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Akan (African) Proverbs from Ancestral Sacrifice

“The Ancestral Sacrifice” by Kaakyire Akosomo Nyantakyi is a fictional tale that explores the conflict between Christianity and Traditional African Religion. The story shows how the introduction of Christianity upset already existing customs and traditions. However, the tale revealed how both religious beliefs could peacefully coexist in the same town (Asana).

The tale is set in a Ghanaian community rooted in African traditions. The author embellishes the book with Ghanaian Akan proverbs, which unearth rich Akan philosophies and wisdom that guide daily lives. Below are proverbs and wise sayings from the book.

Ghanaian Akan Proverbs

  1. If they do it to you and it does not pain you, they do not stop doing it to you.
  2. We must cut the snake’s head while it is still young.
  3. If corn eyes will grow bigger, it starts from germination.
  4. If nothing touches the palm branch, it does not rattle.
  5. Telling stories refreshes the mind, as bathing refreshes the body.
  6. In order to kill a snake dead, you must cut off its head.
  7. If you sit at one place, you sit on your own thing.
  8. Laziness does not deliver a good child.
  9. When two people who hardly know each other become enemies, then I suspect that the line dividing disease and death is not the same as the line dividing health and life.
  10. It is a fool whose testicles are stepped on twice.
  11. We scare away the wolf before we advise the goat.
  12. If the dear doesn’t attend a durbar, its skin goes.
  13. I am waiting to do it walks with I-never-did.
  14. It is the fool who says, ‘They mean my friends; they don’t mean me.”
  15. If you are equal in height with your father, it does not make him your age-mate.
  16. An elder with nothing at all has an elbow, at least.
  17. Sick people do not cure themselves by buying their medicine and having others drink it for them.
  18. It is he who owns the thing that eats it and not he who is hungry.
  19. The spirits that give yam to the child in the forest will provide the hoe for digging.
  20. If you don’t have any wound, you will think the house fly likes you.
  21. If a naked person offers to give you cover cloth, do listen to his name.
  22. It takes a whole village to raise a child.
  23. He who is cutting a path does not see it crooked behind him.
  24. If the eyes don’t see, it is not ugly.
  25. Before a deer discovered its hollow habitat under a tree truck, it slept.
  26. If a visitor lives with you for a while and he has to leave, he either leaves a debt for you to pay or a gift for you to have.
  27. He, who has seen, does not see twice, and it is the fool whose testicles are stamped twice.
  28. You do not take the feathers off the bird before asking an elder to identify it.
  29. It is cruel to push an old woman and pretend to worry about where she would fall.
  30. If the rain will fall, the wind takes the lead.
  31. We must not cut a walking stick and make it longer than height.
  32. What the animals have eaten, let them eat and go. It is what is left that we protect.
  33. The burden of every story is the truth with which it is told.
  34. Scratching an itching foot from outside a shoe is as much a mistake as beating the moon with a pole.

There are over thirty-four proverbs from the book. Do not hesitate to share your favourite among them in the comment section.

Written By

Stephen Baidoo is a writer who loves to research about Ghana's past. He brings Ghana's history to life with each unearthed fact and forgotten narrative, transforming dry dates into passionate stories.

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