Kumasi to Kpetoe, Ghana

A Celebration-Trip of the Ghanian Fashion


Boti Falls
The waterfall duo that the natives say enters into wedlock in the rainy season, when the two are joined by the increased flow of the river.
Spotted Interview
Boti Falls Guide gives an interview to Ghanaian journalists.
boss privilege
Tribal chief is transported on a palanquin during the Festival of Kente.
female audience
Group of women in traditional dresses, at the Kptoe Kente Festival exit.
tribal dances
Two dancers squirm during one of the festival's tribal displays.
good-natured speech
Gold-crowned leader continues with a speech that makes the rostrum smile.
Next generation of Kente
Young participants sitting in the shade and dressed in different colored kente motifs.
Intrigued Ghanaians
Ghanaian women examine the intrusion of foreign photographers into a festival that tends to be mostly Ghanaian.
Kente & Gold
Tribal chief on one of the festival stands dressed in kente fabric and filled with gold.
colorful parade
Women's Parade displays a traditional kente pattern from a particular region.
in the shadow of tradition
A colorful crowd watches the festival unfold sitting in the shade of large traditional sunshades.
animated return
Women talk back to their homes after the Kente Festival closes.
Sisters
Young Ghanaians pose for a photograph more intrigued than proud or vain.
Tribal Fabrics and Symbolisms
Young Ghanaians pose for a photograph more intrigued than proud or vain.
Umbrella Rock
Boti Falls visitor examines the whimsical shape of Umbrella Rock.
After some time in the great Ghanaian capital ashanti we crossed the country to the border with Togo. The reasons for this long journey were the kente, a fabric so revered in Ghana that several tribal chiefs dedicate a sumptuous festival to it every year.

The journey from Kumasi to Koforidua took less than we had feared, from eleven in the morning to two-thirty in the afternoon with a jeep exchange along the way.

The one where Frank, the driver of the Ghana tourism authority GTA, had been driving us for a few days, started to generate metallic noises. To which no problem with the battery that caused its light on the dashboard to turn on for everything and nothing would be unrelated.

Accordingly, Frank enters the parking lot of a large cluster of roadside restaurants. He parks beside a jeep like ours, light gray instead of dark.

The two drivers advise passengers to go to the bathroom and buy whatever they want while they are transshipping their luggage. Over lunchtime, we don't make ourselves begged.

We ran our eyes over the profusion of snacks on offer. We bought chicken kebabs and fried yams, everything to take away. We didn't have time to waste. Furthermore, after nine days of our Ghanaian tour, mostly by road, the vehicle's atmosphere had long since ceased to concern us.

We were supposed to arrive at the entrance to some Boti waterfalls before four in the afternoon.

A detour to a bead necklace market dictated by tourism officials Kojo Bentum-Williams and Yoosi Quarm caused a delay that, much as he wished, Frank could not make up for.

The Delayed Visit to Boti Waterfalls

As we enter the park that delimited the waterfalls, a rather ill-tempered retinue of four elements welcomes us, including directors and guides: “We weren't counting on you anymore”, conveys a local director to Kojo, in a dry tone of malpractice disguised. "we close at four, it seems to me that they were informed in due time".

Kojo pulls on the diplomatic braid and solves the predicament as best he can.

Moments later, we were all descending the two hundred and fifty steps that led to the base of the waterfalls, down a slope subsumed in lush, drenched tropical vegetation.

At the bottom, we find a muddy lake, shaded by leafy trees. From this shadow, the Pawnpanw River rushed down from a half-concave cliff, already there in the shape of the two lower Boti waterfalls.

One of the guides who dictated the tradition of the region explains to us that the one on the right was male. The one on the left, female.

And that, during the rainy season, the two waterfalls joined in what the natives considered their mating season, graced by successive rainbows generated by the splashes released by the impact of water and the wind.

Boti Falls, Ghana

Boti Falls: From Lost in the Jungle to Refuge of Rest of the Father of the Ghanaian Nation

Today, a mere natural attraction frequented by Ghanaians during rest periods, the Boti hide a controversial history. For centuries, they remained hidden in the dense jungle of the area. That is how it was until a Catholic missionary gave them and started to use them as a place of rest and entertainment for his core group of guests.

