I feel powerless.

That might have to do with Ikando forgetting to pay the electric bill, causing the electric company to cut off power to our flat on Friday. We got power back on Sunday night.

It might also have to do with the city wide power outage today. I'm at an increasingly crowded internet cafe that has generators.

Last weekend we stuck around Kumasi to do some traveling. Kumasi feels more like a real city compared to Accra. Accra seems to be a series of clusters of small buildings; Kumasi has a well defined city center. On Saturday we visited the Keteja Market, which is the largest market in West Africa. There are about 10,000 different sellers spread out across 12 acres. Initially we hoped to find the carvings and bead sellers, but we soon realized that it was going to be impossible. Instead we just wandered around for over 2 hours, taking random turns. We lost a lot of time in the smoked fish section, which seemed like it would never end. The smell was very unpleasant. We were unable to take photos inside; the market women became really unhappy whenever they saw a camera.

After the market we went to the National Cultural Center for a visit to the Jubilee musuem. It featured several important artifiacts from the Ashanti culture.

The next day we headed out of Kumasi to a Kente weaving village of Adanwomase. Kente is a traditional Ghanaian cloth, which is made by hand into intricate patterns. We received a tour that explained the entire process from start to finish. It was interesting, but something at the start of the tour did not seem quite right. I'm not saying that the village was shady or anything, just that the Kente itself was not quite right. Despite being a traditional cloth, in production since at least 1700, most varieties no longer use locally made cotton. They instead use cheap Chinese rayon, with the exception of white and black patterns (those are still Ghanaian sourced cotton). The tour guide said that Ghana does not have the ability to dye cotton into various colors, which is a bunch of BS. Portraits of past Ashanti rulers show them wearing colorful kente robes; methinks Ghanaian cotton was simply priced out of the market for the most part. I picked up a couple of strips; one with Ghanaian sourced cotton, and one made of rayon.

Towards the end of the day we went back to Kumasi, had a meal, and went to a crater lake - Lake Bosomtwi. The lake was formed by a meteorite impact millions of years ago. The lake is over 90 meters deep, and the hills around the lake are 600 meters high. We stayed at a beautiful hotel called the Lake Point Guesthouse. At this point it became clear that I was ill with food poisoning, and spent most of my time here in bed.

Last weekend we went to the Maranantha Beach Resort in Ada Foah, a sleepy fishing village about 2 1/2 hours from Accra. It was a nice hotel, despite the lack of running water and power in the rooms. The beach was not as nice as the beach at Bojo however, thus I really have no desire to go back.

I hope to have pictures up soon. The bandwith at the cafe is overburdened today, perhaps i'll try tomorrow.