Ashanti Culture in Kumasi

After John accompanied us to the chaotic bus station in Accra, we were "on our own" for the first time in Ghana, en route to Kumasi, Ghana's cultural capital and second-largest city. On the bus ride, we half-watched a couple of low quality, soap opera-like Nigerian movies. The basic storyline was the the woman being unfaithful/evil and being verbally and physically abused by the man. We talked with the person sitting next to us during the ride, who then before he got off asked other people on the bus to help us find a cab at our stop. Many people in Ghana have been really friendly and helpful in situations like this or even just asking directions, and unlike other places there's mostly not the undercurrent that some sort of "tip" is expected for such help.

In Kumasi we stayed at the Presbyterian Church guest house, a big, rambling building with a large grassy courtyard and balcolny. Feeling too tired to venture out, we settled for a meal of Guiness Malta, a non-alcoholic drink advertised as a health drink and tasting like Raisin Brain. The next morning, after an egg, bread and tea breakfast at a street stand we headed to the Ashanti Cultural Center. The Ashanti were one of the dominant groups in Ghana before being defeated by the British at the end of the 19th century (more on that later). The main attraction of the Cultural Center was seeing artisans at work making batiks, weaving kente cloth (the ceremonial, incredibly beautiful garment of the Ashantis, the pattern is often a patchwork), and wood carving, among others. Next we toured Manhyia Palace, which was built as the dwelling for the Ashanti king by the British in an attempted apology after they burned and looted the previous palace in 1896. At that time, they sent the Ashanti king Prempeh I into exile, first at Elmina Castle in Ghana and then in Sierra Leone, but his followers continued to make the trip on foot to visit the king so he was then sent to the Seychelles Islands (near Mauritius). The palace itself was an interesting collection of objects blending traditional and modern culture: Prempeh I was the first literate Ashanti king so his small bookshelf (containing multiple books on golf) is displayed, as well as Prempeh II's 1950s television, the first set in Ghana.

The Ashantis have a very different take on women than the Egyptians. The Ashanti king is chosen by the Queen mother, who is either the mother or sister of the current king. When the British were threating the Ashantis, it was the Queen mother who led the resistance. Interestingly, our tour guide repeated the phrase we'd heard earlier in the Nigerian movie from the bus as one of the reasons for the king being: "only a mother knows her child," meaning that lineage can only be certain from the mother, not the father.

We also quickly burrowed our way through the gigantic market in the middle of Kumasi, West Africa's largest. Rachel compared it to the chaos of Cairo traffic with the maze-like subterranean passages of Harvard's Widener Library. There was a Ghana-Australia soccer game televised, which the tourist office had mistakenly told us started at 2pm, so instead of watching the game we spent 4 hours at an incredibly slow internet cafe located on above a Shell station convenience mart. When we did go to an Indian restaurant to watch the game that night, we ended up talking with our new friend Marcus, who we've been traveling with since then.