel, qui sont dignes des ideaux des opanyi.n. Pour les
autres, l'idee reste un reve, une sorte de refuge pour se proteger d'une vie
diffi.cile et douloureuse. La recherche anthropologique de terrain pour cet
article a consiste en conversations avec trente-cinq anciens et des membres de
leurs families dans une ville rurale Kwahu dans le Ghana du sud-est. Les
nombreuses citations tirees de ces conversations revelent l'ambiguite des
gens vis-a-vis de la vieillesse; elles montrent la vitalite et la souffrance
associees a la vieillesse dans une communaute ghaneenne moyenne.
The research was carried out with the help of many people. Most prominent was
the assistance given by my Ghanaian friends and eo-researchers Kwame Fosu,
Samuel Sarkodie, Patrick Atuobi, Anthony Obeng Boamah, and Michael Buabeng.
Benjamin Boadu and Yaw Darko Ansah typed most of the research material. I am
also deeply indebted to Monica Amoako, Martin Asamoah, Abena Gloria Ansah,
Abena Josephine Anson, Isaac Oppong, and Abusua Panyin Daniel Osei Yeboah
for the help, support, and care they offered to me during the research. Last, but not
least, I should thank the old people who are both the "objects" and the authors of
this article. I have dedicated this essay to the memory of one of them, ::>panyin
Kwaku Agyei 11-1995). His friendliness and wisdom, as well as his poverty and
loneliness, have made me write this essay. He died when I was away in my own
country. Nana, nanteyiye!
449
450 CJAS I RCEA 32:3 1998
Introduction
In 1994, when I was doing anthropological fieldwork on the mean
ing of old age in a rural Akan community of Ghana, I visited
opanyin Edward Yaw Addo, an elder in the town of Abetifi. I was
introduced to him by Kwame Fosu, a teacher with a special inter
est in Akan tradition, who was helping me with research. When we
arrived, the opanyin was talking with three friends in front of his
house. He invited us inside, where we had a long discussion on vari
ous aspects of old age. Apart from opanyin Addo (A), two of his
friends, :Jkyeame1 Safo (S) and Yaw Pepra (P), also took part in the
conversation.
I asked them their views on the different stages in a person's life
and which stage, they thought, gave the most satisfaction and
happiness. Fosu (F) repeated my question for them:
F: Kwaku (referring to me) means to say that when a person comes
to this world first, he is a baby akwadaa. Then he becomes a young
boy, an abarimawaa. Then he becomes a young man. He later
becomes a middle-aged man, an abasiriwa, 2 and finally he becomes
an old man, an akwakora. Which of these periods in a person's life
has the most happiness? Is there much happiness in the period
when one is a baby, a child, a young man, or an elderly person or old
man?
S: What I know is that an akwakora has much wisdom. He knows
much of the culture and tradition. Whatever he says is the truth,
Kann (plain truth).
F: We are asking which of these periods has the most happiness.
S: When you become an akwakora or aberewa (old woman), you
don't go anywhere. It is at this period that you have to be happy.
They take care of you. That is it.
A: Yes, we have an akwadaa, a baby or child; we have an abari
mawaa, a young boy; then we have a young man. The aberanteE
has not reached the time to live a life (onnya nnuruu sEdeE obo bra
no). His life has not yet been reduced.3 Ne bra so ntee. That is why
he is referred to as aberanteE. Whatever you say to him, he does not
hear it. He does not pay heed to advice. He has not reached the
period of life when he takes advice seriously. It is when he grows a
little bit more that he begins to realise the pieces of advice he was
given. He has been told, often, "Tena ho na wobehunu" ("Sit there
and you will see"). Wait and see. It is then that he begins to taste
van der Geest: :Jpanyin: The Ideal of Elder 45I
life in the following states: yea (pain); od£ (sweetness); amanehunu
(suffering). When he experiences these three states, he becomes an
adult. We have opanyin. And we have aberante£ and we have
akwakora (old man). We [the three of them] are mmerante£, in the
eyes of the ancients. The mpanyimfoo ankasa ankasa wo ho. The
real old people are there. We are behind them and they are behind
the old men. There are two stages of the old. The aberante£ is
always a happy-go-lucky person. Ne tirim y£ nod£. =:ly£ huuhuu
owo ahooden. He is strong. If you offend him, he will beat you.
Woka no a obt:hwe wo.
F: So is he happy?
A: N'ani gye ne ho ft:faf£. He is very happy because he is aber
ante£. You see? He has furnished his room neatly.
F: Please, we asked whieh of the stages or periods has the most
happiness. Is it when he is a young person that there is happiness or
is it when he is an old person that there is happiness? That is what
we want to know.
