The first time I truly understood what it meant to be Ghanaian, I was seven years old, sitting on a wooden stool in my grandmother’s courtyard, watching her kill a chicken.

Not for drama. For dinner. And for the ancestors.

She spoke to the chicken before she killed it. Whispered words in Twi that I pretended to understand. Then she poured its blood at the base of a dried plantain tree and called it mpata—appeasement. I asked her why. She looked at me like I’d asked why the sky exists.

“The chicken knows,” she said. “The ancestors know. One day, you will know too.”

I’m thirty-two now. I still don’t fully know. And that terrifies me.

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The Thing About Preservation

Ghana is doing a lot of talking about cultural preservation lately. Committees meet. Reports are written. Festivals are announced with press releases. The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture releases statements about “leveraging our heritage for economic growth.”

But here’s what those statements don’t capture:

My cousin in London just named her daughter “Ama” because it sounded cute on Instagram. She doesn’t know that Ama means “born on Saturday.” She doesn’t know the naming ceremony involves water, gin, and prayers she’s never heard. She just liked the way it looked in her daughter’s birth announcement.

That’s the problem with preservation. We’re so busy building museums for our culture that we forgot culture actually lives in how we name our children, greet our elders, and pour libation before we open that expensive bottle of champagne.

The Funeral That Shifted Something

Last December, my great-aunt died. She was ninety-four. Maybe ninety-seven. Nobody kept exact records because, as she always said, “The ancestors know my age. Why do you people need papers?”

Her funeral became the event of the season. Three days. Two villages. One cow. And somewhere between the firing of muskets and the distribution of aseda—thank-you money—I watched my London cousins struggle.

They didn’t know when to remove their sandals. They didn’t know why the widow had to sit on a mat. They didn’t understand that the wailing wasn’t just grief—it was a performance, a required ritual, a language the dead understand.

One of them whispered to me: “Why didn’t anyone teach us this?”

I didn’t have an answer.

The Kente Weaver’s Empty Loom

Two weeks ago, I visited a kente weaving village in the Volta Region. The master weaver—seventy-three years old, hands that move like water—showed me his loom. Beautiful. Intricate. Ancient.

“Nobody wants to learn,” he said. “The young people say it takes too long. They want to make money fast. They go to Accra. They sell phone credit.”

I asked him what happens when he’s gone.

He laughed. Not a happy laugh.

“The loom will wait,” he said. “For who? I don’t know. Maybe a ghost.”

His grandson was there, glued to TikTok. Wearing a Manchester United jersey. Speaking English with an accent he learned from American YouTubers. When I asked him in Twi what his favourite kente pattern meant, he shrugged.

“I don’t speak Twi well,” he said. In perfect English.

The Language Problem Nobody Wants to Address

Here’s the uncomfortable truth Ghanaians don’t say out loud:

We’re embarrassed.

We send our children to international schools and feel proud when they struggle with Twi. We correct each other’s English in mixed company but never correct someone who butchers our own language. We’ve decided, collectively and silently, that speaking our mother tongues fluently is somehow less sophisticated.

A friend told me recently, “I speak English to my kids because I want them to succeed globally.”

Global success, it seems, requires local amnesia.

But here’s what I’ve noticed: the most successful Ghanaians abroad aren’t the ones who assimilated completely. They’re the ones who brought something with them. The ones who could explain sankofa to their American coworkers. The ones who wore batik to the office potluck and told the story behind it.

The Ancestors Are Not on Wi-Fi

There’s a moment in every traditional ceremony—whether it’s a wedding, a funeral, or a puberty rite—where the elder pauses. Looks up. And speaks to those who came before.

“Grandfathers,” they say. “Grandmothers. We have not forgotten you.”

The first time I witnessed this, I was embarrassed. Who are they talking to? The air? The ceiling?

Now I understand. They’re talking to continuity. To the thread that connects a chicken killed in 1994 to a chicken killed in 1820. To the idea that we are not alone, not the first, not the last.

My grandmother died ten years ago. Sometimes, when I’m cooking her groundnut soup recipe—the one she never wrote down, the one I had to watch and memorise—I find myself talking to her.

“Too much pepper?” I ask.

And somehow, I know the answer.

That’s culture. Not the festivals. Not the museum exhibits. Not the tourism board campaigns. That quiet knowing. That sense that you’re not starting from zero.

The Good News Nobody’s Reporting

Not everything is dying.

Walk through Nima Market on a Friday afternoon. Young women buying waakye from women who’ve sold it for forty years. Young men arguing about politics in Hausa and Twi mixed together. Children running between legs, speaking whatever language gets them the best response.

Visit any funeral in any village. Watch the teenagers. They’re rolling their eyes, yes. They’re on their phones, yes. But they’re also watching. They’re also learning. They know more than they admit.

And there’s this: the same globalisation that threatens our culture is also preserving it. YouTube videos of adowa dancing. TikTok tutorials on tying kente. Instagram pages dedicated to Ghanaian proverbs with English translations.

A girl in New York can learn her grandmother’s funeral songs from a phone. A boy in London can watch his uncle pour libation and understand why.

It’s not the same as sitting in the courtyard. But it’s something.

What I’m Actually Trying to Say

Ghana’s culture isn’t fragile. It survived colonialism. It survived the transatlantic slave trade. It survived missionaries telling our ancestors their gods were false. It survived independence, structural adjustment, and now, globalisation.

What I’m worried about isn’t survival.

I’m worried about meaning.

We can preserve the forms—the dances, the drums, the cloth—while losing what they actually mean. We can have festivals without understanding why we’re celebrating. We can wear kente without knowing which pattern belongs to which clan. We can call ourselves Ghanaian without knowing what that actually requires.

My grandmother didn’t worry about cultural preservation. She just lived. She greeted properly. She poured libation. She named her children on the day they were born. She didn’t need a committee to tell her what mattered.

We do now. Because we’ve forgotten.

The Challenge

If you’re reading this and you’re Ghanaian, here’s my challenge:

Learn one thing this year.

Not everything. Just one thing.

Learn the story behind your surname. Learn why your family eats that weird thing at Christmas. Learn to cook one dish your grandmother made. Learn what the symbols on your funeral cloth actually mean. Learn to greet an elder properly—not just the words, but the bend, the pause, the eye contact.

And if you’re not Ghanaian, if you’re reading this from somewhere else:

Pay attention to what you’re losing too. Because I promise you, something is slipping. Something your grandchildren will wish you’d held onto.

The ancestors are watching. They’re patient. But even patience runs out eventually.