weekend in kumasi

i was picked up at 5am on thursday morning by a driver named Ebenezer for a five hour drive to kumasi, ghana's second biggest city. we then picked up other interns (Chris from Scotland and Ruth from Ireland) before picking up Nana and starting the trip. you'd think that the roads between the two major cities in the country would be in decent shape but they werent. the trip wouldve taken two and a half hours on Canadian highways but took over five because of the large stretches of construction which were more like sections of unpaved potholed dirt roads that had been left to deteriorate for years. anyway it took a long time.

we got in around 1130 and checked into our rooms at the Civil service training centre which was the building housing the conference that we were attending. Nana was putting on a two-day workshop for the directors and higher-ups at the NCCE which is the government agency which educates the population on their constitutional rights. She was supposed to educate them on human rights in general with a focus on women's rights in Ghana. We, the interns, were there to learn and help Nana facilitate the workshop by taking notes on a flipchart of whatever was being said. we also organised group discussions to a certain extent.

anyway, the workshop was pretty incredible. Nana gave lectures but the crowd would jump in all the time and there would be long debates in the middle of each lecture. at least every ten minutes someone would make a joke and the entire crowd of like sixty high-level bureaucrats would burst into wild laughter that would last a minute or two. it was the most entertaining lecture ive ever been to.

the most interesting part about the whole thing,was that Nana was discussing some issues that these people had never openly talked about before, things like rape and spousal abuse. it was amazing to hear some of the comments being made by well-educated people about what constitutes rape. people were laughing and going nuts throughout the whole talk, like the things Nana was saying were hilarious and crazy.

at one point nana brought up an example of an infringment of a woman's right to mobility. in the northern part of Ghana, women are not allowed to cross a certain river on Tuesday or if they have their period. the law has to do with some ancient cutsom. the story goes that if the woman looks into the river when she is on a boat the boat will be attacked by crocodiles and everyone on board will die. that sort of thing sounds pretty ridiculous to us and it did to Nana and to about half the crowd. however, a lot of people in the crowd really truly believed it. the director of the whole NCCE at one point got up in front of all the crowd and said in a booming voice to nana, "if you do not believe it, then YOU cross the river on your period and see what happens to you!" at which point half of the crowd laughed because they knew it was crazy but the other half nodded as if they firmly believed she would kill everyone on borad. this country has a long way to go. so many human rights are infringed because of traditional beliefs.

so that was a crazy two days. when nana and the other interns left on friday for accra i stayed in kumasi and checked into a really cool little guesthouse where i spent the rest of the day watching soccer with the hotel guys and reading my book. anne and kristin arrived in Kumasi late friday night and we woke up early the next morning to go to the kejetia market.

the market was pretty indescribable. there are about 10000 people selling anything you could imagine in a space of 12 hectares, however much that is. overflowing is the best adjective ive heard to describe kejetia. i put some pictures up on the photos page which you can get through the link next to this entry that says my photos. here's an idea tho.

I also took like ten videos which I will share with people when I get home. The market was massive. we got kind of lost and just walked and walked for hours through tiny aisles, and along train tracks full of people yelling. we all bought Ghana headbands which had "black stars" written on them (the name of Ghana's world cup team) and so every ten seconds or so we would hear “ehhh Ghana!” or “hey you support the black stars?” It was the day of the game against Czech so people were very excited that obrunis were supporting the black stars and we were the only obrunis we saw all day. At one point people started cheering as we walked by and chanting some combination of black stars or Ghana or obruni for a looong time. Anne said it best when she said that it was like we were celebrities. Quite simply, people love obrunis who love Ghana. everyone was overjoyed to see us and wanted to give us high-fives. i gave out a lot of high-fives.

So at the market I bought some fabric to get a shirt made and I bought some second hand tshirts which were pretty cool. I also got a slingshot which works really well and – 6 fowler take note – a little Ghanaian hunting knife. Anne bought a truckload of fabric, she is admittedly addicted to the stuff.

After the market we went to find a place to watch the Ghana game. Some guy on the street named Rati or something like that, said that we should come with him to a ghanaian bar to watch, which we did. He took us to this little bar packed with Ghanaians where we were the only obrunis which was very cool. The drinks were really cheap and tv sucked but it didn’t matter because the atmosphere was so good. When Ghana scored, the entire bar erupted and people started jumping around and dancing screaming for like two minutes. The same thing happened for the second goal. I high-fived a large man wearing a toga. Ill never forget that.

After the game the whole bar and city burst into an amazing celebration. Every car was honking, everyone was yelling, and dancing in the streets. Taxis were swerving down the road in celebration. Anyway, it was madness and everyone was yelling at us again because of our bandanas. Little kids, old ladies and everyone else was equally excited. The whole country got an incredible boost which you could feel in the streets after the game. If Ghana beats the US on Thursday they will go through to the next round and I’m sure the party will be even crazier.

My fingers hurt. More in a few days