Kumasi

Well, I’m a few weeks behind on my Kumasi post!... mainly, because there wasn’t anything interesting to report. The weekend was one big shopping trip, squished into three days. We drove to Kumasi on a dirt road so bad it could churn butter if we put milk in the back seat. A headache was inevitable, so by the time we got to Kumasi we were seriously considering staying forever.

We first went to the palace of the Asantehene, the chief ruler of the Asante state. They had a museum I the old palace that was pretty creepy! Inside, the palace was preserved exactly as it was when the Asantehenes actually lived there. Creepiest part: the Asantehenes are still there in wood form! They have crazy wood statues sitting in chairs all over the place!

We moved onto the cultural center across town, and the shopping began! They had great paintings, wood carvings, jewelry, clothing and everything else you can think of. Of course, I bought a ton of stuff for myself and people at home. Kente cloth is a woven piece of fabric made by weaving small strips and then sewing them together. It’s been fought over who was the first to make Kente, between the Kumasi and the Volta regions.

The guest house we stayed in on the University of Kumasi campus was AAAAMAZING. Marble, air conditioning (!!!!!), hot water for showers (!!!!!), and a bar! Wooot! And the best part is that we got to stay there for two nights!

Saturday we drove around Kumasi visiting villages known for their artistic abilities. In Bonwire, we toured another Kente factory and spent a bunch on “antique” kente. Not quite sure if it was really antique or just dirty. We also went to an Adinkra village that specializes in stamping cloth with special symbols. We each got to pick a strip of Kente, pick a few stamps, each with their own meaning, and stamp them ourselves! I picked three stamps, one of a goose looking back at its tail, which symbolizes learning from your past; one of a crocodile, symbolizing adaptability because he can live in the water and on the ground; and a star and moon, mosty because I thought it looked cool, but a little bit because it signifies the balance of harmony, love and faithfulness. Next stop was a wood carving village, though I wouldn’t call it as much of a village as it was a lion’s den. The second we stepped off the bus we were hassled. Even after I told them I spent the last of my money on the Adinkra cloth, they said that looking was free… so I went looking. Unfortunately I found a really cool mask. I had 10 cedi and the guy told me it was 30, so I was safe! I figured he wouldn’t come down 60% so I told him I only had 10 cedi… then he freaking said 10 was fine! So he got the last of my money, I got a nice mask, and poor Hannah got an IOU from me for the rest of the weekend.

We went back to the hotel for the night and had the option of going out for dinner or eating at the hotel. Hannah and I decided to stay at the hotel, mostly because I was out of money and she was tired. We went down to get dinner and I paged through the menu only to find Fattoush (a very awesome Lebanese salad that we make with some of mom’s friends)!! So of course I have to order it. Usually it’s made of lettuce and fresh parsley with a cool spice, veggies and lemon, BUT this one was made of lettuce, dried oregano and veggies: a major disappointment which marked the end of the weekend. The next morning we turned back for Accra, got another headache and vowed we’d only go back to Kumasi after taking some Advil.

Omni Roodle Shaktiput Blah Blah Blah!

The reason I was forced to wash the banana cement out of my hair was church. Hannah was talking about a special service today and because I hadn’t done too much this weekend, I decided to go with! We took a taxi with her roommate and two other girls (because you can fit six people comfortably in a taxi here, suck it Kenzie!) to the hotel where the service was being held. Apparently the church wasn’t quite big enough. Service was supposed to start at three, but adding Ghana time into the equation, it didn’t start until 4:15. The pastor started normally, like any other services, but then I thought he had some sort of heart attack. He started freaking out, yelling unintelligible things into his microphone! Then everyone started doing it, leaving Hannah and I staring at each other. They were speaking in tongues, yippee. So we sat in the conference room of a nice hotel, trying to shield our ears from the shrieking, yelling and jumbling that surrounded us. I’ve heard a lot of stories from others here who have wandered into a service with prayers in tongues. Most of them are horror stories of pastors and roommates trying to expel the devil from the student’s body, forcing them to speak in tongues. Needless to say, I was freaked out a bit! Fortunately, after 30 minutes of gobbldy-gook, the service flipped into English. It was a special service, like Hannah had heard: speaking about how important it was to speak in tongues. We made it through three hours of the program before our bodies told us it was dinner time and we couldn’t wait any longer. We stopped at a chicken place on the way home and found a shared taxi for 1.50GH each (which is amazing by the way)! It was nice to see a service with tongues because they’re so different from the churches I’m used to. But I was still glad to be walking outside after we ditched. We asked after we got out and the service definitely would have gone on another hour, if not much more. An interesting day, that’s for sure.

A Day at the Saloon

For a while now I’ve been wondering what would happen if I got my hair straightened… like chemically. I’ve been asking around and I usually get one of three responses: 1) why would you want to straighten your hair? 2) Go for it, it can’t go too wrong, and 3) DON’T do it, it’ll fry your Obroni hair and what you’ll have left will still be curly.

So I buckled Saturday, bought straightening cream for $7, ran to a salon (which my roommate pronounces saloon) and had them relax it for another $3. The process is simple: put the cream in your hair, wit ten minutes, wash it out. So I figured it would only take an hour, max right? Not. They put the cream in my hair and washed it out yes; then they put in curlers for some odd reason. I mean, I came to get my hair straightened… why would I want it curled minutes after it’s straight? But they put them in never the less. I think it was to make my hair dry faster in the dryer. They used rollers so big though that, with the size of my head and them combined, we had to maneuver my head in and out of the dryer which can be very difficult to do while laughing. So I sat in the dryer, burning because the warm button was broke so I was stuck on fiery hot, and finished reading a book from a friend of mine. By the time they pulled me out of the dryer, one curler at a time, I felt like a piece of frozen chicken that someone attempted to thaw in the microwave on high (It never works: the edges cook and the insides are still frozen). The stylist took out the curlers and I was happy to be done and out of the saloon. But life never works the way you want it to. Before I could run, she insisted on putting gel and hairspray in my hair. Everything would have been fine, but hair gel here is basically scented glue. Women here have to deal with the wind daily. They must have gotten fed up with it at some point because now, with gel in place, not a single hair will move even, I swear, if they were in a tornado. After three hours in the saloon, I walk out from my straightening appointment with curled hair that is cemented to my head, smelling like a giant candy banana. Actually I didn’t mind the smell at all J. The real problem came today when I tried to wash the cement out. I’m four shampoos in and giving up for the day. Hopefully tomorrow after another four my hair will move normally again.