Dagara Cultural History: Cardinal Peter Poreku Dery

  Testament The following two wishes expressed in my brother’s Last Will and Testament (Fr. Edward B. Tengan 1951 to 2003) are the source of my concern and are provoking this memo and portfolio. Among other things, the will states: 1. Landed Property: e) Plot and 2 house in Piina where I reside when I am in Piina – To Alexis Tengan to develop his Museum and Cultural Centre 2. Cars a. GL 24-13 – To Catholic Diocese of Wa - Pope John XXIII Centre c. GR 9089-7 – To Catholic Diocese of Wa – Pastoral & Soc. Institute Whereas all other properties bequeath to individuals carry no intentionality in terms of their usage and expenditure, in bequeathing these three items, clear intentions are expressed by linking them to particular institutions that are providing social services to the whole community. Perhaps, it was because of this character that these items carry, that he parked the two cars in the family home, expecting me to take proper care of them after his demise. Wit...

Memoir of a Rural Surgeon : Autobiography of Sir Edward N. Gyader By: Edward Nwinyuor Gyader  ISBN: 978-9988-3-7554-6 Printed in Ghana – (December 2024) Hybrid H Limited. Accra Synopsis: Even t hough a year has passed by since the death of my brother, Rev. Fr. Edward B. Tengan on (August 3rd, 2023) circumstances beyond my control have meant that his heritage has yet to be properly assessed and transferred to the appropriate individuals to whom he had given as legacies. This means that one cannot, with legal backing, begin to initiate or work on that aspect of his intellectual legacy, including manuscripts, completed and uncompleted. During my last stay with him – February 13 to March 12, 2023 – when he was still the diocesan administrator, I became aware that he was working with Dr. Eward Gyader on a biography project. Indeed, I was with him in the house when a version of a draft document that I have come to find in his computer was delivered electronically to Dr. Gy...

  In 1929, Peter Poreku Dery was about twelve years old when the Catholic Missionary Fathers of Africa first arrived in Jirapa, some twenty-two miles distant from Dery’s village (Zemopare), and began their work of Christian conversion. He was first introduced to the missionaries by his father who had come into contact with them through his work as an itinerant trader. His father was so enthusiastic about the missionary religion to the extent that he was prepared to annul the traditional marriage between him and four of his wives in order to become a Christian. This act provoked a serious religious and cultural conflict between Poreku Dery’s father and his uncle. Ritual sacrifices at the ancestral shrine as well as various acts of divination failed to reconcile the two brothers but led to a scission within the family and the emigration of Dery’s father. Poreku Dery assisted in all these rituals and felt the pain of the conflict and the separation; a feeling that helped to make him a...

Dear Ted, I cannot write a better tribute on this occasion beyond what you have been sharing with me about yourself, your work, and the vision you have about life and your place in the cosmos. Thus, when I asked you to send me a short bio note about yourself in the 2017 volume which I edited, you wrote the following: Edward B. Tengan is a catholic priest of the Catholic diocese of Wa which is coterminous with the upper west region of Ghana. After his priestly formation in St. Victor’s Major Seminary in Tamale he worked for a few years in the diocese. He was then sent to the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven where he obtained a Licentiate in Philosophy in 1983. From 1983 to 1986, he taught philosophy in his alma mater. In 1986 he gained admission into the University of Birmingham (Centre of West African Studies) to pursue a doctoral program in anthropology. In 1989, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled The Land...

  Dealing with Expectations From a cultural perspective, there are no public funeral or mourning rites when there is a stillbirth ( dɔg-saŋ ) following twenty-one weeks or more of pregnancy or when a child experiencing stunted growth (bi-gbããn ) dies before the mother could have another child. In other words, one cannot grieve publicly and call on the ancestors by wailing ‘Oh My Father!’ ( Sãã Woh-i! ) or ‘Oh My Mother!’ ( Ma Woh-i! ) and we do not gather to sing dirges and praise songs accompanied by the xylophone and the calabash drums. We take it that the expectations of the parents to have a child who will grow to realise their dreams, take fully his or her position as an adult member of the society and achieve the great things that life destiny has assigned for him or her cannot be ritualised in funeral celebration. These must be internalised as a process to understand the situations leading to the stillbirth or the stunted growth in order to keep the fire of expectations an...