Essay --

Culture is an integral part of every society. Culture is a learned pattern of behavior or ways by which people live their lives or how society behaves. Some characteristics of the culture of people or a society are their music, food, laws, arts, marriage, festivals among others. Ghana is the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain its independence from the British in 1957. It is located in West Africa and it consists of different ethnic groups with different dialects. One such group is the Ga-Adangbe tribe. The Ga-Adangbe tribe constitutes of the Adangbe and the Ga people of Ghana who form one ethnic group known as the Ga-Adangbe tribe. The Ga-Adangbe people inhabit the Accra Plains. The Adangbe people inhabit the eastern part of Accra while the Ga people inhabit the western part of Accra coastlands. The language of both ethnic groups is from a common proto-Ga-Adangbe ancestral language. There is one notable thing about these ethnic groups in Ghana and it is their culture o f festivals. These festivals range from the naming of a child, puberty rites, marriage and funerals among other things. One of these beautiful festivals that this paper seeks to discuss is puberty rites. The Ashanti tribe who hail from the Ashante Region of Ghana and the Adangbe tribe who hail from Eastern Region of Ghana celebrate this beautiful festival called puberty rites. The Ashanti tribe of Ghana calls this festival or puberty rite â€Å"Bragoro† while the Adangbe people from the Eastern part of Ghana call it â€Å"Dipo.† My focus in this paper is how the Adangbe tribe celebrates the Dipo rite in Ghana. â€Å"No other ritual, in the life of a female Krobo, is of greater importance than – or equal to – the dipo.† Hugo Huber, 1963 The Manya and the Yilo Krob... ...his study will therefore contribute to knowledge in these areas and possibly give ideas for future studies on the subject of the Dip custom. From the foregoing, Dipo is a festival of the Manya and Yilo Krobo tribe to celebrate the puberty of adolescent girls, encourage them to preserve their chastity and to prepare them for marriage. The girls learn lessons on womanhood in preparation leading up to the festival. The Dipo festival has gone through some modification due to some factors such as abuse of human rights. For example, the Krobo people believe that children that are born before their mothers undergo the Dipo rite are cursed. So currently, children under the age of ten years undergo Dipo and not the adolescent girls to afford them to avoid having cursed children, as is their conviction and to avoid exposing their breast to the public during the ceremony.