Techiman

Techiman stands in the country of the Bono, the northernmost of the Akan peoples, whose state was among the earliest in what is now Ghana. Its capital, Bono Manso, lay a short way north of the present town and was its capital from about the eleventh century, grown rich on the gold and kola trade with the markets of the Niger bend, which drew Muslim merchants south across the savanna. Tradition ties the Bono to the river god Tano and to the rocks at Tanoboase, where the people are said to have come out of the ground.

Asante armies destroyed Bono Manso in 1723, and the capital moved to Techiman, founded in 1740 as the seat of a much-reduced kingdom under Asante sovereignty, its chiefs keeping their stools and their shrines. The town sat on the trade route that carried kola north and salt, cloth and livestock south, and its market grew from that traffic. Under colonial rule it became a district centre of the Gold Coast's Ashanti hinterland.

In independent Ghana the crossroads did the rest. Lorries carrying food from the northern savanna to Kumasi and Accra met the forest trade here, and the weekly market swelled into one of the largest food markets in West Africa, the point where yams, maize, tomatoes and grain change hands in bulk. Administrative boundaries followed the town's weight: long part of Brong-Ahafo, Techiman was chosen as the capital of the new Bono East Region after the referendum of 2018.

Bono culture is Akan with its own accent. The Bono dialect of Twi is spoken here, chiefs are enstooled rather than crowned, and the Techimanhene's court keeps linguists, drummers and regalia in the Akan manner, with the difference that Bono tradition claims seniority as the oldest of the Akan states. Shrines to Tano remain important, and the sacred grove at Tanoboase and the protected monkeys at Boabeng-Fiema show how custom and religion have kept places and animals out of ordinary use.

The Apoo festival is the town's best-known occasion: a period of ritual cleansing during which ordinary restraint is lifted and people may sing openly about the faults of chiefs, neighbours and each other before the year is purified. Drumming, processions and rites at the shrines run alongside the licence, and the festival draws people home from the cities.

The market gives the town a second, less formal culture. Traders from Dagbon, Gonja, the Upper regions, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria work here, Hausa is the common language of the yard, and the zongo's mosques and food have been part of Techiman for generations. Christian churches, Presbyterian and Methodist as well as newer charismatic ones, fill on Sundays, and funerals take over weekends as they do across Akan Ghana.

The 2010 census counted 67,241 people in Techiman, which has grown since, and the town's rhythm is set by trade. The market operates on a cycle of ordinary days and big days, and on the big days the population swells with traders, drivers and porters; lorries queue along the highway, yams are stacked in walls, and the lorry parks run late. Women dominate the market's trade, and the queen mothers of particular commodities, such as the yam or tomato sellers, hold real authority over prices and disputes.

Around the town, farming fills the year: yam, maize, cassava, plantain, cashew and vegetables on smallholdings in the transition belt, with cashew in particular having spread as a cash crop. Government offices arrived with regional capital status, adding administrative jobs, and there is a hospital, a nursing college and a spread of senior high schools.

Days begin before dawn with the first lorries and end early outside the market. The standing concerns are the price farmers get for food crops, the state of feeder roads that decide whether produce reaches the market at all, water supply, and the pressure that a growing town puts on land. Young people leaving for Kumasi and Accra, and returning at Christmas, are a constant of family life.

Techiman eats from both sides of its crossroads. On the Akan side, fufu pounded from cassava and plantain is eaten with light soup, abenkwan of palm nut or nkatenkwan of groundnut, and ampesi, boiled yam or plantain, comes with nkontomire, the cocoyam-leaf stew with melon seeds and smoked fish. Yam is at the centre of everything, unsurprising in a town that trades it in thousands of tonnes: boiled, fried into chips, roasted at the roadside or pounded.

From the north come tuo zaafi, the stiff maize or millet porridge served with ayoyo, okra or groundnut soup; guinea fowl, grilled or stewed; koko, spiced millet porridge with koose bean fritters, for breakfast; and dawadawa, fermented locust beans, which gives soups a pungent depth. Khebab skewers grill along the main road after dark, and waakye, rice cooked with beans, is sold from early morning with gari, egg and shito.

Drink follows the same split. Pito, the household-brewed millet beer of the north, is served in calabashes at yards around the zongo; palm wine and akpeteshie come from the forest side; and sobolo, the chilled hibiscus drink, is sold in bottles at the market.