Kumasi

Yesterday I started our weekend journey to Kumasi. Kumasi is west of where I am in the Ashanti Region. The drive should have been 5-6 hours but complications with our driver made it a 9 hour journey. Our journey started out with a crazy driver who drove like a maniac to make sure he could follow his buddy in front of us so he could make it to Kumasi. On our journey on the road, despite our abnormally, for Ghana, crazy driver I discovered that the reason why they don't have painted road lanes, because nobody would use them. There were four or five cars passing in the oncoming lane at a time. Yes I did worry for my life.
Today when we traveled around Kumasi. Instead of taking our driver you endangered our lives and had no idea how to get around this town, we hired a car from the hotel, or a 30 passenger bus for Heather, Val and me. Our driver Steve was able to tell us a lot about the town and take us around to the good sites to see. Our first stop was the culutral center. It was more like a small courtyard with things around it but it was a lot of historical items from the Ashanti king and kingdom. A couple pieces that were really interesting were, a treasure satchel made out of elephant skin that the tour guide said hadn't been open since the 1700's for fear of the fall of the Ashanti kingdom. The second was a drum made of a leopard skin that was used as a war drum. When you rub a stick across the top, it really did sound like the growl of a leopard.
Our next stop was the Kumasi market. Now in order to travel through the Kumasi market there are a few requirements:
1. You need to walk at a fast pace when following our guide Steve.
2. You must be willing to change lanes, cut people off, and bump into the to go where you must go.
3. You must have a strong stomach because the smell of fish, raw meat of all sorts and parts of the animal's bodies will surely make you want to throw up.
4. You must be good at manuevering not only your body but your head around the large, and I mean large items the women are carrying on their head.
5. You must have eyes on your thighs, feet and all sides of your head so as to not step or bump into the raw meat on wooden platters in all directions.
6. You must be willing to walk around in hot, humid weather, that absorbs the smell of fish by the way.
**If you should survive the market, without feeling nausea, getting some kind of liquid on you, not getting your feet ran over by a big cart or being separated from your group, consider yourself lucky:).
The Kumasi market was really quite the experience. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get pictures of the animal hooves, and large snails, among the other things because the people were afraid that us Americans were going to sell their ideas in the states :). So all of you that are tempted...don't! Kumasi market for me was more a place to be survived rather than a place to shop. But with that and malaria, I think I can call this trip a success!