Africa - Weeks 8-9 - Kumasi Trip

Monday, March 14, 2011 at 3:45pm

Dear Friends,

Hello!! So sorry its been so long since my last update. Been pretty busy and haven’t gotten around to it. Well today I’m gonna try and catch you up on my Ghana life. Last I left you we were going to Kumasi last weekend I think.

My classes are going pretty well, I think. I’ve had a quiz in most of them by this point and have done ok on those. For their grading scale, anything from 80-100% is an A, 70-79 is a B and so on. So far I’ve gotten B’s on the quizzes I’ve gotten back. Not too bad. I’ll take that! Still waiting on getting some papers back so it will be interesting to see how they grade those. I’m still enjoying them, with the exception of one which still doesn’t seem to have much of a direction or anything. For that one, there could be any 1 of 4 teachers there for that day. Its pretty frustrating because they all have different teaching styles and you never know what any one of them will talk about. Not an ideal way to teach a class I think.

I’m enjoying getting to know my classmates/coursemates. My favorite thing about being here is getting to know people and really connect with them. I’m learning so much about their culture and just the people. I love it!! Course, I don’t always remember everyone’s names or where I met them or how it is this stranger walking past me knows my name. LOL!! I’m terrible with that but trying to get better and be more intentional in memorizing people’s names sooner. Sometimes I recognize the face but not the name but I guess some degree of recognition is better than nothing, right?? We meet so many people all the time and also if I met someone when I first got here and haven’t seen them since then, I can’t recall their names. Though, if they had more unique names or less Western names that might help . . . maybe. I’ve met most of my family members here and in triplicate or more. I can’t tell you how many David’s, Peter’s, Michael’s and the like that I’ve met. I have to ask for a second name if they give me one of someone I already know so I can distinguish them somewhat in my mind. And you know how terrible my memory is!!! I can’t rely on Jenn to remind me who anyone is, its all on me and some days I fail miserably. Thankfully they are generally good-natured about it or I just play it off like I know exactly who they are. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t do the same!!

KUMASI:

Last weekend Abby and I ventured to Kumasi, about 4 hrs north of us and the tribal center of the Ashanti people. We left our hall about 3:50am and walked the 20+ minutes to the gas station/night club/bus station Goil to catch the bus to Kumasi. Yes, that was 3:50AM!!!!!!!!!! Due to lack of sleep, excitement and unnecessary paranoia, that walk was quite amusing. It was dark and no one was around. There were some cars on the road but not many and we were walking on the side of this main highway. We were half afraid someone was going to jump out of the bushes and rob us or something but again, I attribute that to lack of sleep and silliness really. It was a fun walk! Haha! We got to Goil and the bus station attendants were sleeping in the waiting area under mosquito nets. The bus was ‘scheduled’ to be there around 5am so we just sat outside and waited. When they woke up they invited us to come sit in the waiting area. The bus finally came around 5:30am and there was room so we paid for our seats and boarded. Tickets were 10GHC, about maybe $7. It was a standard type bus that you might find in the US with air-conditioning (YAY!!!!!!!!!!!) and movies playing. However, the movies were Nollywood films meaning they are from Nigeria and are possibly the worst movies I’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting through. Wow!!! You can’t even imagine what they are like. If you think Bollywood films are dramatic and over the top, well, let me inform you that you ain’t seen nothing! The Nigeria films are overly dramatic, insane, ridiculous and generally pointless. I can’t even fully describe them . .. You will just have to watch one sometime. Don’t worry, I’ll bring some home for you to enjoy . . . or something. Haha!

It was a very bumpy ride and I got pretty cold from the a/c which was kind of nice actually. I don’t have access to a/c much so when I do it is a welcome change. We sat in the back of the bus and try as we might to catch up on some of the sleep we lost getting up so early, it was not to be. Way too bumpy. We left our seats, catching more air than you might like to, on more than one occasion due to the bumps we were hitting. Pretty funny and headache inducing at the same time. The roads are pretty bad in some areas and the driver is often weaving from side to side of the road trying to find the most passable route. Why drive in a straight line anyway?? Ha! Oh, and there were some toll stops. Not what I was expecting at all. It was fun to see some of the countryside though it didn’t look much different than what it looks like in Cape Coast. Still, I enjoyed looking out the window and watching the villages, street vendors, half-built structures, forest, and other random things racing by.

