We are up early this morning, as we have lots to do before we leave Kumasi. After a quick breakfast, we head into the market to look for some of the famous Kente cloth - probably the best known West African fabric. It is made by the Ashanti people for clothing. it is woven in narrow, brightly colored strips with complex patterns and a wide range of colors. The strips are then sown together.
We had found a few shops in the huge central market yesterday and we headed straight for them. We were looking for some of the old pieces, which were hand sewn and are of a much finer quality. We looked in about 20 shops, and narrowed it down to about 3 shops that had decent material. After quite a lot of deliberation, we selected three pieces from two different shops. We got one that was 10-12 square yards and two that 2-3 square yards.
We then had to rush back to the truck, as we had to meet up with John (part of our new cook group) and do our food shopping for the following day. We headed down to the market and searched around for what we needed. We bought much of the stuff from stalls set up along the rail road tracks. A number of times as we were leaning over the stall making our selection or paying for what we had selected, a train would pass by a few feet behind us. We had to be careful!!!
We got back to the truck around lunch time, and went out and picked up some fried rice to bring back to the truck to eat. AT 1:30 PM, we loaded up the truck and were heading on our way north towards Mole National Park. We drove the whole afternoon and we pulled off the side of the road at 5 PM, where we set up our bush camp for the night. And this was a true bush camp in the literal sense of the word - we were in setting up our tents in between all the bushes.
We did not do much else that evening other than hang out and wait for dinner. Dinner was excellent - we had a wide selection of dishes. As usual, Lars stuffed himself - it is amazing that he has lost some weight on this trip so far (but that may be because of the lack of deserts).
We went to bed and watched the night sky through the branches of the trees. It was a delightful sight, with the silhouette of the branches and the sparkling stars showing through.