Ghana Life: Elephants Past and Present
Today, elephants are primarily associated with eastern and southern Africa, where they roam in large herds, but West Africa is also home to a smaller number of the world’s largest land animal. Ghana’s neighboring neighbor, Côte d’Ivoire, derives its name from a long association with elephants, and modest herds can sometimes be seen on the road north from Navrongo to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. In Ghana itself, the best chance to see wild elephants is in the Mole National Park in the Northern Region, where they have been protected for several decades. Modern Ghanaians are familiar with popular press stories of rampaging elephants wreaking havoc in border villages, but these incidents are rare. People live for many years in Ghana without seeing or hearing about wild elephants, but the great beasts have left an indelible mark on Ghana’s culture and national identity.
The scarcity of elephants in modern Ghana suggests that in the past they were hunted almost to extinction for food. The term “killing an elephant” is still associated with a great party. In the early days of independence, the boys on the veranda, supporters of Kwame Nkrumah, used to say: “Osagyefo (El Salvador) has killed a big elephant, there will be enough to eat.” Even now, in the 21st century, the elephant continues to play a key role in Ghanaian politics, having been adopted as the logo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that ruled Ghana from 2001 to 2009 under John Kufuor, the first national leader of both of them. enter and leave office democratically.
The elephant, esono, is still a powerful symbol in Ghanaian politics, but it is even more familiar in traditional culture, and it appears prominently in Ashanti proverbs and the stories of spiders, Ananse. A well-known proverb says: “If you walk behind an elephant, the dew will not get you wet.” The guys on the terrace probably hoped this was still true, but in the military coup of February 24, 1966, when their tasty was overthrown, they came to understand an even more widely used African saying: “When elephants fight, the Herb”.
In the famous Ananse spider stories, most elephants play minor roles as potential victims of brave hunters who venture further into the forests than anyone before. From time to time, elephants are given a central role, as in the story of “the golden tail of the queen mother of elephants.” The elephant is portrayed with magical powers: it becomes a woman, but with insufficient intelligence to defeat a human being. This story is curious since it appears in two versions. In the second version, the golden-tailed elephant mother queen is replaced by sasabonsamhene, the chief or king of the forest monsters, also with a golden tail. The sasabonsam is generally perceived as a terrible mythical creature and this suggests that the elephant, esono, was also seen as a powerful adversary.
Hunters may have feared and respected the elephant, but woodcarvers must view this distinctive giant with great affection. Elephants are carved in a wide variety of sizes and shapes to be sold to tourists and exported. A small popular carving represents a line of small elephants crossing a bridge and individual animals are produced from a few grams in weight to as large as a man can lift or a small child sitting astride.
The international ivory trade has been banned so that elephants are no longer hunted for their tusks and can live peacefully in national parks and game reserves. Hopefully their numbers will increase to attract more tourists and contribute to the economy as they have never stopped contributing to other important aspects of Ghanaian life.