A: The happiness is in three parts. At this time, aberante£, he will
be happy; then you advise him thus: Ei Kwabena anaa Kwaku, hw£
yie. Kwabena or Kwaku, take care. He may not understand because
he is a youth. He will not change. He will go on (Jbt:b so). A stage
will arrive when he will realise what you told him during his youth
ful days. From there he will begin to change. Human beings have
three periods of growth (Nnipa nyini mpr£nsa). It is from here that
he begins to change. He will be given some work to do. At this stage
he will change for the better. Huuhuu no a oy£ e no na wagyae. He
will stop his rascal life. Afei ansa na ode n 'ani a to fam. It is then
that he begins to live a sober life and realises that he should take
care of his father and mother.
F: Does he feel happy at this time?
A: He is happy at this time. He has grasped something. Wanya
biribi mu akita.
F: When he was a young person, not listening to advice, he was
happy.
A: Yes he was just happy.
F: And at this time too he is happy. When is he happy again?
A: There will be a time that because he enjoyed too much for the
sake of everything, he will lose what he held. When he was a young
person, he was taking care of a child. It is this child who is going to
make him happy. Because he took care of him now that he is old,
452 CJAS I RCEA 32:3 1998
he will make him happy. He will then comment thus: 8ny£ me ba
yi adaworoma a anka nn£ merennya baabi minsi. Had it not been
for my son I would not have been in this happy state.
F: You have spoken about three kinds of happiness. When he is
young man, he can be happy; when he is middle-aged, he is happy
because he is working. And because he took care of his child, he is
happy now that he is old. Which of these forms of happiness is the
greatest?
A: The old person who lies down cannot go anywhere and has his
son taking good care of him. He is happy; he is enjoying until his
death (oredi awu).
Most of the research took place at Kwahu-Tafo, a rural town of
about five thousand inhabitants, mainly Kwahu. The Kwahu
belong to the larger group of Akan4 who inhabit most of Southern
Ghana. The language spoken by them is Twi. The Akan have a
matrilineal kinship system.
Ancestors, who are remembered in the mother's line, are
addressed in prayers and through libation during ceremonial drink
ing parties of schnapps and palm wine. Elderly people are ancestors
in spe. They hope to be remembered as honorable ancestors after
their death and attempt to behave accordingly during their old age.
Nowadays, the majority of the Akan belong to a Christian church,
but the concept of ancestor has retained its importance.
The Kwahu are known as smart traders, and their shops can be
found everywhere in Ghana. Trading has contributed to a keen
awareness of being "successful" in life. Those who have been
successful show this by building impressive houses in their home
towns and are admired and respected because of their achieve
ments. Until recently, the average life cycle of a Kwahu man-and,
to some extent, that of a woman as well - consisted of trading in
the first phase of his (or her) active life and farming in the second.
The first phase could also consist of practising a skill such as
sandal-making or tailoring. Nowadays, many young Kwahu men
become taxi drivers in the big towns.
The research involved interviews - conversations may be a
more appropriate term-with about thirty elderly people and their
relatives. All conversations were taped and transcribed. Some
people were interviewed only once, others twice or more often.
One old man, Nana Kwaku Agyei, was interviewed about ten times
van der Geest: :Jpanyin: The Ideal of Elder 453
and visited daily. Apart from the interviews, I often went to greet
the old people informally and had brief conversations with them.
These more casual visits enabled me to make observations about
the daily lives of elderly people and the attitudes of other people in
the same house. Most of these observations were recorded in an
elaborate diary which I kept during the six and a half months of my
fieldwork.
In addition, I discussed old age with many other people in the
town, including opinion leaders such as teachers and church
members, as well as with other key informants. Focus group
discussions were held with young people, as well as with groups of
middle-aged men and women. In three area schools, students filled
in a questionnaire expressing their views on old people or
completed sentences on the same issue. Some students wrote
essays about the old or made drawings of them.
In the first phase of the research, I was particularly interested
in people's definition and appreciation of" old." In my own culture,
that of The Netherlands, "old" is a mainly negative concept. When
the adjective is used for people, it expresses loss of physical
strength and social importance, but it is believed that in other
cultures a more positive appreciation of "old" exists. That some
what romantic contrast prompted me to carry out research on old
age in Ghana. The town of Kwahu-Tafo was familiar ground. I had
stayed there before in 1969, 1971, and 1973, when I carried out
anthropological fieldwork on various aspects of the culture, mainly
related to family life.
The conversation with the three men in the nearby town of
Abetifi suggests that people have distinct ideas about the different
life stages and about what those stages mean to those who live
them. At the same time, the various contributions to the conversa
tion show that it is very much a question of who is speaking -
whether someone is called young, middle-aged, or old. The conver
sation also makes clear that it would be naive to expect a clear cut
and unambiguous judgement about the quality of those stages.
