While You Were at BBQ's and Watching Fireworks

Last Thursday was a public holiday in Ghana (Republic Day, but don’t ask anyone what it’s all about), so that meant no work. I rearranged my Friday classes and took a long weekend to travel to Kumasi, which is 4-6 hours north of Ghana, depending on traffic and the sanity of the bus driver. Side note: people here don’t really pay attention to holidays, and most don’t know what the public holidays are for. When my coworker told our boss that we were taking a long weekend to travel, she got mad because she thought we were celebrating the 4^th of July. One of the Ghanaians in the office assured her that there really was a Ghanaian holiday, so we had a legitimate excuse to miss work. Anyway, Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana and was the capitol of the Ashanti Empire. We arrived Thursday with enough time to find the hostel we were going to stay at and then went and got some dinner. Since we were unfamiliar with the city, we didn’t want to be out much at night, so we just went back to the hostel after staying in the restaurant so long they were practically kicking us out.

Friday morning we went to the cultural center, which is a lot nicer than the one in Accra, and went to a little (and I really do mean little) museum that gave us more insight about the Ashante people and their history. Then we went to the palace which was built by the British as a gift to make up for the bad things they had done to the Ashanti people. King Prempeh I refused to move in until he could pay the British for the palace. It was a really interesting tour, mostly because our tour guide was…well, let’s just say he was a funny guy. At one point, he was mentioning how none of the kings wives were allowed to stay in the palace, but had a separate house nearby. “You know women and their problems” (meaning that because women menstruate, they are considered unclean and cannot stay in the palace). One of the women in our group asked him what he was referring to as “their problems”, which took a while to get out of him and was quite entertaining. So, after that was all over, we went to a restaurant to watch one of the World Cup matchesand then went back to the hostel to figure out plans for the Ghana game. Friday night was probably the saddest night of my life. Okay, not really, but it was the saddest football match I have ever seen. Ghana lost to Uruguay, but really, they should have won. That handball was totally in the goal, but whatever. When we left the hotel where we watched the match, the streets were completely deserted. It was so different from after previous games, when the streets were swarming with people celebrating. Everything was quiet and empty. Even though Ghana lost though, the Black Stars played very well in the World Cup and made Ghana and all of Africa very proud.

Saturday we hired a taxi for the day and went around to a few villages outside of Kumasi. The first village is where they do a lot of fabric stamping. We got to stamp a strip of cloth for ourselves, which was pretty cool.

Next we headed to another village to see how they weave kente cloth. It was so cool to watch them; they use their hands and their feet to pull on different spools and create different patterns in the cloth.

After that, we went to visit an old fetish shrine. There is no longer a priest there, but a funny old caretaker who doesn’t speak English.

Since we had some extra time, we had our driver take us to Lake Bosomtwi, which was very beautiful and peaceful.

Sunday we took a bus home, and let me tell you, that was probably the weirdest bus ride I have ever been on. There were these two preacher guys who were doing their thing on the bus. Everything was in Twi, but then they would yell “JESUS!” over and over again. The bus driver was driving the bus as though it was a little sedan and I thought we were going to die. To make things even better, after the preachers were done, they played Ghanaian movies really loud for the rest of the time. Yeah, I won’t be bringing any of those home, sorry. Needless to say, I was very glad to finally get off the bus.

Kumasi is a lot nicer than Accra. First of all, it’s not as hot. We did not get hassled as much when we were walking around. In Accra, not a day goes by that I don’t get grabbed or touched or called at by at least 20 people, but in Kumasi, people left us alone for the most part. It was wonderful. The city is also a lot cleaner. There are actually trash cans around the city, so people can put trash in them instead of in the sewers. Kumasi is also very green. It is also easier to get around on foot. In Accra, I take a trotro or taxi to get pretty much everywhere, but we only took a taxi once in Kumasi. Overall it was a fun weekend and I did not really want to go back to the office on Monday. But alas, I only had 2 weeks left (now we’re down to one), so I figured I should.