We got to Kumasi about 9am. It was a quicker trip than I was expecting. I thought maybe it’d be 5-6 hrs. You never know here. The bus station wasn’t much more than a ticket booth area, a waiting area, the loading bays and some little shops selling snacks and such. We waited 2 hrs for Kokroko, Abby’s program director or something for the Ghana division. He lives in Kumasi part time with his wife, Irene, who teaches near there. He also lives in Accra. After they got there we walked down through town and some of the market to a restaurant where we got some lunch. We were so tired and in no mood to go walking all over the city. Kumasi has a population of about 1.5 million I heard and is much larger than I thought it was going to be. I was shocked to learn and see that it was that big. At the restaurant we treated ourselves to chicken burgers and fries/chips and an Alvaro which is a fruity carbonated drink that comes in passion fruit, pineapple or pear and is so very good! Passion fruit is my favorite. The burger was good but not my favorite.

From there we walked down through the market area to the taxi stop. Now, this taxi stop is not like anything I’ve seen. I don’t know how all the cars got in that space or how they were going to get out either. Complete and utter chaos! Hundreds of cars and people in a fairly small area, all the cars trying to maneuver their way around where there was no space to do so. Wow! What a sight that was! We got into one of the those taxis that really had nowhere to go and yet somehow there was a small hope that there must be a way to make this bizarre system work. We sat there listening to people shouting and hollering and giving directions in a foreign language. I’m pretty sure our driver was saying, ‘Hey!! I’ve got Obrunis here!! I get to go first!! Let me out!! This is important!!’ or something like that .. . Or nothing like that. LOL!! Just a thought. The cars were literally in there at all angles and directions, some parked empty, some with drivers and passengers inside, all going nowhere fast. At one point, there was an empty car in our way and since the windows were down, some guys just put it in gear and moved it forward just enough for us to squeak by. I don’t know how we got out of there but we were sure glad we did! Whew!! What madness!! We rode about 30-45mins to the house we would be staying at. It was quite a ways from the downtown area in a nice neighborhood that was pretty quiet. Hooray for quiet!!! After the deafening noise of the hall especially during Hall Week, it was the most wonderful thing!!

The house we stayed at was Irene’s fathers home. We walked through the heavy metal gate that was in the wall that surrounded the house and courtyard and were shown the room we would use for the weekend. There was a queen size bed and then a cot there with a sheet and a pillow on each and not much else in the room. I’m not sure who we displaced that weekend but we were grateful for the room. We rested for a few hours trying to get our energy back after a long day.

After resting we were discovered by some little people. There were 5 kids in the house we think. Isaac 11, Derek 10, Yao maybe 4, Ama 3 I think, and then Junior and I’d guess he was 2-3. I don’t know which ones were siblings or cousins. I think there was a mix. I’m not even sure who all lives in the house. I know Kokroko and Irene stay there sometimes but as for the more permanent residents, we couldn’t figure it out. There were a lot of people in and out of the house at different times so who knows. The kids were fun to play with and full of energy which wore me out pretty quick. The older ones spoke English pretty well and helped us understand the younger ones. They learn English in school from the beginning but I don’t think they all were in school yet but not sure.

Kokroko makes batik and so he showed us how to do it and let us make our own fabric with a design on it. It was so cool and fun to make our own batik!! Definitely one of the highlights for the weekend. Just to give you a basic idea of the process, you start with a blank piece of fabric, 100% cotton is the best, and you heat up the wax so it becomes a liquid. You get to pick out the stamps you want to use and the tools, paintbrush, sponge, etc., as well. He had a lot of stamps and it was hard to choose so I picked several for my cloth. You dip the stamp in the wax which works best if it’s a wide and shallow metal bowl, sort of shake off the excess wax so it doesn’t drip everywhere or smear the pattern, press it onto the fabric firmly, leaving the design on the fabric and keep going until you are done with your design. The places where you press the wax will stay white when you dye it. I was only doing one color for the dye so it was easier than Abby’s, who choose 2 colors. If you do more than one color, you do your first selection of stamps and then dye it the first color, the lighter of whichever colors you choose, then you stamp whichever designs you chose for that part and then you dye it again, the darker of the colors. So after the first dye, she choose a red that looks red-orange, you stamp again and wherever you stamp on top of the red will stay red when you dye the next color, which will fill in the areas not stamped at all. She picked purple for her second color and it turned out really cool!! They both look pretty awesome. I’ll try and include some photos. After dying the fabric and letting it dry, you then wash it to get the wax off and then your batik is done, I think. We didn’t do that part of it but I think that’s how that works. It was really fun and we want to do some more for sure.

