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Published: September 14th 2009
I thought i would write you a little note on my weekend. We decided to go to Kumasi this weekend which is in central Ghana, in the Ashanti region. The city is the second largest in Ghana, and its about 4 hours away from accra by Tro tro. Getting there was quite an experience. We first had to take a city tro tro to the center of town, specifically a place called circle. This is no problem and only takes like 45 minutes. Once we got there we decided to eat a bit and catch another tro up to Kumasi.
The first one we picked cost 5 cedi 50 peswa, around 4CAD. Unfortunately when we bought the tickets from the mate we didn’t see the TV inside the Tro tro. The TV was blaring NOllywoood ( Nigerian holly wood) but hte sound kept dying and so it would be yelling and then silent, switching back and fourth every 30 seconds or so. We decided that we couldn’t deal with four hours of that and decided to switch tro tro, which is easier said than done for sure. For starters, the mate didn’t want to refund us, and told us to go and sit back down. We pretened i was sick and finally paid someone else the difference in cash that it would take to upgrade to a tro with Air conditioning, and hopefully some quiet ( we paid around 1.5CAD for this difference) . However, the person we paid was not the mate of the actual tro that we were going on so he didn’t believe us and wanted us to pay again. Someone else confirmed that we had paid , but it didn’t stop the new mate from taking one of our tickets. Luckily, as soon as he left yet another person gave us another ticket to replace the lost one. We settled in content in the AC and somewhat spacious seats.
Our luck was not to last though, as we left an herb sales man jumped into the Tro and started yelling the virtues of what i think was greet tea oil from China. He was yelling and yelling, and seeing as we were stuck in Traffic he yelled for about double the time he normally would have been able to since he didn’t have to get off until a certain point. In total he yelled for about an hour and a half and kept hitting the door and clapping. Talk about a captive audience! When he finally got off the driver decided to put on a nolly wood film if you can believe it. We had thought that the tv wasn’t working, and we were not pleased to find that it was.
Any how, five noisy hours later we got to Kumasi, and after a moderate hassle found a cheap hotel that was reasonably clean and safe. We spent the weekend looking at arts and crafts and things at teh cultural center , which was surprisingly reasonably priced. We also went to the Ashanti palace and had an excellent tour from the Curator of that museum. There is still and Ashanti king to this day and he lives in the palace. He, along with the queen mother, ( who can be his biological mother, sister, neice, ... anything but his wife) essentially rule the chiefs of the Ashanti nation which corresponds to the Ashanti region at this time but used to cover almost the whole of Ghana.
Interestingly the Ashanti chief is selected matrilinealy through the queen mother. This is done because the queen mother and her siblings are royals , thus there is no question that any child they may have is royal. However if it were the wife of the king, she could become pregnant by another man and merely pretend that it is the king’s child. It is the Queen mother herself along with a large council that selects a new king after the current one has passed away. This may seem like a slow and lengthy process, considering that normally there are several prospective kings within the queen mother’s family and each must be considered for the position, but it ensures a just and wise leader for the tribe. However, should things not work out as planned, the queen mother is the sole person with the right to destool the king.
We ended up buying several masks and paintings as well as some lost wax brass works which are absolutely gorgeous. The masks range in size and color and different carvings on the faces reflect different tribes. All the masks we bought were Ashanti masks which was fitting since we were in the Ashanti region.
Well this has gotten quite long, i suppose i will write more later.
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Kim
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How cool is that!
Hei MarMar, glad to hear about your trip to Kumasi. What a lot of time to spend on a bus! Could you tell a difference in the peoples of this region as compared to the ones who live in Accra, besides language, of course. Thanks for the update. Now back to my spaghetti sauce... Love, Momba