Kumasi from the roof of our hotel.
This post is so titled because I’ve felt like some kind of radioactive beam struck me two days ago, awakening latent powers that amaze all those around me. Really I’ve just felt quite a bit better and I’m now able to walk at a normal Ghanaian pace. Still slow by Pacific Northwest standards, and I probably don’t register as a moving object by East Coast measurement, but we can’t have it all.
I told Cole that as soon as I’m well enough to run again I’ll go play soccer with the high-schoolers on the weekends, getting my ass handed to me, but making sure I’m taking advantage of being well.
Now–to relate another leg of my journey with my parents and Mandy. We just covered Mole Park, and our next destination was Cape Coast and Elmina. It was a journey we didn’t want to try and make in one day, so we planned a layover in Kumasi. I’ve already regaled you with the bus experience, so I’ll just say that we had ten more hours of that. We showed up in Kumasi in the late afternoon and found a hotel using Mandy’s guidebook. It was a nice spot and we just kinda hung around for dinner. We had great Western-style food including pizza that was pretty passable and milkshakes that were questionable at best.
Night on the town.
My parents and Mandy went to bed, and hit the streets to take some pictures and meet some people. I wound up hanging out with two really nice guys who were very excited to hook me up with one of numerous women. They even showed me pictures on their phones. Tempting. We wandered around for awhile and were eventually joined by a man that I’ll have to call a night missionary, because that seemed to be his profession. His sermon was very well delivered, naturally flowing, frequently returning to the theme of our inevitable reckoning.
The next morning Mandy and I left my parents to do some shopping, window shopping in a world without windows. They didn’t want to pack anything around so they were more or less stuck with a plan of buying souvenirs on our last day in Ghana. Still, they had plans of wandering and so did Mandy and myself. I wanted to check out this abandoned railway, having seen it on the drive in. My homies from the night before recommended I not go down there until morning. Mandy and I separated almost immediately and started checking out the scene.
It was a pretty cool spot and I met some great people. I also got hassled by a couple of “criminals” who were hoping for I’m not sure what. They made their demands pretty clear, but didn’t seem to be willing to follow up with anything other than more demands, so I just ignored them and eventually they peaced out. It was after they left me alone that someone informed me that they were criminals and I should be careful. If I’m to judge by this experience alone, Ghanaian criminals can be identified by their terrible teeth. And poor manners.
Besides criminals, there was a massive group of young girls just chilling with big metal bowls. I learned that they were all immigrants from the north, and a really common job for them was to just hang out near the market and wait for someone to need help carrying something. They just sit in the sun all day with their bowls, among hundreds of other girls doing the exact same thing, until someone comes and pays them to haul yams or whatever. They had some pretty killer jumping and clapping games going down, but when I asked to take a picture they declined. Oh well.
Before too long it was time to rendezvous back at the hotel. We had a bus to catch. My parents had a good wander of their own, meeting some nice people on the street, apparently having some good conversations. I think both Ghanaians and my Mom like to talk about family, so they get on well. We grabbed a taxi to the station and were off to our next destination… but that’s a story for another time…
