more on Kumasi

In about half about half an hour I'll be heading out to a Liberian refugee camp about 2 hours from Accra. I'm not sure how to spell it, but it's pronounced Budaborum. A few people in our group are doing some reporting/broadcasting on the camp, and I'm tagging along just to check things out.

I guess I should also say something small about Kumasi, because I know I'll totally forget to write about it/get lazy later. The main attraction in Kumasi is it's central market. According to Kenneth, one of the Ghanaian guides hired by NYU, the Kumasi market is the second largest in Africa, dwarfed only by a certain Nigerian market (I don't know the name). Indeed, the market in Kumasi was HUGE. Our tour bus got stuck in the city's notorious traffic on our way to our hotel, and I felt as if we were being engulfed by a sea of people. Everywhere there is shouting and honking and all of the buyers and sellers blend into this large vague whole while somehow remaining distinct too. Kind of like Michigan Avenue on Friday evenings, but totally different also. It's strange how it is possible to detect moments of familiarity amid surroundings that are decidedly alien and new.

I didn't actually get to look around the market during a regular day. We didn't have time Saturday so we went on Sunday. Kenneth explained that most vendors shut down their stalls on Sunday to go to church. Nevertheless, despite the reeduced capacity, things were still pretty busy. I bought Trinity a cool hat like she wanted, but I tried it on later and it might be kind of tight. Oh well. There were bread vendors selling fresh sweet loaves of white bread, young girls and women walking around with screen-lined boxes filled with the creamy loaves on their heads. I hadn't had dinner the night before, so I was starving. I bought one and ate it and it was great, but like fifteen minutes after I finshed it I felt so nauseated and wanted to throw up. Later I saw some stalls where several women were bagging loaves of bread. The unwrapped bread was sitting in mounds on the table... covered in flies! Oh great. So I guess I pulled an Uncle Froggy, right Dad? Well hopefully my immune system is working right these days.

We turned into a side alley in the marketplace and I spotted these weird ass hand painted signs depicting all kinds of bizarre lower body ailments. On one sign was printed "gonnorhea" and showed a picture of a guy with his jeans unzipped, reaching into his pants. Allison thought he was masterbating, but I think he was just scratching his painful lesions. Another board depicted a picture of "toilet bleeding," basically someone's rear end squatting down with a stream of blood flowing out onto a bloody pool on the floor. Constipation anyone? There were other signs advertising infertility cures and whatnot.

As we were perusing the odd sights, a random guy popped out of nowhere and introduced himself to me as a doctor. I asked if he did traditional or Western medicine, and he said that he did everything. I asked if I could take a photo of his signs (you have to always ask in Ghana, where Islamic influence is still felt amid the predominantly Christian population) but he started running up the street to get his medicines for me. Oh crap, I though. Now I have to buy something.

He came back shortly and I managed to explain that I didn't want any medecines, only a few snapshots of the signs. However, the medicine man proceeded to roll up his pants and change into his traditional medicine man outfit. He then threw off his Nikes and someone handed him his medicine man hat, and he sat down all serious and somber like crossed legged, after speading out an old blue tarp and unloading the contents of his medicine bag. There were wilted plans and old twigs, plastic bottles filled with muddy, oily liquids that he was was for syphillus/gonnorhea. There was also a goat horn, or some kind of animal horn that was dirty and molded over. So all this he spread out on the mat. Then he said he was ready for some photos, so I took a few.

I offered to buy the goat horn after it was over, in compensation for his time. He wanted 100,000 cedis, the equivalent of $10, but I got it down to $5. However, after I bought it he demanded yet more money for the photos. I offered to give him a dollar, and he got pissy. So I threatened to give back the goat horn and he got all worried and accepted the dollar. Meanwhile, during the whole encounter, a crowd of Ghanaian vendors had gathered around the medicine man's stall. We left amid a chorus of definite Goodbyes. Someone even called out, "You are mean," as we left. I suppose six dollars wasn't enough for the entertainment we were supposed to have derived from this scam. Oh well. I have some decent pictures to show for it, and I rotting horn which is currently in the back of my closet.

On the way back from Kumasi, we made stops at two different Ashanti villages. There are various ethnic groups in Ghana, each with its own language. The Ashanti comprise over half of Ghana's population, and Twi is the most widely spoken language here after English. The first village we stopped at specialized in wood carving. Even before we got off the tour bus, about a million vendors pressed themselves against the vehicle waving their wares and shouting "I like your style! I like your style! Come look at my stall! Come buy!" Not at ALL the widely circulated idea of poor isolated villagers sitting passively by as malaria and AIDS and other horrible maladies consume their body and soul. Nope. These people were fricking crazy. So I got pulled into various stalls, and I ended up spending around $30 on some really gorgeous and beautiful stuff. They make everything there themselves too. No sweatshops. I only felt bad that I didn't pay more, but I seriously didn't have more money to give. I bought a traditional mask, and when I attempted to find out what it was used for, they guy selling it said "All occassions." I think he was just more interested in getting my money into his hands. I bought a traditional female fertility doll, a necklack, and something for Chara also that we can all use.

The second Ashanti village we went to specialized in kente cloth weaving. We also got swamped with vendors at this village, but not so much. Like I said on facebook, there are three different kinds of kente cloths, single, double, and triple (I forgot the Twi names). I learned this from one of the villagers who shouted Konichiwa as he came up to me, and asked me if I was his American wife. Suddenly everyone around me got excited and started asking me if I was his American wife in between random Konichiwas. So I decided to play along, and everyone got so excited out of their minds when I shouted Konichiwa back. Oh, let them think I'm Japanese... I mean, all my life I referred to them using the vagueish nebulous "African." What the hell is African? So I suppose, in the end, we're even.

The guy that came up to me, or one of them, wanted to give me a tour of his village. He kept mentioning the village priest, how he wanted to take me there, so I started milling up the street with him, when it dawned on me. No, I did NOT want to go to the village priest with him. Turns out he had crazy ideas about marrying me on the spot and even calling up my mother on the phone. In Ghana, I think it's typically the mothers that arrange the marriages and do the final acceptance. So I told him that my mother would absolutely say no and probably kill him too. He was very sad, but oh well.

Before I left he wanted my email address. So I wrote it down for him, and once again that uncanny feeling decended upon me. Here I was in the heart of Ghana, in this "African" village, writing my email address down for this Ashanti man. How odd is that? That story would never appear in National Geographic or the Times, with their sad stories of death and dolor and decay. That's Africa back home for us, but we don't know anything, it seems.

Oh god I'm so late ok bye.