Sorry for the left

Went north to Kumasi for the weekend. It was supposed to be about a 4 hour trip but it turned into 6.5 hours even though we left at 5 am to avoid traffic. The bush roads were...not ideal and I guess Kumasi is a huge cultural center for weddings and funerals on the weekends. It is located in the Ashanti region, which is known as the center of Ghanaian culture.

It was here that I first heard the expression "sorry for the left". Apparently it is very rude to use your left hand to hand off and receive cash or eat communal food because it is considered the dirty hand (ex. used for wiping). This social norm is so embedded into the minds of Ghanaians that they will contort their body and re-adjust their belongings in order to avoid using their left hand. However, if that doesn't happen and you so happen to utilize your left hand in an exchange, you are supposed to say "sorry for the left". Let me tell you from experience that it is VERY hard to get used to this. Lauren is on my case constantly and it's not like I am trying to be rude, it just doesn't come naturally at all. She finally gave up since I am leaving in a week.

We visited a few craft villages about 30 min out of Kumasi, were we were the token tourists, walking around learning about the process of carving all the wood pieces and the meanings behind each piece. Of course everyone was aggressively trying to get us in their shops as they promised to "give us good price". I feel like everywhere I go, I am seen as a walking dollar sign. We went to another village that specialized in making traditional kente cloth. We got a tour of the village and learned the process of making the cloth, a program that was developed by a peace corps volunteer in order to bring tourists to the rural village. The income from the tourism is used for various development projects.

The next day, we went a few more hours north and then hired a taxi to take us to a monkey sanctuary. On the way, in the middle of nowhere, the taxi broke down. As we sat on the side of the road while the taxi driver attempted to tweek some things under the hood of his car, a car passed and stopped when they saw us. Some older man got out and introduced himself as the chief of the nearby village. Random. So we sat there learning about what it was like to be a chief as we waited for another taxi to pass so we could continue our journey.

The monkey village was so cool! We were dropped off in the middle of nowhere, in some random African forest, and hiked a bit to find the monkeys and this tiny village where we saw way more monkeys than people. The monkeys are considered sacred and it is said that if the villagers harm the monkeys in any way, they will be harmed in the same way. There were two different breeds (one way more sacred than the other) and multiple families of both breeds. It was fun learning about and observing the dynamics of the families and meeting the chief monkeys. They were super friendly and came up very close to us thinking we had food. I gave bread to a couple of them and they came right up to me and delicately picked the bread from my hand and sat there and ate it. There was even a monkey cemetery where all the monkeys that die are given a proper human burial. They said that the villagers know when a monkey is going to die because the rest of the monkeys will howl and cry every night for several days before the death. I wanted to take one home because they were so darn cute. Several hundred pictures will have to suffice. I'll get a few up in a couple days.

In other news, I ate goat meat and feel slightly guilty about it. Tasted like a mixture of beef and dark chicken meat.