Update time! This entry is basically just weekend travelogue, so be forewarned. The weekend was indeed an adventure, as all my weekends here have tended to be, and the adventure started up on Thursday evening with a welcome durbar for the international students held up at the Great Hall. A durbar is a gathering or feast called by a chief for his/her people, and so it was - the Vice-Chancellor was the official host of the evening, even though he only showed up in time to eat. Typical. They had traditional drumming and dancing, which was very cool until they started making the obrunis get up from the dinner table and get down with them. I was one of the proud and not-so-few who got roped into dancing with them for a while; I'm personally amazed my gyrations did not scar anyone for life. Saying I'm not confident in my dancing skills would be a vast understatement, and so being dragged out to join professional African tribal dancers in their traditional African tribal dances was...a bit awkward, although ultimately fun. And yes, there are pictures of this, and no, you can't see them.

After the durbar (which was truly a great time, and the food was delicious), we were invited to take the International Programs bus out to a Canadian student's house for a wine and cheese party. Not having anything to do, I went out and it too was a fun time. You have no idea how much I have missed dairy products over the past month. They even had my personal favorite, smoked gouda - I don't know how they got it, but they did. It was a pretty big fandango, with some guys drumming and half of the international students in attendance, but it was a nice time to chat with some of the folks I didn't know as well yet. After we had wined and cheesed enough for the evening, some of my friends decided that nachos at Champ's (only place in Accra with Mexican food) sounded good, so I tagged along. The nachos frankly leave a little to be desired, but any port in a storm...

The next morning, the ISEP group left for Kumasi. Kumasi is the capital of the Ashanti people and is the 2nd largest city in Ghana. It's 275 Km from Accra or so, but of course an hour and a half was added on to our trip by a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere between Accra and Kumasi. Some of us, needing to "greet the chief" as they would say in Ghana, had to go scutter off into the bush to take care of that pressing biological need. Of course, the other guys who went at the same time as me wouldn't shut up about the possible presence of snakes in the bush around us, which added an element of paranoia to the experience. We finally made it to Kumasi and went first to the palace of the Asantehene, the Ashanti chief. The royal animal is the peacock, so we saw plenty of them strutting around the palace grounds. After the palace, we went and shopped at the cultural centre, and then went to our hotel. The hotel was an absolute paradise - hot water, comfortable beds, and AIR CONDITIONING. This was the point at which I realized just how much my body's ability to handle heat has changed in the past month - my roommate and I both were getting chilly at 26 C, which is only about 78-79 F. We froze ourselves down to 21 C (70 F) overnight so we could use the blankets, which was a first - half the time I don't even need a top sheet here since it's usually around 30 C (86 F) in my bedroom at night.

The next day, we went...shopping. Shopping for crafts in Ghana is an adventure in the realm of the pushy salesperson. I have NEVER been that hassled for that long by that many people; it was like walking into a dog pound with a porkchop tied around my neck. The woodshops were the worst; one man selling purses would NOT leave me alone; I finally had to get back on the bus and slam a window in his face just to get the point across that I had no interest in buying more stuff from him! Bonwire, the kente-weaving village, was much more laid-back, and I bought 3 strips of kente to use someday as stoles. Of course, in the midst of this, I got majorly hassled by either the village madwoman or the village transvestite (I couldn't tell whether the people said "she's mad" or "she's a man"; I'm leaning toward the first, but it's too close to call). This individual came up and grabbed my butt when I was trying to go check out another kente shop; a local boy then glommed on to me and warded her/possibly him off in exchange for my purchasing a few bracelets. I felt bad, and still do, about the episode, especially if the person was mentally ill, but...I have nothing but sympathy now for waitresses, etc. who constantly have guys grabbing at them. Unsolicited grabbing of certain parts of the body is NOT pleasant.

I also got hassled for my American address right and left, so I am now Kevin McBurney who lives either at 412 Conduit in Annapolis, 224 Ashbury in San Francisco, or (for those Canadian moods) at 121 W. Pender in Vancouver. I've heard horror stories about neverending streams of mail from random Ghanaians if you give out a real address, but sometimes they just won't take no for an answer, and so...I give them one, albeit not a correct one.

We went to lunch after Bonwire, then to the city market in Kumasi, where I bought a cd of some Ghanaian hip-life music...Kwabena Kwabena, to be precise. We dined again at the hotel, and then Jesse, Joy, and I sat around and talked for a while, which was nice. The next day, we left after breakfast to come back to Legon, and excitement ensued on the drive home. On a really abandoned strip of dirt highway, our bus battery decided to die while going up a hill. Not good. Well, we thought perhaps we could get it to start if we pushed it, but no such luck. We ended up with around 20 white people behind the bus, pushing and making Ben-Hur jokes ("ramming speed! BOMBOMBOMBOM"). And then, in one of those perfectly cinematic moments, a water truck started making its way up the hill. These are the trucks that spray water on dirt road surfaces to keep the dust down. It sprayed us. Hardcore. Then, the bus started to slide backwards when we were pushing it, prompting a fairly loud outburst of profanity from the group as a whole and a mass exodus of flailing white people from behind the bus. Any Ghanaian watching was probably having an absolute field day. Finally, a truck came by and jump-started us, and the rest of the trip passed without event. It was a heck of a weekend, though.

I'll put pictures up when I'm able; I need to get Joy to send me the best of the ones she took while the rest of us were pushing the bus!