...continued...

So eventually we arrived safely in Kumasi, tired, hungry and absolutely frozen by the AC. We were ripped off by a taxi driver and dropped our things in the dingy hostel dormitory before heading out to see if it was possible to get food in Kumasi at 10.30pm. We found a street bar with live music at the normal volume (it seems Ghanaians believe that if the sound isn't so lound its distorted you can't tell that the sound system is working), with a small "fast food" joint outside. Basically a small box with a young pregnant lady inside serving rice. We had just been beaten there by a couple who had been on our bus, and therefore became our friends, seating us and ordering food. However, they had got the last two bits of friend chicken, a fate which we resigned ourselves to more than contentedly, as we eat fried chicken almost every day for lunch. There was a table of Obronis in the corner, with whom we didn't have the energy for conversation but it did explain the cryptic comment by the receptionist at the hostel as we left.
"Go down the street and there will be your colleagues taking alcohol."
In my mind this had conjured an image of a bunch of partners from my future firm performing some sort of heist on a bar, which would have been altogether more entertaining.
Other than these the place was swarming with locals who were mainly dancing and shouting at a crazy man to leave. The friendly and non-threatening barman challenged us to a dance competition for a bottle of Star (Ghanaian beer, pretty good). As he had installed himself as the judge and we could barely lift our feet to walk, we declined and went home to bed.

Saturday
Over breakfast (at which we somehow managed to order double of everything) a man came to take photos of our Bradt guide.  He turned out to be from Leeds. This made me very happy, a little overexcited, and got me thinking about Yumtaz (Actually called Mumtaz, an amazing curry house in Leeds), and other things there that I missed. One of the other volunteers had been playing soul music in the compund the other day and that had got me thinking of an awesome bar called Smokestack (and I also read a book that mentioned them, but in the conext of global warming). So now I have an urge to go for dinner at Yumtaz and go dancing in Smokestack. Could be tricky. And I still would rather be here than in England.

Our plan for the day was to venture to a town just outside of Kumasi and visit a museum about Yaa Asantewa, the queen mother who had led a war against the British, and to visit a local Ashanti shrine. Ashantis comprise the largest tribe in Ghana making up about 40% of the population, and if my sources are correct, you can tell one by the scar on his cheek, given at birth. We were unsure where to get the bus to the town from and asked someone. Error. Somehow (and I don't think it was entirely coincidence) the nearest person happened to be a "tour guide" called Collins. He was nice enough, but he didn't know anything. He took us to three different locations, asking several locals (we could have managed that ourselves) before showing us a small statue and declaring that the museum didn't exist. We then went on to visit the shrine. These are built as a four-sided compound around a central courtyard with rooms on three sides (one for drumming, one for singing and one for the priest. The rooms are thatched and the walls are carved ornately and painted orange up to about waist height. The little old caretaker man was possibly my favourite Ghanaian yet. He was probably well into his 70s, spoke no English with great enthusiasm and told us how when the first aeroplanes came to Ghana they thought the world was ending, and how when he was a boy, if you couldn't reach one hand over your head and touch the opposite ear, you weren't old enough to go to school.

Walking back we managed to shake off Collins who had overstepped the line of annoying and entered plain nuisanceland when he called me fat, put his hands on my stomach as if I was pregnant and told me that he liked it. We had to pay to get rid of him, but it was well worth it. ("I don't want to charge you, we are friends, just something from your heart" has become a phrase to which I just want to announce "I don't usually pay for my friends"!).

We spent the afternoon walking through the shady expanse of the National Cultural Centre, basically a collection of craft shops selling beads, carvings and paintings. I found it trying to explain in every shop that if I only bought one necklace, only bought one painting, only bought one small wooden giraffe it would all soon become very heavy and I couldn't carry it all for the next few months. After this we explored the HUGE Kejeta market, apparently the largest open market in West Africa. Bizarrely, being huge does not mean that there is a greater variety of things on sale. You can still only really buy flip-flops, biscuits, bread and plastic bowls - the same things the women we work with sell on their heads in the street. We then followed at least 5 different sets of directions to the Ashanti King's Palace, taking an interesting tour of the backstreets, and once being stopped by a car pulling up to us, the driver winding down his window and saying
"You remember last night. Hahaha. The bus. Hahaha." before driving off. Eventually we got our final set of directions from a man who offered to take us in his taxi. When we told him no, we knew we were close, he admitted that it was the big white building, just across the street.

The palace is surreal. It was built as a gift by the British as some kind of compensation, and as such is incredibly Western, full of teacups, sideboards and drinks cabinets. The Ashantis refused the gift and bought the palace. And then turned it into a museum and filled it with ceremonial stools, lifesize models of past kings, photographs of celebrations and other traditional relics. It is a totally unusal juxtapositioning of two cultures. Probably not worth the entrance fee.

Returning to our hostel, and discussing the relative merits of bucket vs. real showers as the water was off,  there was a knock on the door. It was a 6 bed dorm, so we assumed a new person had arrived and called them in. It was Collins, come to give us his address. We declined to answer his questions about what our plans were for the evening or where we were having dinner and he left. Sam went downstairs to fill the bucket up. She saw Collins again, who asked where her friend was, and on finding out I was still in the room, he suddenly appeared again. This time he was telling me that he had a problem, he had to go to TAmale the next day (although earlier he had told us he had to visit a "project" in the town we had visited that day) but he was broke. I cut him off and firmly told him to stop talking, it was not going to happen when Sam came in, breathless from rushing up the stairs to save me with a huge bucket of water, and he started the routine again. When I told him again to leave her alone and told her what I had said to him he practically told me to shutup. We complained to the receptionist about him, who informed us that he would be banned now as he had had problems with him before. The next day at breakfast, however, Collins and the receptionist were there, having a friendly chat. We still don't know for sure how he knew where our room was, but have our suspicions.

Internet is about to run out so I'll leave this for now.