February 2006 Photos
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1-2: Two ways of getting your goods to the market - carry it on your head or donkey cart.
3: Market day in Binaba.
4-5: Before you concrete the floor in your home, you must "pound" it smooth first. Basically, you make a mix of cow dung and water, poor it on the floor, and these ladies pound it until the floor is flat and smooth. If you can't afford to concrete the floor, you can just leave it as is (after pounding). If you're wondering, it doesn't smell and it looks really good. It's fun to watch the ladies because they sings songs, chant, and dance while pounding. They also get really drunk.
6: This market lady is making mass amounts of banku - a very popular dish that I don't really like. Stirring this much food in the pot isn't as easy as it looks.
7: A band from San Fransisco toured West Africa with a couple guys from Binaba. They did 3 shows in Accra before coming up to north to Binaba. Their next stop was Togo. We were pretty excited to have them come. As you can imagine, we don't get many concerts in town.
8: I had the best seat in the house. Where's Waldo?
9: The band is called Aphrodesia - good music actually. Sort of African-ish sound.
10: And here are the guys from Binaba who are traveling with the band.
11: I attended my first Muslim wedding this month. There isn't really a ceremony like we have. In fact, I only saw the bride and groom together once the whole day. Anyway, all the men in the community come to the house and do a special prayer with the groom. The bride stays inside a room most of the day before her special washing in the evening.
12: All the ladies in the community come and do a special song and dance. Throughout the whole day, people from the community were stopping by to greet the families and eat some food.
13: The groom (with contributions from the community) will buy the bride several new clothes, scarfs, wash basin, shoes, floor mats, etc... Here, they are presenting the groom's gift to the bride's mother for her approval. Then they carry the gift around to show if off. I think this is typical of most weddings (not just Muslim). The broom also has to pay a bridal price to the woman's father - usually 4 cows. On a side note about bridal prices, whenever a man asks me to marry him, I say ok and that my father's bridal price is 20 cows - he usually gasps and says "oh, I can get 5 Ghanaian wives for 20 cows." Typically, this ends the conversation and he walks away. :)
14: This little girl fears me, and everytime she walks past me, she lifts her dress to cover her eyes. Out of sight, out of mind I guess.
15: I was given a fowl at a funeral as a token of appreciation for attending. I'm letting one of my friends take care of it for me (of course). I'm hoping to get some eggs out of it! That is, of course, until the Avian Flu makes it to Ghana.
16: My friend, Alfred, and his little brother who is representing the ATL. This boy had no idea what his shirt means until I explained it to him of course. They are wearing bells (on their wrists) because they are in the middle of performing a funeral for their father. Tradition says that the last born male and female from each wife/mother wears a bell until the end of the funeral, which lasts 12 days. Lucky for them, the funeral (different from the one mentioned in #15) ends next weekend (March 11th). I'll have more pictures from the funeral to post next month.
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