Behold the twins of Ga Mashie

One interesting aspect of the celebration of Homowo is the Twin’s Festival which is traditionally known as ‘Yeyeeye’ or Akwele Suma.

The festival takes place every year in Ga Mashie.
On this day, all twins from Ga Mashie are dressed in white and paraded around town.

This year’s festival was not an exception.

It brought together both the young and old gorgeously dressed in their white apparels.

Customarily, on the festival day, the twins are given special baths to cleanse them from any misfortune.

Afterwards, a special meal of mashed yam known as Otɔ is prepared for the twins and they are pampered to appease their spirits.

Once this is done, the bowl containing the leftovers used in bathing them are carried in a procession and dumped along the Korle Naabu.

In the Ga community, children are seen as a blessing from God, and when the blessing is doubled in the form of twins, there is an additional spiritual role that the family must play in celebrating the twins.

One of the ways this is done is through the ‘Yeyeeye’. Even if your twin brother or sister has passed, you can still go through the ritual for the festival.

Generally, the Homowo Festival is celebrated by the Ga people of the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.

The moral of the festival is to celebrate the period in their history when there was serious famine in the land.

The festival is very glamorous and showcases a great deal of traditional values of the Ga people.

Legend has it that there was a period in the history of the Ga Kingdom when there was severe famine.

The near starvation was followed by a bumper harvest and the people hooted at hunger with the Homowo festival.

As part of the festival, a special meal known as ‘kpokpoi’ is made from maize and celebrants eat it with palm nut soup.

                                                              The young men infused modernity with tradition.