Each period has its own charm, but the positive appreciation of old
age is remarkable from a Western point of view. That is not the
reason, however, that I have quoted this part of the conversation.
My reason for doing so is that it introduces the concept of opanyin
in the context of growing old.
::Jpanyin Addo remarked that we could divide the period after
454 CJAS I RCEA 32:3 1998
adolescence into three stages: aberanteE (young and approaching
middle-age), opanyin (getting old), and akwakora (old man). The
female equivalents, ababaawa, obaa-panyin, and aberewa are not
mentioned, but they were in other conversations.
I asked Anthony Boamah, middle-aged and one of my key infor
mants, to describe the life stages of women and men. He took
special delight in analysing the terminology. His etymological
explanations may be apocryphal; they are certainly ingenious and
enlightening:
We have abayewa, a small obaa. I think it is derived from
aba (seed), because it is the seed that grows to bear fruit. The
suffix -wa means either "small" or "female." ... So abaawa
means small seed or small woman. She grows to become
obaabun, which is derived from aba-bun, unripe seed. We call
the Blessed Virgin Mary 'Jbaabun Maria. She continues to
grow and bears fruit when she is ripe. Abere means: it has
become ripe. When the fruit is ripe, it will fall and get rotten,
just like the mango fruit. So we call an old woman aberewa.
She has ripened and will soon fall, that is die.
Abarima-wa is a small man. He grows to become aberanteE,
young man. Wobra a onte ("when you stop him, he won't listen").
It is the age when men feel that what they are doing is right and
therefore refuse to take the advice of eld.~rs. The young man grows
to become an old man, akwakora. It is the time he is near his grave.
He can be buried at any moment. To bury someone is kora or sie,
which means "to hide." 'Jkokora means: he is going to hide. So
after the akwakora stage in life follows the burial.
It is not possible to establish fixed age categories, as may be
done in other cultures. This is illustrated by 'Jpanyin Addo's earlier
remark that the three of them would be called mmeranteE (plural
of aberanteE) by the very old people. In our eyes, however, they
were elderly people, so we addressed them as mpanyinfoo (plural of
opanyin). The fluidity of the transition between the various ages
has to do with the absence of ritual celebrations marking such tran
sitions. Some events may to some extent function as such, but they
may not be publicly recognised, as they were in the past. Especially
with regard to men, the transitions may be hardly perceptible. The
following quotation, taken from my (S) conversation with Nana
Yaa Amponsaa (A), a ninety-year-old lady, illustrates this:
van der Geest: :Jpanyin: The Ideal of Elder 455
S: Nana can you tell us what really happens in a person's life to
show that she is moving from one stage of her development to
another?
A: The body grows as time goes on and you change. As I said, I was
18 years old when I passed menstruation (mekyimaayl:) and was
baptised but look: I am now old.
S: Is there anything which is done to show that a person is chang
ing from a girl abayewa to a young woman ababaawa;
A: In the olden days, when a girl menstruated for the first time (sE
QkQ Emaamu a}, a lot of drumming and dancing were performed to
honour her in public. That was called bragon (puberty rites). It was
an official way of announcing that the girl was moving from child
hood to womanhood. After the performance of those customary
rites, the girl was free to marry and have children. The custom
lasted for seven days so after the seventh day the girl was regarded
as a woman.
S: Is there a particular time when a woman becomes an Qpanyin;
A: Yes. When a woman stops menstruating she moves from
ababaawa to become Qpanyin.
S: When does a boy change to become a man? We know that a
male does not menstruate, so how do we determine the change in
him?
A: In a man you see that his dressing and his activities change. He
works more seriously and if you observe his movements, you
realise that there is a change in whatever he does. His speech and
actions become more responsible.
The fluidity of the boundary between Qpanyin and
akwakora/aberewa showed itself prominently in the research. The
only exception is when someone is given a stool in the chief's
palace. Such a person will be called Qpanyin, even when he is still
very young. Anthony Boamah told me that a relative of his was
installed as Qkyame (chief's linguist) at the age of nine. He was
given the title of Qpanyin, and from that day onwards he was
supposed to behave as an elder and not fight or quarrel. Boamah:
"He had left his youthful behaviour."
During further discussions with people, I tried to arrive at a
better understanding of the difference between Qpanyin and
akwakora/aberewa. Gradually I came to the - provisional -
conclusion that Qpanyin and akwakora/aberewa do not so much
CJAS I RCEA 32:3 1998
represent a chronological order-but a moral one, a difference in
appreciation of old age.
