A Weekend in Kumasi or (What happens when you spend too much time in the van).

I'm on Day 4 of my longggg weekend. Which means much internet time and little else. Perhaps a book or two.

We spent the weekend in Kumasi, a city in central Ghana (the heart of the Ashanti region!). Kumasi has a lot of things to do and we were only there for three days so things were action packed. However, I wasn't feeling very well on Friday when we were about to embark on a harrowing 5 hour van ride. I'm pretty sure I didn't boil my water for long enough when I was making my oatmeal that morning. So, anyway, I was not a happy camper by the time I got to the hotel.

It's still rainy season, despite what the guidebook says, and it rained a lot on Friday. We went to see Lake Bosumtwi, the largest natural lake in West Africa. It was pretty big, I'll give them that. But it was foggy and rainy so you couldn't really see much. We did have a lot of fun frolicking in the rain, to the dismay of the Ghanaians trying to shield us with umbrellas.

The next day we did a whirlwind shopping trip to a craft market where there are carvings and wooden things and jewlery and such. That was way fun, despite the jacked up prices we were being quoted. When they were orienting us for Ghana back at Tufts they really stressed how much we were going to be bargaining. I have to say that there is very little haggling or bargaining done on an every day basis. You don't bargain for food. You hardly bargain for housewares. Clothing, cloth, and souvenirs are the only things I've found to be flexibly priced. So I bought some carved things and have begun to stow things away for Christmas presents. The nice thing about coming back right before Christmas (besides getting to be home for Christmas) is that I can just not give people souvenirs and just give it to everyone for Christmas. Which is great.

So we sat around and finally drove to our next station - this place that makes Adinkra prints. Adinkra symbols are all symbols used in textiles and carvings that have very specific meanings. To put Adinkra prints on fabric, one must use these stamps and this ink/dye. So we learned how to stamp the fabric and then got to keep the part that we did. Which was fun.

More sitting around, more driving.

Next up - Bonwire. Bonwire is the birthplace of Kente cloth. It looks something like this. It's very hard to make and therefore quite expensive. Each pattern has a story behind it. It's really cool. The plan was to get off the van, go see the weavers at work and then spend some time shopping for kente. Well, the plan didn't account for the 50 street hawkers that would attack us as soon as we stepped foot in Bonwire. Seriously, I've never felt more like a tourist in Ghana. They followed us to where the weavers were and crowded us so much that we couldn't even take pictures of the looms. Then when they saw that we were beginning to go into shops and stalls, they flipped out and started grabbing this person to get them into their shop as quickly as possible. This was really putting me off as I was worried about getting my purse stolen or getting forced into buying something I really didn't want.

I ended up buying a kente bedspread for my room at school from a guy named Elvis Presley. Who promptly proposed after hearing that I was from the US. When I broke his heart by telling him that I already have a husband he asked me if I'd "birthed" already. Oy vey. My proposal count is only a paltry 6 after over 6 weeks here. I must be quite an unattractive Oboruni. But the ones I do get are on par with Elvis's romantic proposal.

FINALLY back in the van for more sitting and more driving. Next up, the Prempeh Museam. By this time I'm cranky and car sick and tired. I'm kind of acting like a petulant child. You know, the usual. (I missed my nap time!) So I didn't get much out of the Prempeh Museam other than Kumasi is the center of the Ashanti culture and that's great.

More sitting, more driving. And then the sweet sweet relief of a HOT shower. Yes, that's right. Hot water. It was more than I could have asked for. We also had a TV where we could watch CNN and bad Nigerian movies. (You think Step it Up 2 was bad? I dare you to sit through 2 hours of a Nigerian movie. It makes TUTV look like Paramount.)

Sunday we did A LOT of driving around Kumasi before we actually began the trek to Accra. Now, we didn't do anything strenuous on Saturday. A lot of shopping and sitting and driving. That's it. So why, may I ask you, was everyone in our group sore on Sunday morning? Did you know that you can be sore from being jostled around in the car from too long? Neither did we! But in fact, you can.

6 hours after leaving Kumasi we returned home to our beds and promptly fell asleep.

The. End.