Being a participant of the AFS organization, I was fortunate
enough to have the opportunity to be a part of the AFS trip to the North. This trip allowed us to have the
opportunity to travel to Kumasi and Tamale and learn more about Ghanaian
history and be exposed to more Ghanaian culture. Although it is only the fourth day of the trip I have
learned a lot about the Ghanaian people in Kumasi and realized how different
the Accra life is from some places in Kumasi
On the first day of the trip we left Accra around two
o’clock in the afternoon and arrived in Kumasi around seven in the
evening. We stayed at the Champion
International Hotel for the night.
The following morning we headed out to go to Ntonso and Ahwia, which are
two locations where Kente is made in Kente Village. Kente is a colorful cloth made in Ghana. It can be woven as a single stitch,
double stitch, or triple stitch.
The process for making Kente is very tedious and the weavers can sometimes
work on making Kente cloth for days at a time.
Also at Bonwire we had the opportunity to buy Kente cloth
and different souvenirs. Once
everyone was done with their purchases we gathered outside the building and
waited for the group before getting on the bus. We were greeted by little children who wanted to hug the
“obronis” (that means foreigners in twi, one of the local languages in Ghana). The little kids were so adorable and I
loved being able to interact with them and see their faces brighten when I
would say hello. Once everyone was
ready we got on the AFS bus and headed to the wood-carving place in Ahwia. Here we were shown how Kente dye is
made. It takes about two weeks to
get just a pot of black Kente dye.
The process involves getting “bade3” bark from a tree in the North and
soaking it for about three days, then pounding the bark, boiling the bark, and
extracting the color out of the bark.
We also were shown Adinkra symbols. These are blocks of wood that have Ghanaian symbols carved
into them. Each participant picked
a symbol and dipped it into the Kente dye and stamped it on a strip of kente
cloth for AFS. I also bought my
own strip of Kente and made my own design with the symbols meaning: go back to
your roots, the power of God, and love.
That concluded our Kente portion of the day and then we
moved onto having a tour of the Manhyia palace museum where we learned about
the Asante hene (which is the Asante regions chief). It was cool to find out the history of the Asante chiefs and
see how the traditional system of chieftaincy is still engrained in the Asante
people even though Ghana is under a democratic rule of John Dramani Mahama. The Asante region is honestly like its
own little part of Ghana—it even has it’s own flag.
The following day we visited Kintampo Falls which is a
gorgeous waterfall in Ghana. We
got to learn the history of the three parts of the Falls and we got to go into
the waterfall. It was a beautiful
sight where lots of Ghanaians just came to have fun and play in the water.