We're Ghana Win The Cup!

Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana, and the old capital of the Ashanti Kingdom, which was a nice enough place, but nothing really special. I walked around for a few days, but in all honesty I spent quite a few hours at a local bar, watching football as the World Cup has now started. One morning I got up early to catch some minibuses to the nearby Lake Bosumtwi, I arrived in a small village then had to walk for a few kilometres before I arrived at the guesthouse. This was a really nice quiet spot, and between world cup matches I walked around the hills and villages surrounding the crater lake. I did struggle to catch some of the games though due to poor reception, so when I met Quentin and Anna, a French/Swedish couple living in Ghana and found out they’d be driving back to Kumasi the next morning, I more than gladly accepted their kind offer of a lift.

Back in Kumasi, another full day of football awaited, and you might be able to see a pattern in how this blog will pan out for the next month or so. My next destination Cape Coast was a roughly five hours south, so I needed to get up early once more, in order to arrive before the first match of the day. Cape Coast is a really pretty and charming town with loads of colonial charm but also a sad history as this was once the largest slave trading port in West Africa. I have been here almost a week now, most days there are three World Cup games on, and I have now got it down to a pretty good routine of getting up early walking around, doing sightseeing between matches and enjoying a few beers throughout. Two of the main sights I visited were the castles of Cape Coast and nearby Elmina.

The first building on the sight of the Cape Coast Castle was actually a timber lodge built by the Swedish, but later converted into a much larger fort and castle by the Portuguese, Dutch and lastly the British. It is an impressive structure on the rugged coastline, but as mentioned it’s history is tragic as it’s main purpose was to hold thousands of slaves captive before their treacherous Atlantic crossing. Elmina Castle is located in the neighbouring town of Elmina, which is smaller but perhaps even more charming. The castle is the oldest European building in Sub Saharan Africa, built by the Portuguese in 1482, but later taken and expanded by the Dutch. Again it was so sad to take the tour, walking around unventilated dark rooms originally built to store gold, ivory and other goods, but converted to cramped dungeons for human cargo when that became the more profitable export. In other news I can tell you I have been robbed again, surprise, surprise! This time I was walking home late at night with a newly found friend when two guys jumped me, one of the held me from behind, with a knife to my throat whilst his friend emptied my pockets of the cash I had on me. I was terrified to move in case he slipped with his grip of his blade, but once they had run off I made the walk back to the hostel. The girl I was with said she couldn’t get home so late at night, and I knew there were empty dorm beds where I was staying, so she came back there to sleep.

Once we were back she started yelling and causing a scene, waking the other poor sleeping guests, I felt bad but she wouldn’t stop so I went to get a security guard and he helped me get her out of there. It was only much later I realised my small backpack was open, and my newly retrieved wad of 2000 Ghanaian Cedis (roughly $400) was gone. The more I think of the situation I’m pretty sure she was in on the first robbery as well, but there’s not much I can do and I can only be happy I wasn’t injured and that I only lost cash and not something harder to replace like my passport or credit cards.