Word: ashantis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Apart from the Iranians, many of the students did talk. With all but one or two, however, their fear of giving political offense led them to apparent contradictions. Aaron Poku-Appiah '78, an advanced standing sophomore, is a tall, gaunt Ghanaian, an Ashanti whose English accent has been honed from birth in London, and his summer visits there throughout his high school years. Speaking English was encouraged by his father, an Oxfordtrained criminal lawyer, Poku-Appiah says, because "it enforced the identity of elite people in Ghana...
...that are entirely based on gesture and posture. Art Historian Robert Thompson, in showing these works drawn from the superb African collection owned by Katherine White in Los Angeles, demonstrates the canons of African motion across the diversity of regional cultures: Dan and Dogon, Yoruba and Ogoni, Luba and Ashanti, Benin and Ejagham...
Western ideas of form and psychological theories of "body language" are inadequate to deal with African imagery, though it has something to do with both. A European is apt to seek the meaning of a work like the modern Ashanti wood carving of a mother and child from Ghana in its harmony of shapes: the massive, fluid bulges of hair, the delicate formal rhyme between the points of nose, chin and conical breasts, and so forth. But when Thompson showed it to an African, his response to what seemed "universal" in the sculpture was quite different. "She is purely there...
...ASANTEHENE OF GHANA. Otumofuo [All Highest] Nana Opoku Ware II, King of Ghana's 1.8 million Ashanti, still wields considerable power as Keeper of the Golden Stool. A barrister in the Ashanti capital of Kumasi until he became a king in 1970 (succeeding his uncle), Nana Opoku, 54, is all but coddled by Ghana's leaders. In turn, he takes a lively-but noninter-fering-interest in national affairs...
...Ashanti tradition, a king's death calls for the sacrifice of as many as 1,000 men and women. Last May, after Prempeh II had "gone to his village,'' as the Ashantis put it, fear swept the kingdom. In fact, the announcement of the death was delayed for four days so that the royal executioners could seek out their unsuspecting victims in stealthy leisure. Villages formed vigilante groups to protect them from prowling executioners, and several European priests were shot at by panicky villagers. It is generally believed that despite the precautions, several dozen lost their lives...