Definitions
On one of the first days of the research, I was walking with Kwame
Fosu through Kwahu-Tafo, when we met an old man, Nana Kwaku
Agyei. We greeted him. He replied and asked us for money to buy
food. We did not give him money but told him that we would visit
him later in the day and have some conversation. He promised to
wait for us. Two hours later we went to him. He was staying in a
small room of an old and rickety mud house. The room did not look
tidy and was almost empty. It contained only a bed and two small
chairs. The old man was siting on the bed, which had some dirty,
threadbare blankets spread on it. Later he told us the blankets were
a gift from the local Catholic priest. The old man explained to us
that this was only a temporary abode because his wofase (nephew
or sister's son) was building a house for him. He was dressed in a
pair of trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, also a donation from the
priest. He proved to be a gifted talker and had an enormous
command of proverbs and other forms of traditional knowledge.
After he had told us a few things from his life history, Fosu (F) and
Agyei (A) started talking about old age.
F: Why is it that when you grow old we call you akwakora~
A: Your joints become weak. You cannot do anything. The second
thing is that you are waiting for death. This is what we mean by
akwakora.
F: What about aberewa~
A: It is the same with aberewa. Her joints have weakened. The
aberewa cannot go anywhere.
F: What are the signs that tell us that such a person is akwakora
or aberewa~
A: He is not strong. He cannot weed (work on the farm).
F: Is it because he is sick?
A: Yes, when you grow old, your veins get weak.
F: When you grow old?
A: When you grow old, the veins get weaker. Then you are
akwakora. It means that you are not strong enough to work.
F: Does it mean that anyone who is sick is akwakora~
A: No. If you are young and you get sick, it is different. You go to
van der Geest: :Jpanyin: The Ideal of Elder 457
the hospital and you feel well again. But when you grow old and go
to the hospital, you do not get well again till you die.
F: So, if the joints get weaker, you become an akwakora?
A: Yes.
F: Any other signs?
A: When your joints become weaker in the first instance, you
cannot work. If you are not lucky, you become partially blind. If you
are not lucky, your penis dies.
F: You become impotent?
A: Because there is no strength, and so ... (pause).
F: Yes?
A: We call such a person akwakora.
F: So your hair [touching hair] and other things don't show signs
of old age?
A: As for grey hair, even if you are young you can have it.
Therefore, grey hair is not a sign of old age.
F: Your joints are weak, you cannot work. Sometimes your sight
becomes blurred and your man becomes weak (impotency). All
these are signs of old age?
A: Then you are alone in a room. You don't go anywhere.
The first condition for being old is, of course, that one has lived
for a very long time. Those who are able to link their old age to
some historical fact in the distant past will be most convincing in
their claim. Agya Suo (S), a blind and quite miserable old man,
proved his old age thus:
S: At my age I am akwakora.
Q: What shows that you are an old man?
S: I am old because it was six months after I had gone to Somanya
that the locomotive engine arrived at Koforidua. So I have grown
old.
Q: When we say that (obi anyin a) somebody has grown, what does
it mean?
S: Na Ete se woanyin akyere. It means that you have lived for a
very long period.
A few days later, I (S) visited an old lady, Nana Abena Ntiriwaa
(N) and asked her the meaning of aberewa (old woman) and
akwakora (old man):
CJAS I RCEA 32:3 1998
N: When you grow old, you are called aberewa or akwakora. Such
a person cannot work.
S: Why is it that such a person cannot work?
N: Where is strength? The strength has finished.
S: Where has the strength gone?
N: [laughter] Now that I am sitting here, I cannot go to farm. I
cannot do anything. The strength has finished and so I am aberewa.
S: Is it only the fact that one has lost one's strength that one is
called aberewa~
N: Yes.
S: What else tells that one is akwakora or aberewa~
N: For instance, since my husband's death, I have not married. It
means that I am aberewa.
S: Is there anything else that tells that someone is akwakora or
aberewa~
N: I know you cannot trade. This means you are aberewa. If you
can trade, you can eat. If someone does not help you, you will sleep
(go hungry and get poor). Without these children, I would have
found it difficult to eat.
S: So, if you are aberewa, you cannot farm and you cannot trade?
Are these the only types of work aberewa or akwakora cannot do?
N: Yes. I have no money to trade with. It means I am aberewa.
S: If one is aberewa, what shows that there is happiness or no
happiness in that situation?
N: There is no happiness in being aberewa because you cannot
work to get food. You cannot work to gain money to buy anything.
S: Does this mean that there is no happiness in being aberewa~
N: Yes.
S: Do you think that all old men and women have no happiness?
N: Where is happiness? There is no strength to work!
Most of her definition seemed to dovetail with the one Nana
Agyei provided, but she added one curious element to it: the
aberewa or akwakora is not happy because she/he cannot work to
earn money to eat. Nana Kwaku Nyame added a similar element to
the definition: poverty.
With money you can always put on fine things which will
make it difficult for people to realise that you are an old man.
But when you are poor, you can't even get a cloth to put on and
it will make you look very old.