kumasi

This past weekend, I travelled to Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana (next to Accra), with three friends from Canada: Lonnie, Nina, and Arsalan. The journey started at 7am Friday morning…a stop to pick up egg sandwiches and fruit, a tro-tro ride to the main gate of the university, a hop on the Metro Mass transit bus to Circle in Accra, an hour-long wait on a bus to leave for Kumasi - buses here don’t leave on any schedule, just once they fill up - and a three-hour ride on the bus took us first to Abompe, a small village about halfway between Accra and Kumasi.
Well, the bus actually dropped us off near Abompe, so the four of us got off the bus only to be greeted by a number of Ghanaian women selling various items who didn’t speak English and two taxi drivers who were fighting to take us to Abompe. We hurriedly got into one of the taxis to avoid a fight between the taxi drivers (this happens often), and in a few minutes found ourselves dropped off in Abompe…again, with various Ghanaians staring at us and us having no idea what we were doing. But, we made friends rather quickly, and eventually a tour guide came to meet us. Abompe uses beadmaking as a community development project, and the beads sold to visitors go directly to the individual beadmaker and their family. During the tour, we met lots of friendly Ghanaians, saw how the beads were made and got to practice making them ourselves. We were explained that the beads are made from bauxite rock from the nearby mountain, and after the rock is taken to the village, it is chipped, whittled and smoothed by various beadmakers to be made into necklaces, bracelets, earrings, etc. We met so many hospitable people along the way, and some adorable children. One of my favorite moments was when I turned to see about seven children standing about twenty feet from me, all of whom looked younger than four years old with their arms outstretched, fingers pointing, yelling, ‘obruni! obruni!’ We waved, said hello, and asked them various things in Twi (local language of the Ashanti people), none of which they answered because they were too busy staring and pointing. My favorite part was when this one little girl came running up to me, touched my leg, and then ran away. So adorable! But okay, I’ll stop ranting about how cute the kids here are. So, after we finished the tour, we were taken to the shop where each of the beadmaker’s pictures are hung and their jewelry is on sale. It was so neat being able to buy something and know exactly where the money was going, especially since it was clear that the village was extremely poor.

After another tro-tro ride, we were in Kumasi! It was slightly unfortunate that we arrived there at night, since we had no idea where we were going, and quickly learned that not many people in Kumasi speak English…We made a friend at a nearby hotel, who helped us find a place to stay when all the places we called in the guidebook were either full or did not have working telephones. It took us quite some time to find a guesthouse, but we finally settled at the Nimoh Guesthouse. Arsalan even bargained for us for our hotel rooms - only 15 cedi per person for two nights – and we even got our own bathrooms (although the water in one of our rooms didn’t have running water, so the bathroom wasn’t much help). Who knew you could bargain for a hotel room?

On Saturday, we went to the Ashanti Palace Museum, where we learned about the history of the Ashanti people and saw many artifacts of the Ashanti kings and queen mothers. We then went to the cultural center, where we browsed through craft shops, ate some good Ghanaian food (after lamenting about how you are never given more than one menu and a good part of the items on the menu aren’t actually offered), and watched part of some performance by all different high schools that included skits and dramas. To us, it seemed like they were doing drama education – one skit was about the dangers of cults, another was about the repercussions that come if you accuse someone of doing something they didn’t do, etc. We then went to Kejetia market, the largest market in West Africa. It was absolutely insane!! The guidebook told us that it looked like ‘an alien mothership from afar’ and it kind of did. Row and row of cardboard or tin roofs made it almost look like a slum, but really those were all the shops of the vendors. Vendors sold everything from clothing to Bollywood movies to food products, and we didn’t stay for too long because of how overwhelming it was. We also got to see a Ghanaian band perform, and watch Ghanaians dance, which I LOVE doing. I’m hoping I’ll catch some rhythm here…but let's be serious, that probably won’t happen :) I really enjoyed Kumasi, but it was definitely different than Accra. There was so much pollution everywhere (it probably didn’t help that our hotel was in the junkyard part of town) and it seemed a lot more spread out than Accra.

The ride back also proved to be an adventure. The STC busses are one of the main ways of getting around Ghana, and are pretty much the only bus company with a set time schedule. I was very excited about the thought of actually leaving at 12:30, but of course, that didn’t happen. We watched our bus driver sit inside the bus, reading a newspaper as the minutes ticked away…around 1pm he came off and helped some other workers start replacing the battery or something… we eventually left at 1:30. Oh, Ghana.

The only bad part of the trip is that the three of us girls all got sick on the way back from Kumasi with a fever and flu-like symptoms. I went to the clinic (I arrived there and got my temperature taken only to be told I could only pay in cash and therefore had to go back to campus to get cash and then go back to the clinic, only to find out that when I later paid with the cash, they didn’t have change…it is such a mystery to me why no place has change) and was tested for many things, but they told me that I most likely have a bacterial infection. There is still a possibility that I have typhoid, but I am pretty sure that it’s just a bacterial infection…I’m already feeling much, much better so that is good!

Also...I will be trying to put pictures up soon! I'll either put them on this blog or on facebook...the internet is just too slow most of the time. So hopefully they'll be coming soon! :)