The story
Nkyidwo Festival in Essumeja
An Ashanti origin festival at Essumeja, near Kumasi, marking the night tradition says the first Asante ancestors emerged from the ground at nearby Asantemanso forest. Chiefs process in a durbar of drumming and dancing while custodians perform rites at the forest site for the wider Asante nation.
Asantemanso forest, just outside Essumeja in the Ashanti Region, is where oral tradition places the emergence of the first seven Asante ancestors from a hole in the ground, an event said to have happened on a Monday night and to have been followed out of the earth by a dog and a leopard.