Kumasi and the four villages inn

---

July 9, 2010

Kumasi is the cultural capital of Ghana. It is also the capital of the Asanti region. I love it here sooooo much more than Accra. It’s about a 5 hour drive from Accra --- not because of distance but because of construction and traffic --- and it feels like a different country. Accra is all hustle and bustle --- except when you’re waiting for something to get fixed. It’s concrete and wide-open street gutters and lots and lots of traffic. That exists in Kumasi too, but it’s a nicer hustle. We drove through beautiful countryside to get here --- plantations, mountains, narrow villages with palm nuts roasting in the sun and freshly-baked bread loaves waiting to be sold.

The city is within a rainforest, so there’s a lot of green and more livestock. There are even dogs and cats running around (they’re in Accra as well, but they look like dingos and Mini-me cats). Even the architecture is prettier.

I’m sure my opinion is biased because I also love where we’re staying. The Four Villages Inn is a home owned by Chris and Charity. It’s a lovely home with a comfy living room loaded with fluffy pillows, books, videos, games and, of course, Ghana aritifacts. The living room, dining room and hallway look into an atrium that is part zen, part Ghana shrine, part kick back and pick up a book. Lovely pottery pots hang from the ceiling. In the center are rocks and brass animal statues, with of course adinkra symbols and fertility goddesses all over the place.

Since there are only four rooms the women are staying here. The men are in a hotel down the road, which is also nice (it has a lovely pool and outdoor restaurant with hookah bar), but it’s a hotel. We have an entire house to ourselves, except better. Charity is also a wonderful cook, so she and two women make us a lovely breakfast every morning in the big, warm kitchen. Chris and Charity have two dogs and two cats (one recently had kittens), so I get my pet fix through them.

Each of the rooms is decorated by a Ghanaian form of art ---- one is pottery, one is adinkra symbols, one is wood carving, and I, along with Maria and Venita, am staying in the kente room. Kente cloth is hand woven and cannot be duplicated (although there are imitations). A Kente blanket will cost around $400, and we have one hanging right over our bed. Our curtains also have kente cloth sewn into them. It’s really a cool place to sleep at night. For one week we can feel like Asanti royalty. Another plus to the area is the tropical garden outside and room to walk. The place in Accra was nice with a pretty backyard, but there was no real safe place to walk.

So far we’ve visited the Kumasi Market, the Wood Carving village, and the Manhyia Palace where the Asante Henne (chief of all chiefs) used to conduct business. I’ll write another blog just about what I’ve learned about the Asante, but for now know they are an ancient tribe that seems to have withstood the test of time (although the Asante believe it’s all relative, what happens here is also to an extent happening in the spiritual world). We learned today that they are masters of incorporating other cultural good and sometimes bad ideas.

I loved going to the market, which is massive. It has over 1,000 stalls and sells anything from big-eyed fish heads to gold to the most beautiful fabric you’ve ever seen to used appliances. You pretty much name it, and they’ve got it.

We had a blast practicing our Twi with the market women, who run the shops, and they seemed to enjoy helping us along. Bartering is fun here. It’s expected, and it’s never mean spirited, but always animated. I love watching Leslie, one of the professors who is also from Ghana, laugh it up with the shop keepers. You can hear the women cackling and cheering him two alley ways away. Walking through the market is an experience in itself. It sort of looks like any Arabian market you’ve seen in adventure movies, except multiply the vendors by at least two. Every single concrete speck of land has someone with something to sell. I don’t know how they do it.

It’s sectioned off by category. The shoe area includes shoemakers making shoes from scratch, as well as selling imports. The fabric area includes seamstresses and tailors doing amazing work. The fish sells way too much fish (Good God the stench almost made my tummy turn). Oh and in the produce area the yams are huge. It’s so tempting to taste some of the street food, but we know not to get too daring. I’ve been lucky and have not gotten sick at all, but a few of the others have done the Ghana cleanse.

As for the palace, I'll have to save that for another time.

---

Photos

Go Ghana
gotta love the spirit

Head luggage
We've seen just about everything, including a chicken coop WITH chickens, on top of people's heads.

Fish anyone?
um ... no thanks.

Fabric tower
soooo much fabric, soooo much color, soooo little time.

Dairy
want some cheese? yeah, i didn't buy any either.

Street shopping
who needs a market when you can buy goods while stuck in traffic?

taping away
Kevin trying to capture our market adventure on film

Ted and kiddoes
We were watching a dance performance and the village children came out to watch it with us. It didnt' take long for them to start dancing too (we tried, but i wouldn't call what I did dancing).

Cutie pie
every where we went children came up to play with us.

boys will be boys...
so, yep, even far, far, far away from home I'm surrounded by little hams.

Comments

[Brown]

Wow what an awesome experience! I'm jealous.