Capital-Hopping

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Arrived in Kumasi on Sunday afternoon following a five-hour bus ride from Accra. Kumasi is the second-largest city in Ghana, and the capital of the Ashanti, the largest ethnicity in the country, and the namesake of the year 2002's favorite R and B singer. The Ashanti kingdom is not a historic idea, it is a living, breathing thing, as they still have a fully-functioning king and various other dignitaries, as well as a palace right here in town. This might explain the plethora of tourist-friendly masks and "artifacts" in some shops, which are made insignificant with the real shopping heart of Kumasi, the Ketejia market. Like with any large city in an agricultural area, the Kejetia market is just bursting with commerce on the smallest of scales, with sometimes what seems like more vendors than buyers, even if there are thousands shopping the streets and alley ways. You can get a poster of Fifty Cent, underwear, live snails nearly a half-foot long (more on those in a future food posting), toothpaste, and dinner in less time than it takes to get bumped by a woman with a large box of bread on her head as she passes by. My favorite was turning down a hidden, narrow side alleyway, and coming upon about twenty booths in a row of women braiding hair and putting in extensions. So while Kumasi is still a million strong, it just feels a little more approachable than Accra, and I think that's because of the market and the adjoining Adum Neighborhood (Adum means "center" in the local language), which provide a polar axis from which you can explore the city, and not feel like you are on an endless walk of no consequence, as can happen in Accra.

Besides wandering the new locale, I have been incredibly busy getting the logistics taken care of for our market research project, which starts next Monday. Me and a few poor souls at the local office are trying to coordinate accomodations, food, transport, etc. for 18 people, including 12 University students that we are in the middle of interviewing and choosing, as well as getting loan officers to call their communities where they work and arrange groups to participate in our surveys in nearly fifty different communities both here and north in the Brong Ahafo region. So things are really cooking, but it is great to have a change of scenery, even if I'm only seeing it on lunch breaks and in the evenings.

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