For dinner that night they made us fufu with rice and then a tomato sauce, too. Fufu is one of the most popular dishes here. It is made from pounded cassava I think and is made into a dough that is then put in a groundnut soup that usually has chicken or fish in it. This was the first time I had eaten it. The fufu was really slimy but the soup was good. So basically they set the ball of dough in the soup and you take a small amount of it in your fingers and dip it in the soup for the flavor or if there’s veggies in the soup you grab some of that and then eat it. Usually the soup is way too hot for me to stick my hand in but they are used to that here so its no big deal. Its not hard to eat but can be messy. I don’t like the fish in it since they put the whole fish in, skin, eyes, fins and all. Not entirely appetizing to me in the least. I’d prefer it without anything in the groundnut soup at all but that’s how they make it so that’s how we eat it. Groundnuts are like peanuts. I don’t know if there is an actual difference but they are the same to me. The rice with the tomato sauce they made was really good. I don’t know the recipe or anything but it was really good. We sat outside in the courtyard and ate with everyone. It was dark by then so they were using candles to cook and eat. It was kinda cool. I ate way too much but we were pretty hungry.

After supper we played with the kids for awhile until we were tired and went to bed. It was a lot of fun playing with all of them but tiring. The power was out or as they say “the lights are off,” so the fan didn’t help with the heat that night. Yep, when the power is out they say the lights are off. Its true. They are. Haha! Did I mention in any previous update how you never know if the food you want at a restaurant will be available the day you go or not. Even if its on the menu, depending on where you go, many things are not actually available for order. However, fried rice and chicken are almost always available so that’s ok with me. That’s usually what I order anyway if we eat out.

Got up the next day and were ready to leave by 8am but didn’t leave till closer to 10am. We had hoped to see the Independence day celebrations but only caught the end of whatever they had done because we were too late. We took a taxi into town and then walked through the market to the open-air stadium/square where they were doing something. The market is insane!!! It is so huge!! I think their market is bigger than the whole of Cape Coast and so busy. Wow!! It was pretty overwhelming, partly because we were trying to keep up with Kokroko who was walking fairly fast and we were trying to take it all in and not trip over any number of things that were waiting to bring us down. Part of it that we walked through was the food area and that was . . . umm . . . fragrant shall we say. It smelled awful actually. Dead animals of many varieties - fish, squid, chicken, seafood, and probly many others that I didn’t want to look to closely at or breathe around. Lots of vegetables, peppers, herbs, and anything else you might want or not was there. Since Kumasi is such a large city I thought we’d see more white people there but we actually saw less and felt like we stood out more. Interesting. Abby tends to get a lot of attention for all her piercing and at one point we were stopped by a lady who actually wanted us to take a photo of her which was such a foreign thing I wasn’t sure what to do. While I was doing that some other ladies were talking to Abby about her piercings. The most people have here is on or maybe 2 in their ears. Abby has 11 in one ear and 12 in the other with a lip piercing and 2 dermals below her left eye. Yep. Definitely a novelty here. So we made it through the market and on to the stadium.