However, the land on which they were situated belonged to the Akyems of Tafo, a tribal group in the area. When they claimed it, they realized that it had already been sold by another tribal chief, to a member of a third tribe. Typical of the Ghana complex, the dispute has not stopped getting complicated.

It required a judicial intervention that, against everyone's will, declared the waterfalls public domain.

By that time, the feud had already made the waterfalls famous. The first Ghanaian Prime Minister and President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah decided to visit them in 1961. The majesty of the natural setting so impressed him that Nkrumah commissioned the regional commissioner to erect a retreat house for him there.

In that flow of the river and the people, time had gone by more than it was supposed to. It was starting to get dark. And yet we are supposed to take a look at another natural peculiarity of the Yilo Krobo region, this one made only of rock, instead of rock and water.

Twilight and Drought Visit to a Mysterious One Umbrella Rock

A Umbrella Rock 2km away, by way of goats. With sunset imminent, Kojo and the entourage decide that we would go through it by jeep instead of on foot.

Once disembarked, in a bluish twilight atmosphere, we unveil a rock formation sculpted by erosion, inspired by a mushroom and that the popular imagination highlighted being able to shelter 12 to 15 of its own from the tropical rainforests at once.

Umbrella Rock, Kente Festival Agotime, GhanaEven without rain, despite the almost night, the entourage, already well expanded compared to the one told in Boti, indulges in endless photos and selfies, in a communal session that only the absolute darkness of that valley lost in the nothingness of Akpamu put an end to.

We set off towards Koforidua, the capital of these parts of the country, treated by its youth by K-Dua or KofCity.

An Amazing Night and Pass through Koforidua

No matter how informal the city was called, they direct us to a so-called Royal Hotel.

Due to the computer work we were late, we slept a mere five hours.

At 8:10 am, we woke up like zombies, decomposed by Kojo with whom, as a rule, we complained every morning, because he and Yoosi dictated the beginnings of the day to be much later than we wanted.

We left in two jeeps, up the mountain, at great speed, with the four blinkers on, honking and overtaking too dangerous, in a mini-caravan that only lacked sirens to take on a special operation.

The Embassy to the Tribal Chief of the Region that Never Found a Place

Despite the commotion, Yoosi explains the occurrence to us: “we are taking a detour. We're supposed to salute the tribal chief of this region and we're too late.

In Ghana, the bosses are superb. They don't like to wait. When made to wait, visitors have to offer them a cow. It doesn't come cheap, believe me!”

We believed. When we check into The Royal Senchi – the resort on the Volta River marked as a meeting point – that Tribal Chief was no longer there. We didn't understand who would buy the beef,

A European hotel manager greets us. We drank welcome cocktails and took an official photo of that play-and-run visit.

We left again, this time appointed to the Ghanaian tourism delegation from Ho, eastern region of Ghana that we would come to explore more

Stopover in Ho City, En route to the Famous Kente Kpetoe Festival

There, a city guide joins us. Nii Tawiah shows us the way to Kpetoe, the place east of Ho where, since 1995, the Agbzmevorza festival, better known as Agotime Kente, has been held every year.

Not to vary, the estimates and preparations of the duo Kojo and Yoosi fail again.

Instead of starting only in the afternoon, as Kojo had informed us, the festival was already taking place on a clear lawn.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, assistanceA crowd, partly seated, partly standing, in the shade of elegant tribal sunshades, occupied a wider, let's say popular, sector.

Rompante entry at the Agotime Kente Festival already in full

In the center stood out a platform with a canopy in the colors of the Ghanaian flag and which housed the highest representatives of several ethnic sub-nations of Ghana.

In practice, during the festival there is a reception of chefs and their subjects who arrive with the superior purpose of exhibiting different types of costumes and fabrics. kente produced in their regions.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, young participantsThe festival takes place in Agotime, a place that proclaims that it was its people who introduced the art of its Kente weaving into present-day Ghanaian territory.

