We got up a little later for once, since we weren’t leaving until 09:00.  For only the second time this trip, we were spending a second night in the same hotel.  Sadly, it was this hotel.  The AC seemed worse than when we went to sleep.  We were sweating in our room at 08:00.  Downstairs we had breakfast with Taryn and Stephenie, and everyone lamented the AC and shower situation.

Our first stop of the day was the Catholic Church.  We didn’t go inside, as there was a service going on, but we saw people coming and going, and then we walked through the street market for a bit.  The group got separated a couple times; we didn’t do as good of a job as we had done in Lomé.  We got to try some cola nut again - it still tasted like chalk and dirt.

Not far away we traded the street market in for the Ashanti Royal Palace Museum.  Outside of the museum there was a huge Banyan tree and lots of peacocks.  Inside, there were wax figures of the current king and queen, which looked incredibly realistic.  We saw a video about the Ashanti people and culture.  During the Colonial period, the Ashanti King was exiled by the British to the Seychelles.  Eventually he was freed to make peace, and there has been an Ashanti King the entirety of Ghana’s independence.  There was some initial discussion of the Ashanti King leading the independent country of Ghana, but it never happened; instead the Kingdom and the country co-exist. 

We got a short tour of the King’s former home, which is now just a museum.  We saw his old office, having a desk with 3 different telephones.  There was an old bar set, an old fan, an old refrigerator (which was identical to one Hertz had when he was growing up), and an old gramophone.  Upstairs we saw some fancier artifacts, including Kinte cloth, some stuff on loan from the Brits, and some stuff returned forever from the Fowler Museum.  The Ashanti King and Queen are always related, but never married.  The King chooses a Queen from post-menopausal relatives.  The Queen, in turn, chooses the King - he can be any age, but strength and education are very important.  The Queen must be post-menopausal because menstruation is considered unclean by the Ashanti. 

We heard about the famous Golden Stool of the Ashanti.  The Brits tried to take it during Colonial times, but the Ashanti Queen had a fake one made from copper, and hid the original one.  Because the Brits had never seen the real stool, they didn’t know that they had been duped.  By the time the Brits figured it out, the Ashanti King had returned from exile, and the Ashanti had their independence from Britain.  Apparently the real stool comes out every 5 years, and 2029 is the next time.  There were a couple of other people with our group on the tour, and one of them was an Ethiopian Jew, and she and Hertz spoke to each other in Hebrew.  He seemed much more animated than we’d seen him on the rest of the trip.

We drove for a bit to meet a local guide, and then saw another small museum.  Then everyone who had gathered near that museum got the word (from where we don’t exactly know) of where and when to go for the chief’s celebration, called an Akwasidae.  It is held every 42 days, which is one Ashanti month, always on a Sunday.  On our drive over, we stopped briefly to purchase booze as a gift to the chief.  We drove west again, the same as yesterday.  We passed by a couple Ohana Pizza restaurants, which intrigued all of us.  Speaking of Pizza, we had missed lunch because of the timing of events, and Sena was worried about us starving, so decided to order some pizza for us to eat when we arrived.  We figured we could go without a meal, as these Akwasidaes are very rare, and the date of our trip was centered around attending this event today.

Our final location for the event was almost to where the funeral had been yesterday.  We had seats in the front, but we were in the shade for maybe only 5-10 minutes.  The equivalent of the Lieutenant Governor showed up and sat nearby, holding some sort of rifle.  Other people kept trickling in, bit by bit.  We were trying to keep tabs on what was going on, but all around we heard people talking more about the timing of the fucking pizza than seeing the Ashanti King (actually a Chief today, as the King was out of town) and Queen.  And indeed, we saw most of the other tourist groups get up and go out to see the procession of the King, but we missed it because Sena and the local guide were dealing with the pizza.

We eventually caught up with the Chief in a separate grounds area, where the Queen was holding court, and the Chief was greeting her.  Then we were lucky enough to briefly meet the Queen Mother.  As we left the Queen Mother’s area, most of the group went back to the bus to eat.  We went back into the main event center and saw the Chief take his seat and start to meet the various dignitaries.  There was a long line of people slated to meet the Chief, we believe in terms of importance or gravitas or whatever.  Our group was very close to the back of the line.  So we were still seated, watching everyone else and their gifts, including one person that brought a goat.

In due time TransAfrica was called, and we were able to meet the Chief, and then the Queen Mother again.  The Chief didn’t smile much during the celebration, but he had a big smile when he was introduced to Crystal.  After all of the introductions had been made, there were several groups of musicians and dancers performing for the audience.  Last but not least there were two guys covered in talcum powder who were apparently the Chief’s spiritual advisors or something like that, and they did special dances that got the biggest rise out of everyone that was watching.  

Everything was pretty unique, and definitely something we hadn’t really seen before.  We left the event after the religious dancers had completed their dance, around 16:30.  Somewhere in all the fun, the lens on Justin’s new Sony had gotten scratched, and we have no idea how that could’ve happened, but there was a lot of activity going on.  Like yesterday, we got back way faster than it took to get to the event in the first place. 

We got back before 17:30.  The room seemed decently cold enough (the AC running all day was able to do at least that much), and we hoped we’d be able to sleep later.  Since we had a couple hours before dinner, for once we had time to go through some of the photos and videos.  Justin pulled out some of the pictures of the other group members, and got those onto his phone so we could AirDrop them at dinner.  Dinner was a little earlier, at 18:30, because we didn’t get lunch.  [Don’t get us started…]

The restaurant was quiet for the first 30-45 minutes, so we discussed what all we had seen earlier in the day, and Sena answered some questions.  Justin asked about the relationship between the priests and the chief, because the priests certainly seemed like they had a huge following.  Sena said there is no issue about priests upstaging the chief because the priests are a useful tool of the chief, to keep order over the populace.  It does seem like a potentially dicey relationship, however.

Music started around 19:15 again, but with a different band/singer tonight.  It was mostly 1990s and 1990s R&B songs, and some older reggae from Bob Marley.  Sena and Justin were big fans of the rendition of Redemption Song.  We were going to ask them to play Careless Whisper, but then they played it of their own volition, with a saxophone no less.  We made sure to give them a good tip.  The music was so much better than the night before.  We went over to the bar for one last drink after dinner, and watched EPL highlights.  Arsenal had won, City had drawn, and Arsenal was up 9 points in the table.  Justin tried not to get too confident.