New Year, Accra-style

Lighting things on fire: a Ghanaian tradition since 1957

The end of the year for Mr. and Mrs. O include the usual motions: watching end-of-year TV recaps and marathons, catching up to end-of-year music lists and reminding themselves that they are too old for new year's eve parties. In fact, the last time that Mr. and Mrs. O stayed up and went out to a New Year's Eve party might have been before they were Mr. and Mrs. O.

Once again, they found themselves at home, in pajamas, eating fine chocolate and watching comedy films - basically the opposite of the Hollywood ideal of New Year's Eve celebrations. They fell asleep before 11PM to the sounds of intermittent hand-lit explosives.

Since December 23rd, it seems, the residents of Accra (demonym: the "Ga") have been randomly lighting holiday fireworks after dark. Few of these seem to make light, but they certainly do make noise. If the family were living in a rougher West African capital, like Abidjan, Lagos or Kinshasa, there might actually be concern that the noises were gunplay. Thankfully, violent crime is low enough that there is very little worry of this sort of thing, provided doors are locked properly. So the reports of explosives are heard sporadically during the festive season, with Little Miss excited to hear the "pop".

On New Year's Eve, the fireworks seemed to be going off much more regularly throughout the evening. But once midnight rolled around, Mr. and Mrs. O were awoken by a rolling thunder of loud noises and bright lights in the sky. In most of the developed world, celebratory fireworks are put on in a central area (park, harbourfront, etc) as a public good, with home-lit fireworks being a bit more of an expensive niche (Mr. O's family has a proud tradition of lighting things on fire in the country). In Accra, public services being what they are, it seems that individuals and companies have taken it upon themselves to invest in their own explosives and to outdo each other with the best show possible. Mr. O made his first new year's resolution to be somewhere with a balcony next December 31st.