Ready for more delicious Ghanaian cuisine? Then step right up to the For 91 Days Chop Shop, where we'll slice and dice everything so nice! There's no better fufu pounders in the country! You want rice-bean mash slopped out of a cooler with an ice scoop? Saucy noodles plopped into a plastic bag with a piece of dried fish? We got you covered! Take a seat! We'll have your food ready in an hour and twenty minutes, just relax!
As soon as we got out of the trotro in Bonwire, we were approached by guides. It seems there's exactly one reason for foreign faces to appear in this town -- and that's "kente". Without even bothering to ask what we were there for, a guy indicated that we follow him. He brought us to the town's main production hall, and gave us a quick tour. It was so efficient and straightforward, it didn't bother us not to have any choice in the matter. And the guy was super-nice.
Our two weeks in Kumasi provided us with a crash course in Ashanti culture. Even though the people have embraced Christianity to a suffocating degree, ancient traditions and beliefs are still very much alive. We've touched on the history of the Ashanti, but thought we should also highlight some of the coolest idiosyncrasies of their culture.
Kumasi is home to the largest traditional market in West Africa, Kejetia: an unbelievable sprawl of tin-roofed stands that basically comprises its own city-within-a-city. Over a million people visit Kejetia daily, whether to shop, sell or just mingle. We spent a delirious afternoon getting lost within its highly-organized but baffling maze of alleyways.
The idyllic campus of the University of Ghana might be physically located in the north of Accra, but it feels worlds away. Very little traffic, an absence of litter, wide tree-lined streets, and a hushed atmosphere which provides a wonderful place for thousands of young Ghanaians to learn. We visited on a regular weekday, and fell immediately under the spell of this striking colonial campus. The university was founded in 1948, when Ghana was still a colony…
Spilling out onto endless blocks of downtown Accra, Makola is less a "marketplace", than a general way of life. You don't really "go to Makoka Market" ... you just walk down a street and it slowly starts happening around you, until reaching such a pitch that you can't even take a step without knocking over a plate of snails, or stepping into some poor woman's fufu bowl.
The American scholar and author William Edward Burghardt DuBois spent the last two years of his life in Ghana, having been invited to return to Africa by Kwame Nkrumah, to work on the Encyclopedia Africana. We visited the house in which he lived, and which now serves as his mausoleum.
Life in Accra can be stressful, I think most would agree. But regardless of how difficult the day had been, how unbearable the heat, or how aggravating the traffic, we always managed to go to bed in a fairly relaxed state of mind. Why? I think it had to do mostly with our post-sundown ritual, of finding a bar in Adabraka, and rinsing out the negativity build-up with a nice, cold beer.
Maybe it's because we come from such industrial societies, but Jürgen and I are always interested in seeing craftsmen ply their trade. The only hand-crafted products back home are the friendship bracelets your nieces force upon you. So when we're in a place like Ghana and we see people producing actual goods, it's exciting. What are those, coal pots? Sure, we'll watch you make coal pots! The lucky subjects of our attention were a couple guys holed…
The small town of Aburi is best known for its sprawling Botanical Garden, developed by the British as a sanatorium, and opened as a public garden in 1890. It's become a point of pride with locals, popular with those seeking a break from the hectic daily life in Accra. We spent a couple hours enjoying the garden's serenity, during our trip to Aburi.