However, the village of Bonwire, near Kumasi, the center of the country's Ashanti ethnic group, is also considered a Ghanaian source of Kente.

Whatever its Ghanaian origin and soul, the art of kente has spread and diversified.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, paradeKente is woven in silk and cotton bands in the most diverse forms and levels of quality that we saw dressed in the guise of a toga on men, women and even children around.

There is authentic kente woven only by traditional means. There is also another intermediary that comes out of Ghanaian factories such as Viisco and Akosombo Textile Lda.

Then – there's no escaping it – a cheap mass-produced version in China is still marketed, as a rule, for consumption by the western public.

The Diversity of Patterns and the Meaning of Kente Shades

In any case, each of the colors used in the kente patterns has its meaning: black is identified with maturity, ancestral spirituality, funeral, mourning and the like. Blue with peace, harmony and love. Green with vegetation, planting, harvesting, growing, spiritual renewal. Gold with royalty, wealth, high status, glory, spiritual purity.

And so on, as for the rest of the chromatic spectrum. Kente patterns are complex and identified with a name and even a message from the weaver.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, sisters

Fabric names, such as colors and patterns, prove to be important elements when Ghanaians acquire their kente. If money is not an issue, fabric quality never will be either.

The most valuable Kente is by far the traditional one worn by traditional chiefs who enjoyed shining on the surrounding lawn and tribunes, crowned and decorated with strings, bracelets, rings, medallions and other gold paraphernalia.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, gold

And that, protected from the afternoon tower by a large canvas tent and sunken in armchairs, we could hear speeches in slow motion, it seemed to us that there was no end.

At one point, the organization was forced to rush and cut short the speeches that followed, a heavy blow to some leaders who had been preparing their illustrious messages for days.

Dances, Traditional Exhibitions and those of the Tribal Chiefs, elevated on Eccentric Palanquins

We return to the open lawn. There, dance exhibitions begin to the rhythm of jambés, drums and species of Ghanaian maracas.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, dancesThe women line up. They dance in a row and display their kentes and the voluptuous forms pressed into them in a circle of sunny ecstasy, proud and smiling.

It wasn't the first Ghanaian tribal festival we attended. We had lived the Fetu Afahye with incredible intensity, on the streets of Cape Coast.

As the afternoon drew to a close, the feeling that something unavoidable was lacking in that Agotime Kente Festival intensified in us. It only lasted a few minutes.

From one moment to another, the dances, the drums, the jambés, all the music and other popular expressions on the lawn vanished.

Two chiefs approached the back of the clearing, in a plane above the crowd. Part of this crowd, by the way, carried them on lush palanquins, sorts of large gilded bathtubs patterned with intricate motifs.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, tribal chiefAt a central point of the lawn, clear of people by the organization's security guards, the chiefs stand side by side, each wrapped in the respective kente toga, brandishing their sword and other significant elements of their royalty and the supremacy that justified exhibiting there eyebrows.

Soon, they followed their own destinies and that of their peoples.

All power has limits.

In the meantime, yours was transferred to the central stand. There the awards and national and magnanimous closing speeches would be inaugurated.

They set the tone for a gradual stampede from the crowd.

Kente Festival Agotime, Ghana, backReturning to the homes and humble dresses of everyday Ghanaian life. If the gods allowed it, the following year kente would be celebrated again.

Volta, Ghana

A Tour around Volta

In colonial times, the great African region of the Volta was German, British and French. Today, the area east of this majestic West African river and the lake on which it spreads forms a province of the same name. It is a mountainous, lush and breathtaking corner of Ghana.
Elmina, Ghana

The First Jackpot of the Portuguese Discoveries

In the century. XVI, Mina generated to the Crown more than 310 kg of gold annually. This profit aroused the greed of the The Netherlands and from England, which succeeded one another in the place of the Portuguese and promoted the slave trade to the Americas. The surrounding village is still known as Elmina, but today fish is its most obvious wealth.
Accra, Ghana

