Kumasi

Lake Bosomtwe - The largest natural lake in Western Africa

Yesterday, we arrived in Kumasi, which was about a 3 hour drive from Abomosu.  Kumasi is a pretty big city, comparable to Accra.  It is more westernized than other areas of Ghana. The university here is called Kwame Nkrumah (Abbreviated Knust) and it is pretty nice.  It isn't nice to American standards, but for Africa, its super nice.  There is a road on campus lined with palm trees - it reminded me of a campus in California or Arizona. It's pretty cool.  So we left Abomosu at around 6:30am and got to Kumasi around 10ish.  They weren't expecting us until afternoon because they thought it would take us longer, but I guess more roads have been developed that made it faster.  When we got here, we met with a professor of Disability Studies for a little bit.  We couldn't check into our hotel until 2, so to kill some time, we went to lunch at this cafeteria type place and then took a tour of an Asante palace! It was really interesting.  There have been 16 Asante kings, and only the 13th and 14th lived in that one.  Basically everything is made of gold and we learned a lot about the culture.  The 14th king had 8 wives! And the next king is picked by the queen and must be part of the royal family but can't be the king's children.  It's usually a nephew.  It was interesting learning about that part of the culture.

After doing the tour and checking out the gift store, we went back to the campus and got our rooms for our hotel on campus.  I am rooming with Leah and each room has 2 beds and a bathroom with quality showers and a TV!!! It's super nice.  I am really loving it haha. At 4, we had a meeting with students in the disabilities and rehabilitation program here at the university.  We basically just got to interact with them and learn about the program and learn the differences between disabilities in the US and in Ghana.  It was interesting and it was cool to meet some peers!

Today, we got to sleep in a bit which felt awesome, and then we went to the campus bookstore.  I wanted to find some cool college tshirts, but they don't have anything like that here.  It's weird.  We asked people if there were tshirts for sale around here, and there wasn't anything. And when I thought about it, there wasn't really any students wearing college tshirts - they all dressed super nice.  You basically have to be rich to go to college, and since it's such a privilege, everyone dresses super nice.  So no tshirts for us! 

From there, we went to a village where they make fabric.  They showed us how they actually weave the fabric, and then they had a lot of cool things for sale.  The guys there were driving me absolutely insane.  Everyone really pressures you to buy things and they don't just let you look around at their stuff, they are always pulling you in different directions, wanting you to buy from them, which just makes me want to leave and not buy anything! I did buy a cute little bag for my sissy, & she better like it!

A bunch of fabric

They weave the fabric on those wooden things

From there, we went on a drive to a lake! It was called Lake Bosomtwe, and it was the biggest natural lake in all of West Africa! It was super pretty.  We had lunch at this super nice place right on the water with palm trees everywhere.  There were insects flying around and lizards everywhere, too.  But the service at the restaurant... horrible.  Except thats how its been at every place we have eaten.  Nothing compares to customer service in America, its crazy.  They have huge menus with lots of items that sound tasty, and everything you order, they say "we don't have it."  all they ever have is chicken or fish.  And by fish, they mean a whole fish. So its really annoying when I get super excited for some beef, and they dont have it, and then i settle for some spaghetti, and they don't have it. And I want some sprite, and they dont have it. And I want some ice cream, but they don't have chocolate.  it's the saaaame story everywhere. And the food has taken like an hour to get, each place we go.  So eating takes up a lot of our time here, which gets annoying.  I guess i'll appreciate crappy service in America because it won't even be comparable to the service in Africa.

palm trees!

Leah & I at Lake Bosomtwe

Scott catching a coconut out of the tree.  A few people wanted coconut water, so a guy climbed the latter and got them fresh coconuts right out of the tree and chopped the top off and they drank it! So cool! Coconut water is nasty, though

Posing with the coconuts!

Leah, Lindsey, Kayla, Reika,& I

Pretty Place