Amy’s adventures in Ghana

I love this photo

One of my colleagues, Lantana got married at the weekend.   She is from a village called Daboya, about 2 hours west of Tamale in Gonja district. Gonja is a different tribe so it was interesting to attend a wedding with different customs to the Dagbani weddings I have been to. They also have a different language so my basic Dagbani was of no use! 

To get to Daboya we drove about 2 hours until we reached the White Volta River which we had to cross by canoe, since there is  no brige. It wasn’t very far but my colleagues I travelled with were terrified as they cant swim.

Daboya is just a few minutes walk from the river.  Obviously having no bridge is a huge hinderance to development. All the food and imported goods have to be transp orted in these small canoes!

The wedding preparations started on Saturday night.  All the women gathered at the brides house to cook.  The bride’s hands and feet are painted with henna designs to make her look particularly beautiful. They also painted my hand which turned bright orange cos of my skin colour, but looks nice.  Everyone was asking if I was getting married too as it’s usually only done to the bride.

The next morning we got up early to greet the bride who looked lovely.  She then was taken to her father’s house to be washed before going to meet her husband.  This was great as all the women gathered outside the house and were singi ng and dancing traditional Gonja songs.

After washing, she was taken to her husbands house. 

Daboya is well known for smock making which is similar to Kente.  All over the village I saw men, women and children weaving, spinning wool and dying wool. The smock is very beautiful and used for the tradional dress in Northern Region. 

I took advantage of the Easter holidays to get out of Tamale for a few days and go to Bimbilla, about 3 hours South East of Tamale.  I travelled alone and met Abdul there, who travelled from Accra. It was so nice to get away for a bit and visit Abdul’s family who are all in Bimbilla.  We basically spent the time greeting family and eating with them. I was the only white person in Bimbilla which is a small town but very rural.  I was surprised on the first day I arrived to have 2 people know my name - since they had heard from Sahadatu that her "siliminga" daughter was coming so they knew it must be me! 

This is Abdul’s father’s father and 2 of his 4 wives (i’m not one of them)

This is me, Abdul and Sahadatu in Tamale.

This is the queue for water in Bimbilla, it comes on infrequently..