I’ve found the source of all the cool things that fill up the markets around Ghana: Kumasi—the heart of Asante country. This city used to be the center of a powerful empire, and all the surrounding villages have specialized in a particular craft that used to supply the kingdom. We headed out to the Ghanian textile villages this morning to get some quality goods.
The first village we stopped at specialized in kente—a woven cloth that has symbolic patterns. The more expensive of the two common textiles, it can take a weaver a full day to create a two-yard length of cloth. Unlike other markets, every person I dealt with had woven all their own material—I even got to try my hand at weaving kente on their machines. I got two kente cloths—one for the kitchen table at Mom’s request, and a bigger blue kente that would make a great gift—or a pillowcase for me.
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| Where the Magic Happens |
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| Web Gem |
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| Homies |
Our second stop was at an Adinkra village. Adinkra is cheaper, larger fabric that has various signs and symbols printed on it with black ink. At this village, we got a walk through of how they extract black ink from the bark of trees—a pretty remarkable process. We got to make our own adinkra, I had to buy the Obama cloth, and I got another big one at a great price.
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| Tree bark |
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| He liked my hair |
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| Who could resist! |
In more important news, our room here has A/C and I took a hot shower last night.
Shout out to my family in Humarock! We’ll be trying to celebrate the 4th of July in Techiman—a tall task. Hope the fireworks and bonfires on the beach are better than ever.
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