Day 9 - 11th March Exploring Kumasi, the Asante kingdom, and a meeting with a chief

Photo above - my audience with an Asante chief in Kumasi. More photos to follow below.

City of Kumasi

Set off in the van at 8.30am to look around Kumasi, the historical and spiritual capital of the Asante kingdom. First stop was the Asante tribe king’s palace. The drive through the city revealed a bustling, friendly, lived in city built on a hill, surrounded by forests, with no tall buildings, lots of traffic, and bad roads. It felt like a very large village, although it has a population of 1 million.

Asante culture and kingdom

The palace was built for the then Asante king when he returned from a forced exile by the British to the Seychelles in the 1920s. The building was paid for by the British but the king refused to move in until it had been paid for by the Asante people. It is now a museum dedicated to the Asanti people and culture.

The Asante were concentrated in central Ghana where gold was discovered, and gold is closely associated with the tribe, which make up about 50% of the population. The Asante used their wealth to develop a powerful and complex society prior to the arrival of the British.The Asante resisted the British colonial regime and went to war with the British 7 times over a one hundred year period from 1805.

The king famously wears a large number of thick gold armbands, and gold is a very important part of their culture. The Asante have a different calendar with 42 days in a month, and 9 months in a year. The Asante flag is yellow, black and green. Yellow for gold, black for the people, and green for the forests.

Another massive market

Next we drove around to one of the largest markets in West Africa. There was mayhem on the street outside with hundreds of traders, buyers, tuk tuks, taxis etc. The main market is a huge indoors market in a building like a multi story car park. Many traders and people in the market came up to me to ask me where I was from, and welcomed me to Ghana. In fact, it made me think that I had not seen another white face for a few days. Just about everything was on sale. The noise was amazing, with lots of shouting, amplified music etc. There was even a medical diagnostic entre in the middle of it all testing for things like Diabetes

An audience with a king

Next we stopped at a cafe for lunch. Then we travelled a short distance for an audience with an Asante king!!

There is only one king, but he devolves some of his responsibilities to various regional kings, or chiefs, and it was one of these that we were going to see, a person called Baffour Ognina. We turned up at his pink walled suburban house at about 3pm for an audience.

The chiefs are effectively community leaders, and he has about 70,000 that he represents. A set of chairs were set up in his backyard for him to receive us, and we were given a few pointers on the protocols of the meeting prior to his arrival.

Then he entered in his official dress with his personal umbrella holder. This is actually symbolic rather than for blocking out the sun. We had to stand as he came to each of us to shake hands and welcome us. He has to speak Asante at official meetings, but he has good English. Someone translated while he spoke and we were able to ask any questions we wanted. He explained about the Asante culture, a lot of which we learned this morning at the museum, but it was great to be able to ask questions of him. He is 61 and a retired civil servant - the role does not pay a salary as I understand it.

After we took our leave, we returned to the hotel. Tomorrow we have a long drive south back to the Atlantic coast of Ghana.