Easter Weekend

I hope everyone had a very nice Easter weekend. It was one of the nicer weekends I’ve had. My roommate was out of town for a church thing, so I had a room to myself for a few days, which was very relaxing. Friday and Saturday were quiet without much worth noting, except the fact that it was nice to be with friends without anything to worry about.
Sunday was such a nice morning though. A few friends and I took advantage of the empty building (everyone was either traveling or at church all day) and made a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, pastries bought the night before, coffee, juice and milk (made from milk powder of course, which is actually quite good after being without milk for 3 months). We then boiled some eggs and spent the afternoon painting them and playing cards. One of my friends had brought a bag of jelly beans from home that she had saved until now, so we enjoyed a little sugar-fix which none of us has had since January.
Monday was also fun. (The University of Ghana does not hold lectures Good Friday or Easter Monday, so it was a very long weekend.) A few of us volunteer at an orphanage a little ways from campus called M’adamfo Paa, and we went to help with an Easter party there on Monday. We helped chop vegetables to make a giant pot of jollof rice, and as it was cooking, it began to rain so much. The rain made everything muddy and wet, but also cooled the air. After we served lunch to the 30 children, and ate some ourselves, everyone began dancing in the rain and the puddles to music blasting from a stereo in one of the buildings. It was so fun. I’m not much of a dancer, but you wouldn’t believe how these children can move. Ghanaians just grow up dancing and you can’t stop them from moving whenever there’s music on. It was so cool to be a part of the group. I definitely feel that the Ghanaians on campus are much different than Ghanaians I’ve met anywhere else. On campus, they do not talk to me and are not nearly as welcoming and friendly and warm as everywhere else. Everyone at the M’adamfo Paa was so nice and such a joy to be around… I feel alienated on campus. For anyone planning to study abroad here: don’t get discouraged if the students on campus don’t welcome you with open arms… but make sure to find something to do off campus so you can meet some really awesome people. They are out there, you just have to go find them.

I suppose I should wrap this up, but I will say that this is my last week of classes. Then we have a “revision week” and then 3 weeks for finals. That means I only have 5 weeks left. I feel like I’ve come a long way since January and I will be so happy to go home, but I will be a little sad to leave Ghana. It was sometimes rough getting to this point, but I’m so glad I came.

Photos From Kumasi

Sad news... I've been trying to upload photos from last weekend, but I haven't been able to find an internet connection that is fast enough to handle it.

So, anyone who wants to see pictures from it will have to ask once I'm home (or check Facebook because I will probably try to put most of them up there once I'm back).

So sorry!

Kumasi Weekend

The weeks are flying by now, even though the days sometimes seem to drag on…

Last weekend was one of the best I’ve had since coming here. CIEE took us on a trip to Kumasi, which is a major city in Ghana. It is the city where the king of the Asante empire lives, and the home of Adinkra and Kente cloth. Our first stop on Saturday was to an Adinkra village, where they make traditional Adinkra cloth. Adinkra symbols are traditional symbols, and they can portray historical events, human behavior and attitudes, animal behavior, and some simply signify the shapes of specific objects. There are 60-100 different symbols, which can mean anything from strength and diligence to wisdom and defiance. We were shown how they make permanent dye from only the bark of a specific tree and water.
Then we went to a Kente cloth village. Kente cloth is traditional hand-woven cloth that is quite expensive and symbolic. It is made of thin woven strips that are sewn together to make larger pieces of cloth. The patterns each symbolize something.
These villages were interesting, but quite difficult to enjoy because the sellers there were so aggressive. It made for a really stressful experience.

We stayed at the nicest hotel I’ve ever seen – The Golden Tulip. Ghana’s football (soccer) team, The Black Stars, was also staying there. That was insane.

On Sunday, we began by visiting the palace and museum of the Asante king. It was a very cool place – there were peacocks in the yard! I learned some interesting things. The matrilineal inheritance of the Asante people was finally explained to me… it had never really made sense before. (Basically, inheritance comes from the mother’s brother. So, if I was an Asante and I had children, those children would inherit from Jack. And my husband would pass his inheritance to his sister’s children, not his own. This is awesome because it gives women much more sway in the family and makes female children desirable.)
After the museum, we went to a Black Stars game! That was one of the best, most fun things I’ve done in Ghana. A match is only 90 minutes, but we got there 3 hours before its start, and the crowd was so much fun. For the entire 5 hours we were there, the people never stopped dancing and singing and cheering. It was such an amazing experience. Ghana won against Benin: 1-0. The only goal was scored in the very first minutes of the game. But the rest of it was still exciting; the crowd made it so awesome.

Well I should be going to get dinner now, so I should be wrapping this up. I will just finish by saying that I recommend going to see a football game in Africa (however make sure to choose a peaceful/safe country – the Cote d’Ivoire game was such a tragedy).


Also, photos of this trip will be forthcoming...