Addo-Nkwanta

Addo-Nkwanta is the name of the town we stayed in with our home stay during training. It is located in the Eastern Region of Ghana and is on a horrible road. One that I was told by auntie was great in 1972 until the wrong government came to power and it has disintegrated ever since. She is still upset by this and would mention it every time I brought up how hard it was to travel in the area. Other than the bad road it was great town I would say it had 1500 people and as many bars as churches which I think is the way it should be. It also had a mosque and Muslim section which was kind of cool to hear the call to prayer every morning in my opinion it was better than the singing coming from the CAC at 4:30 AM. On Sunday afternoon they play soccer at the local field against teams from surrounding small towns. This is always a big event with people lining the field and they are always enthusiastic about it. One time when I went one the players who was about 25 years old scored two goals and each time he did his mother would run out on the field and give him a kiss after every goal. It was hilarious but no one seemed to think it was too strange. The field is just a relatively flat area near the school which they trim with Machetes and carve the lines in the dirt. It is a scene that is replayed over and over in Ghana and the world and it was pretty cool. Another interesting thing was in the center of town they had a rock in cased in some cement. We had no idea what it was but we would always meet up near the area and all we knew was that you could not touch it. This made me very curious so I started asking around and ended up going to the Chiefs “palace” to talk to him about. It turns out that is juju rock which holds the power of the town’s ancestors. On occasion they make sacrifices to it on holidays and if someone happens to commit a crime in the community that the chief has to settle. If you do commit a crime you are the one who provides the goat to appease the ancestors. It is really funny especially when you consider how religious and devoted they seem to be to Christianity.