Chapter 53...The Kumasi Weekender!

Following my short but sweet trip to Tamale I arranged to meet the American aka Abbie for a long weekend in Kumasi, 'Ghana's second city,' over the Republic Day holiday on Friday 1st July. 

On Thursday morning I arrived at the Tamale Metro Mass bus station around 08:30 to take one of their bright orange buses to Kumasi. Having lived in Ghana for five months you would have thought I'd have known better than to actually think I would be on a bus by 10am, but in my naive mind this is really what I thought would happen. Instead at 10am I found myself in a typically unordered, chaotic bundle of a queue as tickets for the next Kumasi bus went on sale...about 10 minutes later I found myself ticket-less and wondering if I would actually get to Kumasi today at all! In front of me in the queue was Moses, a young Ghanaian man with a friendly smile. We started talking and he assured me I would be on the next bus, I didn't hold my breath! But Moses was true to his word and when the next set of tickets went on sale he was at the front of the queue buying both his and mine as I sat chopping egg 'n' bread. After waiting four hours at the Tamale Metro Mass  station I was finally sat in the dreaded middle seat of three on my way to Kumasi...

I slept the whole six hour bus journey, much to the amusement of the Ghanaians sat around me who kept saying each time I stirred from my slumber 'you sleep lots' to which I simply replied 'yes' and fell back asleep. We arrived in the evening to a hectic, rainy city with traffic jams on every street (streets that actually had street names)! At one point the driver said something that I did not understand and Moses told me to get off the bus and we would walk to where I was meeting Abbie, which turned out to be miles away from where we alighted the bus, but gave me a good chance to see Kumasi by night with the safety of a Ghanaian! We walked past the Central Market and past several streets that I was told by Moses not to walk down at night and eventually after lots of map reading and asking for directions I met the Abster outside Guestline Lodge where she had been waiting (worried) in the rain for me!

After a yummy fried rice, salad and chicken dinner we woke early on Republic Day with big plans ahead to visit Lake Bosumtwi, enjoy the views, read a book, listen to music and simply absorb our peaceful surroundings! Now you can imagine our surprise when we arrived at the lake to find ourselves at a hardcore Ghanaian festival/party/rave to celebrate the holiday, quite possibly the complete opposite of what we were expecting from our day, but a very pleasant surprise indeed! Once we had worked our way through the endless armed guard check points on the road down to the waterfront we were in the presence of many Ghanaians all out for a good time! Most of them were in the water or dancing to the live band that's music was blasting around the lake! There were food stalls selling anything from dried fish to spring rolls and burgers, there were many local alcoholic drinks on offer, including Alomo Bitters and what looked like a watered down pito and there were women selling all sorts such as sandals, jewellry, swimwear and rubber rings! We found a spot to park ourselves at for the afternoon and settled down with a Club and a Star... 

By the afternoon Abbie and I were ready to leave having had a fair bit of the usual drunken hassle from Ghanaian men! Once back in Kumasi we found ourselves trawling the supermarkets and getting highly excited by how cheap Western items in Kumasi are compared to in Accra! We spent the evening plotting out what to buy with the small budget we were working to and playing 'Blink' - the card game that manages to get me wound up everytime we play!

Saturday was to be our 'no public transport day' so we set off by foot down the streets of Kumasi on our journey of exploration... Now I am not sure whether it is because I am becoming more used to Ghana or whether my head is in a better place for it now, but I didn't seem to mind the mess, dirt and sheer chaos of Kumasi at all! I have been to many cities like it before and never had a problem with it, but for some reason on my first ventures out of Bolga, which is a very clean, very spacious town, I felt my whole body tighten at the clutter, claustrophobia and filth of some of the larger cities! Within five minutes walk of our hostel we came across areas like this...

...and this...

My mind was already starting to think of Kumasi as a city of contrasts and I was excited to get to the National Cultural Centre to see what that had to offer... The cultural centre was basically a larger version of Bolga craft village with many many stalls selling things from bracelets and beads to drums and paintings. As is always the case when Abbie and I get together, we spent hours and hours admiring the goodies on offer and almost treating ourselves to things, but ended up with even more 1 Cedi bracelets instead (then we can't figure out later why we have no money to buy that piece of cloth we really like, but we still encourage each other to spend money we don't have on it anyway, even it means not being able to eat dinner that evening)!

This shop had a variety of paintings by the artist Bernard Mensah that Abbie and I both totally loved! I am going to start saving my pesewas now (and buying fewer bracelets) to be able to treat myself to a piece of art for my house...!

A little spot of park land in the Cultural Centre where we sat and took some water.

Something new for our taste buds! Not sure what the name is or what the ingredients are, but I liked it (not that you can tell from the odd expression on my face)!

We then decided to brave Kejetia Central Market which words cannot even describe! According to my guide book it is 'reputedly the largest open market in West Africa' and you really could believe that when you find yourself inside the labyrinth of stalls where '10,000 traders operate within the 12ha market!' We started at one of the official entrances and soon found ourselves just falling into line of the flow of pedestrains all making their way through the market. There were even unmarked walking lanes we noticed where everyone walking in one direction would stick to one side of the narrow path in order to minimise the number of collisions! In the small section we attempted to look around we came across hundreds of stalls all selling the same things - cloth, jewellry, toiletries, fruit and veg, sandals and second hand clothes. As we ventured further into the market and felt braver about where to go we thought to ourselves 'this isn't so bad, what's all the fuss about this place being unsafe and just crazy chaotic!' We then managed to find ourselves in some 'underground' part of the market that stunk of urine and was set up on a dis-used railway track. We walked through filthy water at quite a pace trying to find a way out of there and were so thankful when eventually there were steps leading up to ground level again and  more importantly fresh air! I hadn't realised until I took a deep breath in that I had been holding my breath most of the time I'd been down there! Needless to say we didn't venture below ground level again, instead we went in search of fruit and veg and a way out of the market...

After strolling back to the hostel we grabbed an early fried rice, salad and chicken dinner before having to set our alarms for 03:30 the next morning in order to start our journey's back home! Mine was relatively painless given travel in Ghana is never easy and I managed to leave on a Bawku bus (the first Bolga bus was full and apparently there were no others going that day) just before 7am getting me back to Bolga just before 4pm. Kumasi can now be ticked off the never ending travel list, but also placed on the 'must visit again' list as I feel the city has much more to offer, as well as return trips to the Cultural Centre and market...!