The place where Nana Dwenti fought death. Tracing the Roots of a Historic Township Kumawu Bodomasi

Dwenti Asimpa became the first chief of Bodomase. Dwenti Fought Death Nana Dwenti Asimpa, the founder and chief of Bodomase one day, went to Kumawu to celebrate the Adae Festival. This festival is celebrated every forty-days on the Akan calendar.In those days as there were no roads, he had to go and return through the forest. Bodomase Village and the mountain on which Dwenti fought death On his way back, darkness suddenly appeared right in front of him. Being a spiritually developed man, he sensed that there was something wrong. Nana Dwenti Asimpa positioned his flint gun and challenged whoever was there to come out openly and face him. The place where Dwenti fought death Suddenly, the darkness gave way to light and there stood Owuo [DEATH] carrying a palanquin (Apakan) and a small drum. Dwenti, with his magical prowess and charms fought and defeated death and captured his mortal box and drum and sent them home. After the defeat and seizure of death’s palanquin, what followed was a mixture of joy and worry. Joy because for three years nobody died at Bodomase and worry because for three years no woman at Bodomase menstruated or brought forth a child, not even the women who were pregnant at the time Nana Dwenti Asimpa had the palanquin of death with him. Worried and not knowing what to do, Nana Dwenti consulted the fetish priestess, Anowuo at Nkoransa-Bosonyaa. There it was revealed that the cause of the immortality and barreness during those three years was the seizure of death palanquin. Nana Dwenti was therefore instructed to return the ribs made of palanquin to the spot where he fought with death. After Nana Dwenti Asimpa had obeyed Anowuo’s instruction, those women who had been pregnant for three years started bringing forth-normal babies .Girls of age also started having their monthly periods. There were deaths as well. Nana Dwenti Asimpa at the height of his spiritual development never ate any food prepared by a woman. Nana Dwenti Asimpa lived for nearly 200 years and he never died. He was buried Alive. Where Dwenti was buried (his burial grounds) Nana Dwenti Asimpa grew so old that he could neither walk nor eat but he breathed alright. His skin became withered and his cheek bones stuck out and his eyes balls sunk very deep in their sockets. In fact, he turned into a living skeleton. And every morning when the sun was up, he was brought out and ‘dried’. This coupled with the fact that he has turned into a frightful spectacle compelled the elders of Bodomase to bury him alive. The entrance of Dwenti burial grounds The Place where cooking and eating of traditional foods is done every last friday before christmas to celebrate that incident.History is not a formation dance in which everybody in one period marches in one direction, and then, in the next, marches off in a different direction. One of the greatest strengths of history today is that nothing is ruled out. At its very core history must be a scholarly discipline, based on thorough analysis of the evidence, and in the making of this play, all elements of Drama have been taken into consideration. These include among others; language which is mundane or ethereal depending on which character is using it. Setting (cultural ambience of time and place with properties and costumes conforming and blending with the period), character (Real and allegorical), Thought (Akans’ perception of death and life). Form, (Surrealistic) under Theatre of Symbols, is deployed with the utmost precision. Music offers the old tunes of Highlife, and other traditional Akan traditional songs and lyrics. There is constant awareness of the methods and principles of the drama discipline, constant attention to how it is taught, and how, at different levels, it is communicated to wider audiences. Nothing Ruled Out; the Playmaking All human activities, including history, are culturally (or socially, the meanings in this instance are the same) influenced, but history is not "culturally constructed" or "culturally determined". Too many naïve statements have been made along the lines of "each age rewrites its history". Conclusion Any dramatist or scholar who has not been taught history well at school, and has never worked at it since, may think there is nothing in it except events and dates and places; so that, whenever he can find events and dates and places, he will fancy himself in the presence of history. But anyone who has ever worked intelligently at history knows that it is never about mere events, but about actions that express the thoughts of their agents and that the framework of dates and places is of value to the historian only because, helping to place each action in its context, it helps him to realise that the thoughts of an agent operating in that context must have been like.