Kumasi, Ghana, Day 194

It’s the usual routine this morning: breaking down the tents, breakfast, attending to the bloody bags, and then we leave Lake Bosomtwe for Kumasi, the second city of Ghana. It’s a 2-hour drive to the Presbyterian Guest House in central Kumasi and then we have the rest of the day to explore. Kumasi was, historically, the capital of the Ashanti kingdom.  And the Ashanti people are famous for making Kente cloth.  One of the best places in town to find Kente cloth is the massive open-air Kejetia market.  As usual in Africa, the market is a combination of litter-strewn alleys and open sewers mixed with a vibrant, throbbing mass of humanity all on the move at the same time.  It is chaos personified.  There are fetish sections, high quality Kente weavings as well as the more mundane fish, vegetables, clothing, hardware, and shoe stalls.  It’s all in your face, strange, confusing – yet Georgina (from whom Christi purchases two pieces of Kente cloth for us to use at night rather than our suffocating sleeping bags) says today is a quiet day. God knows what it must be like when the place is truly busy. We’re also feeling rather brave and try lunch at one of the numerous food stalls.  We make sure to avoid the snot this time and end up with a very pleasant paella-type dish called jollof and another of the yummy light soups (with chicken).

Next we wander up to the National Cultural Centre, which is adjacent to the zoo.  And in the trees over-hanging the zoo complex are hundreds of fruit bats, while at street-level an enterprising lady is selling roast bat in a spicy relish.  Naturally we have to taste it.  Of course if you ask sane people about bats one of the chief concerns is the fact they carry the rabies virus.  Did we worry? No.  Are we stupid? Perhaps.  FYI roasted fruit bat (and don’t you think he resembles ET?) tastes rather good (like game rather than chicken).  We stick to nibbling the flesh, though, because the poor little chap was cooked with his intestines in situ.

Now it may just be the heat, but I am feeling very thirsty and becoming a little irritable…Oh no…

Blog post by Roderick Phillips, author of Weary Heart – a gut-wrenching tale of broken hearts and broken test tubes.