The Kundum Festival in Ghana: Ritual Interaction with the Nonhuman among the Akan

During the Kundum festival in Ghana, people ritually express their wishes for productive farming and fishing seasons, social progress, spiritual protection, and a healthy natural environment, bringing into play the nonhumans expected to uphold or oppose these objectives. This article contributes to an improved analysis of the perspectives of intersubjectivity, relationship, and community in African rituals by examining the interaction between nonhumans and humans in the Kundum festival. It analyzes some of the transitional rites that constitute Kundum. These rites are less the markers of life-cycle or seasonal transitions than the very cultural resources by which transitions are put into effect in creating hope for the fertility of farmlands and rivers. They are linked to the creation of a purified food production season, to healing, to the roles assigned to nonhumans in the initiation of the festival, and to a configuration of relationships in a shared world.