KUMASI

We spent 2 days in the second largest city in Ghana, Kumasi.

Here I was fortunate to have a friend of a friend and her husband show me around for the two days. It was wonderful to have someone to ask questions of and to explain things to me.

The first place we visited was a park with a museum and handcraft area. For some reason, I forgot to get my camera out until I saw this lizard.

So he was my first photo in Kumasi. We saw many of these and they seemed to be different colors, but this is the only one I got a picture of.

And a bit later we saw this bird. There was a cage below him, so perhaps he was someone's pet, I'm not sure.

These women are dying cloth with wax designs. I think this is called Adinkra, but I was also told Adinkra used stamps to apply color rather than wax, so I'm not really sure.

My time stamps indicate that this photo is taken 2 minutes after the one above. See how much the color changed in those 2 minutes?

Some dye pots. 
Across the road you can see the wood carving area. Men were carving chests, stools and other things from those big logs.

This woman is cutting out fabric for some bags.

And just beyond her, more women were sewing the bags.

Next door they were selling the fabric and also things made from it.

I should have bought more than I did.

Next we went to lunch and missed the afternoon rain, and then we went to the market.

I could have gotten lost in here,

but I stuck close behind Meg.

We stopped here and bought some fabric. They wouldn't let me buy less than 3 yards, though.

I think I read somewhere that this is the largest market in Africa.  You could buy anything here.

The black and white fabrics are worn on Sundays for church and weddings. ( I think the blue is just printed on the plastic protecting the fabric.)

The black and black and red fabrics on the right are for funerals.

We climbed some steps at the edge of the market and then had a view out over the roofs of the market stalls. You can see the market stretches out forever.

Another view looking the other way. I was glad that Meg bought some things she needed here including some fabric, some pampers for a gift, some rice and later from the car she bought flour.  Hawkers come up to the vehicles stopped in traffic with all kinds of things to sell. This seemed to me like an easy way to shop. Meg didn't have to carry the large bag of flour at all. 

The next day we visited a butterfly preserve in a forest.