All we saw were groups of school kids in their uniforms lined up in groups and someone was talking on a loud speaker but who knows what they were saying. I sure didn’t catch any of it. So that was kind of a waste and from there we walked to the Manhyia (man chee-uh) Palace Museum which is where the king/queen of the Ashanti kingdom lived and I think there is a residence on the property where he/she now lives as this one has been turned into a little museum. I detest museums and this was no exception really. I find them boring and uninteresting. To borrow the words from a friend, “I have not yet developed an interest” in them. Haha! Plus you can’t take photos in them so I find them generally a waste of time. That is not to say that they don’t have value and can be interesting. This one was not. It was hot and I wasn’t thrilled to take the guided tour through the small museum. Guided tours are another part of museums that I don’t much enjoy. If I’m going to go I want to look at what I want to look at in my own time and not feel rushed by someone on a time schedule other than my own. However, I’m glad we went and got to see it. I did learn some things and the gift shop was nice enough. Ended up buying a couple paintings from some guy selling them on the street outside the palace walls. Oh! And there were peacocks on the premises! That was surprising. You certainly don’t see those here.

From there we walked to the STC bus station to get our tickets for going back to CC the next day. We rested some there and then ventured on to the cultural center. I was pretty tired and didn’t want to walk but they decided to so we did. We did so much walking that day and I got quite a sunburn. Not pleasant really but survivable. Outside the cultural center we stopped to get some grilled bananas from a vendor that was selling them. We had tried them yet so we got some and waited for them to grill. They were way too hot to eat right away so we took them with us and kept walking. I’m fairly wary of buying food from street vendors since I’m well aware of the dangers that can be involved. I am more trusting of someone else buying things for us since they know what the item is and how it should taste and such.

The cultural center is a compound sort of area with lots of shops and building that are used for various celebrations or ceremonies like weddings but since it was Sunday and a holiday no less there was hardly anything open. We found one shop that was open so we perused their goods for awhile. Its not hard to find things to buy here but I am fairly selective and want to get the best quality for the best price that I can. I found a few items here and purchased them and I’d like to go back and see some of the other shops there cuz I think there is a lot more there to be seen and possibly purchased. While we were in the shop and just about finished it rained a little bit so we stood out in the rain till it passed. It was refreshing since it wasn’t a heavy rain. I’m sure we were a source of entertainment for anyone walking by. We are getting used to that somewhat. You just have to do what you’re gonna do no matter what because you are being watched anyway so you might as well be happy and not bother with your audience too much. So we finished up there and then took a trotro back to the house. A trotro is just a van with as many seats as they can fit that is super cheap transportation even if it can be hazardous on long journeys. Haha! Everything is an adventure here no matter what you are doing.

They made us dinner when we got back to the house. We had groundnut soup with fish in it and it went on rice and they also had the tomato sauce that we liked from  the night before. It was so good, though I don’t like the fish in the soups. We still ate a lot and then pretty much rested the rest of the evening until bedtime. We were exhausted and thankfully the lights were on so the fan was working. The kids wanted to play with us some more but we were to tired and kinda felt bad but needed to rest.

Monday we headed back to CC and were so relieved to be going ‘home’ and back to familiar settings. It was a great time, in Kumasi, but I don’t want to do a homestay again just because there is a sense of obligation to do what they do and you are somewhat limited with what you are able to do. That was ok for a short weekend but I appreciate my freedom and independence too much to do much more of that. They are super nice people and if we go back I’m sure we will try and visit them. Our seats on the bus going back were the first ones right behind the driver. More crazy movies for entertainment and the a/c so it was a good trip. Got some sleep this time since it didn’t seem as bouncy and probly cuz we were so tired.

Once we got to CC we walked back to the hall. Hall week was over and it was somewhat quiet compared to how it was before we left. During hall week each day they have activities that they do and they all include lots and lots of noise. If you can imagine it, it was even louder than usual and louder for longer hours too. So glad that is over. This past week and a half has been relatively quiet. I don’t have much hope that it will last very long but there you have it.

So that was our Kumasi trip. Had a great time. Felt great to be back on campus. Can’t wait to go to some more places. Accra is on the list for sure. Lots to see there I hear and we know enough people who go there that we can get some good recommendations for places to see and stay and all that.

Since this is already pretty long and I’m tired of typing and I’m sure you are tired of reading I’m gonna end it here. Last week wasn’t terribly eventful after we got back from Kumasi. It was nice to be on campus this past weekend though and just relax and hang around here. Traveling makes you appreciate when you don’t have to. I pray you are all well and living life to the fullest. Talk to you soon. Take care and God bless.