This year’s Agbamevorza (Kente Festival) of the chiefs and people of the Agotime-Ziope Traditional Area was marked in grand style with an exhibition of beautiful Kente designs.
It was, indeed, a day for Kente, as the indigenes, tourists and visitors who thronged the durbar ground were dressed smartly in Kente outfits, fusing tradition with modernity.
The festival has, since 2005, been celebrated to showcase the uniqueness of Kente as a matchless indigenous fabric from Ghana.
Also, it is to draw attention to the aesthetic and cultural values of the Kente cloth.
The week-long celebration which ended on October 20, 2018, featured a series of activities, including a Kente weaving contest, which saw master weavers exhibiting their creativity.
A junior high school student, Bless Dogbey, emerged the winner of the contest and received a cash prize of GH¢5,000.
Another aspect of the festival which has become an annual ritual is the visit of women to the riverside to fetch water for visitors who grace the festival, dubbed ‘Asialetorme’.
This year, the women, dressed in beautiful Kente cloths, went to the riverside in a single file and returned with water in their pots to be poured into a traditional pot at the forecourt of the palace of the paramount chief for use by visitors as a demonstration of the people’s hospitality, amid music and dancing.
The Paramount Chief of the Agotime-Ziope Traditional Area, Nene Nuer Keteku III, in an address, called for government’s assistance to complete a Kente village project which would be a one-stop shop to market the works of local weavers to the rest of the world.
He also called for the extension of basic social amenities, especially potable water, to all parts of the traditional area, as well as the provision of a district hospital and a facelift of the Kpetoe Market.
The celebration was on the theme: ‘Attitudinal change: The panacea for our future development’.
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Graphic Online