The Capital in the Cradle of the Gold Coast

Do From the landing of Portuguese navigators to the independence in 1957 several the powers dominated the Gulf of Guinea region. After the XNUMXth century, Accra, the present capital of Ghana, settled around three colonial forts built by Great Britain, Holland and Denmark. In that time, it grew from a mere suburb to one of the most vibrant megalopolises in Africa.
Nzulezu, Ghana

A Village Afloat in Ghana

We depart from the seaside resort of Busua, to the far west of the Atlantic coast of Ghana. At Beyin, we veered north towards Lake Amansuri. There we find Nzulezu, one of the oldest and most genuine lake settlements in West Africa.
Cape Coast, Ghana

The Divine Purification Festival

The story goes that, once, a plague devastated the population of Cape Coast of today Ghana. Only the prayers of the survivors and the cleansing of evil carried out by the gods will have put an end to the scourge. Since then, the natives have returned the blessing of the 77 deities of the traditional Oguaa region with the frenzied Fetu Afahye festival.
Suzdal, Russia

The Suzdal Cucumber Celebrations

With summer and warm weather, the Russian city of Suzdal relaxes from its ancient religious orthodoxy. The old town is also famous for having the best cucumbers in the nation. When July arrives, it turns the newly harvested into a real festival.
Nikko, Japan

The Tokugawa Shogun Final Procession

In 1600, Ieyasu Tokugawa inaugurated a shogunate that united Japan for 250 years. In her honor, Nikko re-enacts the general's medieval relocation to Toshogu's grandiose mausoleum every year.
Saint Petersburg, Russia

When the Russian Navy Stations in Saint Petersburg

Russia dedicates the last Sunday of July to its naval forces. On that day, a crowd visits large boats moored on the Neva River as alcohol-drenched sailors seize the city.
Pueblos del Sur, Venezuela

Behind the Venezuela Andes. Fiesta Time.

In 1619, the authorities of Mérida dictated the settlement of the surrounding territory. The order resulted in 19 remote villages that we found dedicated to commemorations with caretos and local pauliteiros.
Pueblos del Sur, Venezuela

The Pueblos del Sur Locainas, Their Dances and Co.

From the beginning of the XNUMXth century, with Hispanic settlers and, more recently, with Portuguese emigrants, customs and traditions well known in the Iberian Peninsula and, in particular, in northern Portugal, were consolidated in the Pueblos del Sur.
Jaisalmer, India

There's a Feast in the Thar Desert

As soon as the short winter breaks, Jaisalmer indulges in parades, camel races, and turban and mustache competitions. Its walls, alleys and surrounding dunes take on more color than ever. During the three days of the event, natives and outsiders watch, dazzled, as the vast and inhospitable Thar finally shines through.
Bacolod, Philippines

A Festival to Laugh at Tragedy

Around 1980, the value of sugar, an important source of wealth on the Philippine island of Negros, plummeted and the ferry “Don Juan” that served it sank and took the lives of more than 176 passengers, most of them from Negrès. The local community decided to react to the depression generated by these dramas. That's how MassKara arose, a party committed to recovering the smiles of the population.
Esteros del Iberá, Pantanal Argentina, Alligator
Safari
Iberá Wetlands, Argentina

The Pantanal of the Pampas

On the world map, south of the famous brazilian wetland, a little-known flooded region appears, but almost as vast and rich in biodiversity. the Guarani expression Y bera defines it as “shining waters”. The adjective fits more than its strong luminance.
Faithful light candles, Milarepa Grotto temple, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 9th Manang to Milarepa Cave, Nepal

A Walk between Acclimatization and Pilgrimage

In full Annapurna Circuit, we finally arrived in Manang (3519m). we still need acclimatize to the higher stretches that followed, we inaugurated an equally spiritual journey to a Nepalese cave of Milarepa (4000m), the refuge of a siddha (sage) and Buddhist saint.
Traditional houses, Bergen, Norway.
Architecture & Design
Bergen, Norway

