The Origin of the Ga People The Ga people belong to the Ga-Dangbe group of Kwa people who inhabit the Greater Accra region of present-day Ghana. The Kwa people of Africa include the Ga-Dagbe, Ewe, Akwapim, Fanti, Kwahu, and Akim and Ashanti. According to some legends Ga people migrated from Nigeria, others that they were part of Israel that migrated southward through present day Uganda, then along the CongoRiver, westward through Cameroons, Nigeria, Benin, Togo and finally to Greater Accra. Given that Africans have roamed the continent for thousands of years and that such migrations might have been northward, southward, eastward or westward, the origin of any group of people in Africa may be very uncertain. Any African might have relatively originated from anywhere in Africa. The cited origin might as well be what could be remembered about the recent past and not the ultimate origin. For example, the Wolof name for a king is Fari which is very similar to the word Faro of ancient Egypt and may point to the Egyptian heritage of the Wolof in West Africa. The Egyptian word for the highest god and righteous father was Ra and the Setwana word for father is also Ra. It is therefore not surprising that among the Ga people, those at Teshi claim to have migrated from a town called Boma on the shores of the Congo River, those at Labadi from Boney Island off the coast of Nigeria and those from Gamashi from Benin City in Eastern Nigeria. While these legends from remembered history cannot be proved, they cannot be denied as well. There are several names in Uganda among the Acholi which are very similar to Ga names and there is supposed to be a language in the Cameroons called Ge which is similar to the Ga language. Moreover, the pronunciation of the word Ga is more similar to the word Ghana than the word Akan from which Dr. J. B Danquah created his myth linking the Akan to the ancient Ghana empire. To complicate matters, the ancient unleavened bread of the Ga people called akpiti1 is much the same as the unleavened bread of the Jews. What can be said with certainlty is that the Ga people were not static, but dynamic and engaged in the very common phenomenon of migration in Africa and that the Homowo festival had its origin in such migration. Before delving into the origin and meaning of Homowo, it is expedient to provide a brief account of the political structure of the Ga people, and some brief account of their culture. Because very few people including Rev. Carl Christian Reindorf (1834-1917), A. B. Quartey-Papafio2 , and Rev. Peter Addo3 have taken the trouble to write about the Ga people, much will be derived from the rich remembered history handed down from generation to generation. Quartey-Papafio’s account of Homowo applies to Gamashi only while that of Rev. Peter Addo is very brief. While remembered history cannot be full proof, written history cannot be also full proof. Elements of truth can be garnered from each of them through critical and comparative analysis of facts collected from various sources. Much of the work of Carl Christian Reindorf followed this approach when he compared and analyzed remembered history collected from various people. Normally, such remembered history is written in the minds of trusted initiates of the royal houses after the rite of butung4 . As one who hails from one of the royal houses of the Ga State, I had the advantage of being educated in the tradition of the Ga people by the grey-headed wise men and women through the practice of writing in the mind rather than on paper described below in the section on the culture of the Ga people. I consider it my responsibility to transfer some of what has been written in my mind on paper to the benefit of humankind. 

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Daniel Tetteh Osabu-Kle Carleton University