After waking up in Mole to 10 elephants swimming in the pond below our room, we took in our last few hours there before heading towards Tamale, the largest city in the Northern Region with a population of around 1 million. Islam is the primary religion and evident by the very large central mosque in the city and many other smaller mosques that dot the roads, although there are many Christian churches as well. The people are dressed in more conservative clothing—men in pants and tunics and women with longer sleeves and skirts and many had their heads covered although generally just with a scarf rather than the full veil as we saw in the UAE.
Sam and Ernest drove us around Tamale where we got to see the goings on of the very busy open street market. I could have done without the cow heads, though!
Because it’s Sunday, many of the shops and tourist options are closed so Ernest asked, half jokingly, if we wanted to see a Ghana Premiership football game. I said yes and Rob said YES, so we headed to the very large and new Tamale stadium. In one of the guidebooks it notes that the stadium was built in 2008 for the Africa Cup competition at a cost of $80 million (US). We purchased the more exclusive seats at a cost of 3 cedis each ($2) and Ernest adeptly barged us through the various guards, police, and crowds to our seats at midfield. Side note– there were a lot of random officials with guns who seem to like to advertise their power without much weight behind the air of authority—I think is it worldwide phenomenon at sports stadiums. The stadium was quite empty but still lively. The home team, the Real Tamale United handily beat the Berekum Arsenal 2-0. While in the stands, our driver Sam bought us FanMilk vanilla ice cream, a really nice treat and served in a typical Ghanaian way— you rip open the edge of a bag with your teeth and suck out the contents. Bags of water are consumed this way, too.
A few rows ahead of us in the stands sat the regional minister who was greeted by many well-wishers throughout the game. The fans were fun and energetic with lots of yelling, clapping, screaming taunts at the competition and random dancing. I can now say I have a habit of attending foreign football matches (Spain, Scotland, Ghana) and I highly recommend it as a very unique cultural experience and not easily comparable to pro sporting events in the US.
As we left the stadium we made our way into the field and, for one brief moment, Rob’s professional football star dream came true. Too bad his wife is twice the size but much more pleasant than Victoria Beckham!
Inexplicably, many restaurants in Ghana, especially those in hotels, serve Chinese food. I haven’t found a reason why as we haven’t come across any Chinese people. At any rate, we partook of the opportunity for a few vegetables in our meals and went for this foreign cuisine. Unfortunately, during dinner my stomach problems returned. Hopefully Imodium will do the trick. I don’t feel bad otherwise so I think it’s due to my adventuresome eating.