The Great Hanseatic Port of Norway

Already populated in the early 1830th century, Bergen became the capital, monopolized northern Norwegian commerce and, until XNUMX, remained one of the largest cities in Scandinavia. Today, Oslo leads the nation. Bergen continues to stand out for its architectural, urban and historical exuberance.
Salto Angel, Rio that falls from the sky, Angel Falls, PN Canaima, Venezuela
Adventure
PN Canaima, Venezuela

Kerepakupai, Salto Angel: The River that Falls from Heaven

In 1937, Jimmy Angel landed a light aircraft on a plateau lost in the Venezuelan jungle. The American adventurer did not find gold but he conquered the baptism of the longest waterfall on the face of the Earth
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Ceremonies and Festivities
Jerusalem, Israel

A Festive Wailing Wall

The holiest place in Judaism is not only attended by prayers and prayers. Its ancient stones have witnessed the oath of new IDF recruits for decades and echo the euphoric screams that follow.
Hué, Communist City, Imperial Vietnam, Imperial Communism
Cities
Hue, Vietnam

The Red Heritage of Imperial Vietnam

It suffered the worst hardships of the Vietnam War and was despised by the Vietcong due to the feudal past. The national-communist flags fly over its walls but Hué regains its splendor.
Meal
Markets

A Market Economy

The law of supply and demand dictates their proliferation. Generic or specific, covered or open air, these spaces dedicated to buying, selling and exchanging are expressions of life and financial health.
Culture
Jok​ülsárlón Lagoon, Iceland

The Chant and the Ice

Created by water from the Arctic Ocean and the melting of Europe's largest glacier, Jokülsárlón forms a frigid and imposing domain. Icelanders revere her and pay her surprising tributes.
Sport
Competitions

Man: an Ever Tested Species

It's in our genes. For the pleasure of participating, for titles, honor or money, competitions give meaning to the world. Some are more eccentric than others.
Traveling
Annapurna Circuit: 5th- Ngawal-BragaNepal

Towards the Nepalese Braga

We spent another morning of glorious weather discovering Ngawal. There is a short journey towards Manang, the main town on the way to the zenith of the Annapurna circuit. We stayed for Braga (Braka). The hamlet would soon prove to be one of its most unforgettable places.
Masai Mara Reservation, Masai Land Travel, Kenya, Masai Convivial
Ethnic
Masai Mara, Kenya

A Journey Through the Masai Lands

The Mara savannah became famous for the confrontation between millions of herbivores and their predators. But, in a reckless communion with wildlife, it is the Masai humans who stand out there.
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Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Portfolio Got2globe

The Best in the World – Got2Globe Portfolio

Moa on a beach in Rapa Nui/Easter Island
History
Easter Island, Chile

The Take-off and Fall of the Bird-Man Cult

Until the XNUMXth century, the natives of Easter Island they carved and worshiped great stone gods. All of a sudden, they started to drop their moai. The veneration of tanatu manu, a half-human, half-sacred leader, decreed after a dramatic competition for an egg.
Mexcaltitán, Nayarit, Mexico, from the air
Islands
Mexcaltitan, Nayarit, Mexico

An Island Between Myth and Mexican Genesis

Mexcaltitán is a rounded lake island, full of houses and which, during the rainy season, is only passable by boat. It is still believed that it could be Aztlán. The village that the Aztecs left in a wandering that ended with the foundation of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the empire that the Spanish would conquer.
Boats on ice, Hailuoto Island, Finland.
Winter White
Hailuoto, Finland

A Refuge in the Gulf of Bothnia

During winter, the island of Hailuoto is connected to the rest of Finland by the country's longest ice road. Most of its 986 inhabitants esteem, above all, the distance that the island grants them.
Kukenam reward
Literature
Mount Roraima, Venezuela

Time Travel to the Lost World of Mount Roraima

Persist on top of Mte. Roraima extraterrestrial scenarios that have withstood millions of years of erosion. Conan Doyle created, in "The Lost World", a fiction inspired by the place but never set foot on it.
Cathedral, Funchal, Madeira
Nature
Funchal, Madeira

Portal to a Nearly Tropical Portugal

Madeira is located less than 1000km north of the Tropic of Cancer. And the luxuriant exuberance that earned it the nickname of the garden island of the Atlantic can be seen in every corner of its steep capital.
Mother Armenia Statue, Yerevan, Armenia
Autumn
Yerevan, Armenia

