A wild weekend in Kwahu

This weekend was a bit of an adventure here in Ghana! I went with five friends to the mountain region of Kwahu, to visit a Ghanaian friend's hometown of Mpraeso. While the bus ride took six hours as opposed to the two it was supposed to take because of traffic, we still managed to pack a lot into the two days we were there. It was funeral weekend in Mpraeso. Yes, you read that right. Funeral weekend. Funerals are a HUGE deal in Ghana and last for days at a time. Also, they save up the funerals to happen on one weekend a month or so, so during this specific weekend in Kwahu, there were probably 15 or 20 funerals happening at once. They must have good preservatives or something. Unfortunately, due to our bus delay, we missed the corspe viewing, so I'm afraid I can't tell you what a month-old dead person looks like. In any case, the streets were filled with funerals when we got there, and Chief (our friend who's town it is) said that we needed to greet all the mourners. So that's what we did. We shook 100s of hands, let me tell you. After shaking hands and getting settled in our home away from home, we set off in search of a good place to eat. Several of our group wanted a place to eat some good fufu, so Chief took us to a tiny whole in the wall sort of place, where we ground up our own onion, pepper, and ginger before being served our fufu or banku and groundnut soup. I'm still not a huge fan of fufu, but the banku is growing on me. The banku is similar to fufu in ingredients, but for some reason (of which I'm not really clear), it's a thicker consistancy than fufu. You feel more like you're eating than just swallowing. The meal was very tasty, and we all felt pretty accomplished for crushing our own spices and eating with our hands like locals.
After eating, we drove up to the highest habitable point in Ghana, which was just in the next town over. There is a church and training college at the top of the mountain, and from there we watched the BEAUTIFUL sunset. I'm not sure why this is, but I've noticed that the sun seems to set a lot faster here than at home. We watched it drop from relatively high in the sky to below the horizon in a little over a half hour. You can literally watch it drop. Is there some sort of physics lesson to that?

The next morning, we got up really early, around 5:30, and headed out into the day to hike up a mountain. Although the hike wasn't through the woods as I was sort of expecting, it was an amazing walk. We followed a dirt road up through the trees, and being that it was still really early and we were in the mountains, the mist was extremely heavy. At one point, we could barely see ten feet in either direction. It was so beautiful though, because these huge African trees (picture Lion King) would sort of rise out of the mist. You wouldn't realize they were even there until you were right under them. I took some pictures, but of course, none of them captured how incredible it was.

That afternoon I experienced something that I really don't ever need to see again. We were invited to witness a ritual done by a fetish priestess a little ways outside town. For those of you who are unfamiliar with fetish priests or priestesses, I believe its similar to voodoo. In any case, the reason for the ritual that day was as follows: A small old woman claims she had been bewitched somehow and given evil powers that she couldn't control. She confessed that with these evil powers, she had been responsible for killing many people. While she doesn't physically murder, she evidently spiritually murdered them and then soon after, they would die mysteriously of a sudden disease, stroke, or accident. She came to the priestess to cleanse herself of these evil powers because she didn't want to kill people anymore. While the ritual was all done in a different language, the jist of it was that in order to cleanse her, they needed to sacrifice a chicken and a goat to the gods and shave her head. I realized that I don't think I've ever seen an animal killed before. The chicken wasn't so bad. They really just sprinkled the blood on the alter before throwing it down to the ground where it flopped about for a while. The goat on the other hand... I don't think I've ever seen so much blood. And it was so red! It looked like paint! It was horrible to watch. After the sacrifices were over (which were successful in clearing her powers, by the way), it suddenly started to downpour. The blood washed off the alter and then the rain stopped. It was crazy. It was a fascinating afternoon, to say the least.

As we were getting ready to leave Kwahu, the village kids around the house where we stayed all swarmed us, which of course was adorable. It was a good relief from the rough afternoon experience! We danced and sang with them, played hokey pokey, and took lots of pictures, because they loved seeing themselves on camera. It was a very fun way to leave Kwahu. After the two hour ride back via tro tro, we were all pretty exhausted, but happy. Another successful weekend of never-before and never-again experiences.