Revelling on the mountain: The good, bad and weird at Kwahu Easter

By George Folley & Edmund Smith-Asante

It was all booze, extremely loud music, the smoking of hookah and lots of food, including roast chicken and kebabs at the Kwahu Easter celebrations on the Kwahu Ridge, as revellers took it by storm from last Thursday to Sunday.
 

It was as if the whole world had poured on the mountainous community.

Beverage producers and distributors tried to outdo each other as they flooded Kwahu with their products. Name any drink at all, and you were sure to get it on the Ridge at Obomeng.

Almost all beverage producers had one sort of promotion or another to draw more customers. As a result, even those who did not have money to buy drinks had their fill of drinks from the opportunities that abounded to sample various brands of bitters and hard liquor.

Explosive night

The peak of the ‘jamming’ on the mountain was on Saturday when thousands of revellers defied hours of rain at Obomeng on the Kwahu Ridge to party all night. The crowd was so intense that movement along the main stretch of the Obomeng township from both ends of the street was very difficult.

At 12:30 a.m. in the wee hours of last Sunday, when the Daily Graphic team, which had been locked up in the heavy traffic for over an hour, finally got to the slopes of the Kwahu Mountain, there was a bumper-to-bumper traffic of more revellers coming up, all the way to about halfway down.

In view of the static vehicular traffic, some passengers, especially those on board Metro Mass Transit buses, got off and chose to walk up so as not to miss the action.

Obomeng is the entry point on the Kwahu Ridge and in view of that, most of the merrymakers converged on the town to enjoy the Easter festivities.

Roadblock

Due to the many activities that were going on along the main street, the main entrance to the town was blocked by the police and traffic diverted through other routes behind the town. Yet there was still heavy traffic, as most of the vehicles and their occupants eventually ended up at the nerve centre of the celebrations – Obomeng.

In spite of the heavy rains that began at about 3p.m. and continued for the rest of the day, the hordes of people from all across the country and some parts of the world would not be bothered.

Those on the streets sought shelter from the many stands and spots that had virtually covered the distance of about 1km, which is the stretch of the street that runs through the Obomeng town when the rains intensified but returned to party when it subsided.

Revellers from all walks of life poured onto the streets

Others, who were luckier, were safe from the rains under secure structures put up as revelling spots, with bouncers at the entrance. Here, people wined, dined and danced uninhibited by the rains.

Mostly made up of the youth, the revellers, who included scantily dressed young women, either in mini or micro shorts, clinging mini, very revealing leggings or see- through dresses (http://ghanapictures.blogspot.com/2016/05/kwahu-easter-2016.html), crowded in the several drinking spots and eateries that had been erected for the Easter festivities on the ridge and jammed all night to loud music.

Drenched but not bothered, revellers danced and made merry in a cacophonic atmosphere of loud music from every spot along the street.

Dreadlocked youth

One thing that stood out conspicuously during the Kwahu Easter festivities was the mode of dressing of a group of young men.

Mostly in the youthful ages of between 18 years and 25 years, the youth, who drove Toyota Camry saloon cars and spotted dreadlocks, also had their trousers pulled almost to the knee and wore socks and bathroom slippers.

A sales girl at the Kwahu Easter

Their way of life sent shivers down the spines of some revellers who most often murmured unprintable words when they passed.

Sex objects

The four days of revelling on the Kwahu Ridge could be likened to the open market, where every trader jostled for his or her voice to be heard.
 

In their attempt to advertise and market their products, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage producing companies used beautiful ladies dressed in skimpy dresses, some of whom exposed their vital body parts.

A reveller, Mavis Acheampongmaa, called on gender activists to rise up and speak against the trend of using young ladies as sex objects during such occasions.

She was of the view that chiefs in the Kwahu area should liaise with the Ghana Tourism Authority to nip such activities in the bud.

This story was first published by the Daily Graphic on March 29, 2016