A Capital between East and West

Heiress of the Soviet civilization, aligned with the great Russia, Armenia allows itself to be seduced by the most democratic and sophisticated ways of Western Europe. In recent times, the two worlds have collided in the streets of your capital. From popular and political dispute, Yerevan will dictate the new course of the nation.
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Natural Parks
Mérida, Venezuela

The Vertiginous Renovation of the World's Highest Cable Car

Underway from 2010, the rebuilding of the Mérida cable car was carried out in the Sierra Nevada by intrepid workers who suffered firsthand the magnitude of the work.
Van at Jossingfjord, Magma Geopark, Norway
UNESCO World Heritage
Magma Geopark, Norway

A Somehow Lunar Norway

If we went back to the geological ends of time, we would find southwestern Norway filled with huge mountains and a burning magma that successive glaciers would shape. Scientists have found that the mineral that predominates there is more common on the Moon than on Earth. Several of the scenarios we explore in the region's vast Magma Geopark seem to be taken from our great natural satellite.
Couple visiting Mikhaylovskoe, village where writer Alexander Pushkin had a home
Characters
Saint Petersburg e Mikhaylovkoe, Russia

The Writer Who Succumbed to His Own Plot

Alexander Pushkin is hailed by many as the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. But Pushkin also dictated an almost tragicomic epilogue to his prolific life.
Balo Beach Crete, Greece, Balos Island
Beaches
Balos a Seitan Limani, Crete, Greece

The Bathing Olympus of Chania

It's not just Chania, the centuries-old polis, steeped in Mediterranean history, in the far northeast of Crete that dazzles. Refreshing it and its residents and visitors, Balos, Stavros and Seitan have three of the most exuberant coastlines in Greece.

Sanahin Cable Car, Armenia
Religion
Alaverdi, Armenia

A Cable Car Called Ensejo

The top of the Debed River Gorge hides the Armenian monasteries of Sanahin and Haghpat and terraced Soviet apartment blocks. Its bottom houses the copper mine and smelter that sustains the city. Connecting these two worlds is a providential suspended cabin in which the people of Alaverdi count on traveling in the company of God.
Chepe Express, Chihuahua Al Pacifico Railway
On Rails
Creel to Los Mochis, Mexico

The Barrancas del Cobre & the CHEPE Iron Horse

The Sierra Madre Occidental's relief turned the dream into a construction nightmare that lasted six decades. In 1961, at last, the prodigious Chihuahua al Pacifico Railroad was opened. Its 643km cross some of the most dramatic scenery in Mexico.
Vegetables, Little India, Sari Singapore, Singapore
Society
Little India, Singapore

The Sari Singapore of Little India

There are thousands of inhabitants instead of the 1.3 billion of the mother country, but Little India, a neighborhood in tiny Singapore, does not lack soul. No soul, no smell of Bollywood curry and music.
Saksun, Faroe Islands, Streymoy, warning
Daily life
Saksun, StreymoyFaroe Islands

The Faroese Village That Doesn't Want to be Disneyland

Saksun is one of several stunning small villages in the Faroe Islands that more and more outsiders visit. It is distinguished by the aversion to tourists of its main rural owner, author of repeated antipathies and attacks against the invaders of his land.
Cliffs above the Valley of Desolation, near Graaf Reinet, South Africa
Wildlife
Graaf-Reinet, South Africa

A Boer Spear in South Africa

In early colonial times, Dutch explorers and settlers were terrified of the Karoo, a region of great heat, great cold, great floods and severe droughts. Until the Dutch East India Company founded Graaf-Reinet there. Since then, the fourth oldest city in the rainbow nation it thrived at a fascinating crossroads in its history.
The Sounds, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Fiordland, New Zealand

The Fjords of the Antipodes

A geological quirk made the Fiordland region the rawest and most imposing in New Zealand. Year after year, many thousands of visitors worship the sub-domain slashed between Te Anau and Milford Sound.
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