It's been a while...




So it’s been a while since I posted…

I’ve been up in Kumasi and Tamale with intermittent WiFi and just got back to Accra, so this post and the next three or so posts are a little behind what I am currently doing but I wanted to post them anyways.

The road to the Tamale guest house

It was awesome to be in the Ashanti Region and the Northern region. Ghana has a very interesting government system. They have a set of tribal leaders or princes that own the land in each region, they settle personal disputes and give advice to the members of their tribe. The most powerful chief or prince is over the Ashanti tribe due to the regional resources.  People I have talked with also have mentioned that the Ashanti are great warriors that resisted colonial rule. Some of the other tribes are the Fanti and the Ga peoples. Each tribe has its own language.

Totally separate from the tribal leadership is a parliamentary government. Each region is separated into districts with representatives similar to the House of Representatives. They also have a president and two main parties the New Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party. The current president, President Akufo-Addo is from the New Patriotic Party. Overall it seems that the most people, like in America, fall into these two parties.


Anyways that’s just a something about Ghana that I have find really interesting.
Just supporting a sick friend

Tamale was awesome but I got really sick.

We drove up to Tamale which was a six hour drive. Plus Gabby was feeling pretty sick on the way up so we had to drive slow and stop so she wouldn’t be sick. We stopped on the way up at a really nice hotel on the drive up to grab food. Gabby was sick after dinner. We made it to Kumasi late around 9pm. The guest house was nice and roomy. Dr. Seth was very considerate of Gabby and gave us a break day after the drive. It was nice to have a day to recover. 

I wen to a run that fist morning and then Natalie and I went out to the check the town and grab groceries. Probably the first thing that I noticed was how hot it was and how fast I started sweating. It was like being back in Arizona. Our driver in Kumasi is Foster. He is a college student here in Tamale studying computer science, who works with the clinic and does evening school.

Me on my run around the Tamale guesthouse
The majority of Tamale is Muslim and it’s Ramadan. That means that the street for that I have become used to is not there, if the people are fasting they don’t cook either. That made it really hard for us to find food outside of grocery stores.

Another thing that was a regular occurrence in Tamale was the morning call to prayer. It happened every morning around 4:30am. I was amazed at the devotion of the people to get up at 4:30 and pray every morning so much so that I wasn’t really frustrated when it woke me up every morning.

After one day of rest we prepared to leave for Nkwanta which is in the northern for a surgical outreach

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