My time in Ghana is flying by and I cannot believe I only have about a month left! I finally finished all my midterms and now have to begin preparing for finals. My internship is going really well, I have enjoyed spending so much time with the kids at Hope Community Children’s Home and watching them grow through their schoolwork. For the rest of my time here I will be working towards my goal of buying a table and chairs for the Home, as currently the only surfaces in the main living space are a few tree stumps. I also am hoping to establish a clothing drive in the States upon returning home to make sure the kids look their best when they start school again in the fall. I have been so busy lately that I will just post an update from some trips several weeks ago!

Kumasi

My study abroad program went on a trip to Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city. We spent the first day helping two past CIEE students who are building a library in an isolated fishing village on Lake Bosomtwe. We walked about half a mile with the children of the village to get water for the cement, and it was incredibly eye opening to see what it is like to have to walk to a neighboring village for just a gallon of water. The children there wake up at 4:30 everyday to fetch enough water for their families, and little kids were passing us carrying three times the amount of water I was struggling to hold. After lunch a few of us went on a hike to see the lake, which was a very rare and unique experience because our guide allowed us to use his village’s footpath. He told us we were probably the only Americans to have ever used the path because it is exclusively for fishermen of the village. Lake Bosomtwe is breathtaking, it was formed by a ancient meteor and now there are many superstitions surrounding the Lake. Fishermen there do not use any metal at all and only fish using traditional methods, so no fishing rods or nets. It is taboo to bring metal near the water.

Later we visited a kente weaving village, where all members of the community are in some way involved in this traditional art. Kente is an intricate and prized fabric hand woven specifically in the Ashanti region. Every piece is unique because the weaver creates the pattern as he goes, and this attention to detail means it can take three days to finish one yard. We were lucky enough to watch expert weavers creating kente and had way too much to choose from when buying.

We also visited one of the few Adinkra villages left in Ghana. These villages specialize in printing the traditional Adinkra symbols of Ghana, which were originally stamped on an individual’s funeral cloth to describe their life. There are over 100 of these symbols which are still recognizable and meaningful in Ghanaian culture today. A few members of this community spend their days making the authentic dye that was reserved for these symbols, which is extracted through a long process of grounding, mixing, boiling, and mashing specific tree barks from the jungle to create either black or red dye. We were all able to pick out a symbol and stamp it with the traditional dye on a cloth for our program.

On our last day we visited Manhyia Palace, home to the Asante King. The Asante King has been an incredibly powerful leader in Ghana throughout history, and now the palace grounds also house a museum. On Saturday we visited the museum to learn about the Asante King and his people’s history, and then we were lucky enough to attend his celebration ceremony the next day! Every 42 days there is a ceremony held on the palace grounds where people come to see the King, and we by chance were there on the 42^nd day. It was an incredible experience to see a real King in this traditional and authentic ceremony, and I felt very honored to have been welcomed to witness it.

Togo

The next weekend several friends and I visited Ghana’s neighboring country to the east, Togo. We entered through the coastal capital of Lomé which is also Togo’s largest city. Togo is a French speaking country, so the language change as well as completely different currency and the fact that our cell phones did not work in another country called for a lot of quick adjustments right away. We were lucky enough to meet an incredibly kind woman named Yolanda who invited us to her home for a meal. She took us to her community where we bought ingredients for lunch at the market, and then she and her family taught us to cook a traditional Togolese soup. I am constantly amazed by the selfless hospitality in West Africa and how willing people are to invite strangers into their home. After lunch Yolande invited us to visit her family’s voodoo temple, which we of course agreed to. While most people associate voodoo with Haiti, voodoo actually originated in Togo and is a prominent religion in many communities. Yolande and her family had a small shrine in their home and are very involved with the temple in the neighborhood. At the temple we paid our respects to the leaders in charge, and before we knew it they involved us in a voodoo ceremony! We completely unknowingly had walked into a traditional ceremony where we had no idea what to expect but quickly became involved. To make a three hour long story short, there was gunpowder, smoke, lots of drumming and chanting and singing, a very important bowl of water, strange spicy nuts we had to eat, a shrine we could glance at, two chickens and sacred kola nuts. All of the guys had to take a turn holding this giant stone alter on their heads, and when the woman in charge said a girl had to hold it I switched in and took a turn with the alter on my head. A man chanted at me and lit fires in the alter, and luckily I switched right before they brought out a chicken to be sacrificed on the alter! Later the man in charge hit us all on the head with a live chicken before sacrificing it and throwing it into the shrine. We were then instructed to whisper to a kola nut our greatest wish for our lives, and because we had performed the ceremony the voodoo spirits would help our goals to come true. They would also protect us for the rest of our stay in West Africa and our journey back to Accra. We all left the temple in absolute shock and disbelief. It was a completely unique and incredibly rare experience that happened completely by chance, I feel very fortunate to have been lucky enough to be a part of it. Definitely one of the craziest moments of my life and a highlight of my semester here!

Yoyo and I dancing to American music

Location: Lome, Togo