An invitation to a funeral

Day 10
When the alarm went off I said to Mr C what’s the bet on the day we need to leave early the breakfast won’t be ready at 7. And guess what? Princess Malaysia was shouting at the guide “What time is breakfast?” He said “It will be ready soon”. She roared “That is NOT the question I asked “.
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It has been a challenging day. An hour out the bus broke down. It was 37C. The guide and driver went off with the broken part. They brought back a mechanic. Things were done and a piece was taken away. They came back and botched up something. In 1.5 hours they had it fixed. The guide and mechanic had to negotiate payment with the mechanic. They are not thin on the ground - most vehicles here are old.
The breakdown occurred on the road with all the pottery stalls so I whiled away the time by buying a couple of bowls.

The bus got us to Kumasi about 2 hours late with no time to go to the hotel so the guide decided we’d go straight to the cultural centre for lunch and a talk about the history of the country. And we got lost again. By now there were huge traffic jams and we got really stuck. The guide got a Brownie point for ingenuity as he got us some tuktuks to take us there. We ordered lunch. No omelettes available, just chips - the others had burgers.

We only had a short visit to find out about Ghana - we saw the king’s photo, his chair, some guns captured from the British, and so on.

We had been invited to a funeral - a man who knew where it was met us at the centre. The funeral was more a celebration of life. The deceased was 105 and died over a month ago - it took a while to get his 12 children here from overseas and agree on arrangements. People wear clothes of a kind of orangy-red and black. There was a very loud loud-speaker and some drummers. We were invited to sit with the family and guests and join in the dancing. Money gets thrown on the ground and collected and logged in a ledger. It was very jolly and everyone was very welcoming, shaking our hands and inviting us to dance.

Kumasi has a population of over 3 million. The traffic and pollution is bad. It was dark before we got to the hotel, in need of a shower. (A large gin would have gone down well but we haven’t found any tonic). The good news is I don’t need to have a omelette for dinner. They have noodles and stir fry veg.

We are to get two “microbuses” tomorrow and the driver is taking his bus back to Nigeria.