Sunday July 25th

On Sunday, we got up to check out of the hotel and settle our tabs with the front desk before loading a larger, more comfortable bus for what we were told was going to be a three hour journey to Agogo, but what actually turned out to be a five hour journey to Agogo along back, winding roads. But, we did find it to be much of an improvement, despite the long time frame, to the road conditions we discovered the day before on the way to Shai Hills. The scenery was pretty and the air in the mountains was refreshing. We stopped along the way at an Arboretum to learn a little about Ghanaian plant life.

Once we arrived, we ate our first meal of mostly traditional foods (Meghan discovered from experience that Ghanaians always like to throw in a plate of French fries, because they think that’s all we eat). We were shown to our dorm room lodgings at the Pentecost Women’s Bible College; we have to say that while the conditions are sparse, they are providing to be adequate (we have electricity and cold running water). Once we had four minutes of resting time, we were taken to the Chief’s Palace for a private welcoming ceremony before a public, formal welcoming ceremony.




Once arriving, we found ourselves shaking more hands than the President of the United States, but we realized we had to follow suit to respect the traditions of the Ashanti Village in which we are visiting. After Josh made a short speech outlining the purpose of our visit to Agogo, we headed outside for the formal ceremony; this ceremony entailed much of the same, but was capped off with several beautiful, traditional dance performances provided by skilled locals in traditional dress. While the ceremony took place almost solely in Twi, we were lucky to have Yvonne and Dan Warren, two members of our group, telling us what the ceremony was about.

After the ceremony, we walked around the village for a few minutes, before being invited to meet the queen mother. She is almost 100 years old, and she is the one in charge of appointing any chief, because of the matrilineal structure of the Ghanaian traditional system. It was amazing to learn about the significance of the Queen Mother in appointing the next chief. She is truly respected by the village and while her age is high, it is not something that stops people from revering her. We went back to the college for dinner, where we debriefed our experiences and began discussing necessities on activities for the next day.