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Adventures with Kingsley Holgate

Adventures with Kingsley Holgate

Author: Kinglsey Holgate
Date: 2017-02-24

An Assault On The Senses

Kegetia Market in Kumasi turns out to be an unforgettable experience of colour, barter, noise, a thousand smells, smiles and goods of every description spilling into a seemingly never-ending labyrinth of crowded, twisting alleys struggling to contain hundreds of tin-roofed stalls. There are fishmongers, cloth merchants, tinsmiths, bakers, butchers, coconut and shea butter soap-sellers, tailors, cobblers and second-hand motor spare dealers. You can buy anything here from ancient trade beads and voodoo fetishes, to hibiscus tea, dried bulls' penises and mildly narcotic kola nuts that are still sought after in the Sahel.

Jolly Ghanaian mamas in wide-brimmed grass hats sell enormous yams and vats of blood-red palm-oil amidst a vast range of fruit, vegetables and giant baskets of black-eyed peas, peanut butter, ginger, chillies, strange medicinal herbs, exotic spices and 'fufu' - the popular, gooey doughy staple made from ground cassava, plantains and yams.

Cosmetics, shoes, jewellery, leather goods, giant metal pots, household utensils and teetering piles of metal containers and 'jikos' (the charcoal-saving stoves popular all over Africa) vie for space next to stores packed to the rafters with Ghana's famed hand-woven Kente cloth, favoured by the Asante royalty. This is still made the traditional way on simple wooden looms by nimble-fingered young men; but today, they have smartphones plugged into their ears, listening to the pulsating beat of modern West African music as they create age-old, complicated geometric designs in vivid gold, black, red, green, orange, blue and purple.

It's a riot that assails all the senses and we stagger out of the market five hours later. But there is still much to see and do on this West African Land Rover odyssey. Next stop: the Volta and Voodoowe'll keep you posted.