During college I was fortunate enough to do a summer abroad in Ghana. We stayed in Santasi, Kumasi. While there we were assigned volunteer positions and we took classes at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. While technically this trip was for school, I also count it as a vacation because I had a good amount of free time to explore as well.
Our weekdays alternated between class and our volunteer sites (mine was a local school), but during the weekends we were out exploring local markets, museums, and restaurants. There was one week that we spent exploring different parts of Ghana that we liked to call “excursion week”, and I will cover what we did on that trip in my next post.
For this post I wanted to highlight some of joys of living locally in Kumasi. From trying new street foods to preparing a dance performance at the Kumasi Culture Center, there was always something going on.
One of my favorite things about Santasi was the many fruit stands. In the mornings I’d stop at those same stands and get a bofrot for breakfast, and on the way to dance practice I’d get a vegetable spring roll. In the markets I was able to buy fruits, fabrics, and beads. We got clothes made and tried new foods all in the same area.
Kejetia Market is Kumasi’s largest market as such it takes some time to navigate. That means that we had to split our trips up over various weekends.
I loved being able to go outside and explore the various vendors and local events, but I also found myself looking forward to dance practices. During our last week in Ghana we had our performance, so every week leading up to that we had drum and dance practice. Our drums were made just for us and it was even as though they chose their owners. Mine was green and had a giant sunflower carved into it (my favorite color and flower), which we thought was auspicious because we hadn’t met us yet or asked for any requests from us.
