Couples' Weekend

Sister Turner and I just returned from a couples weekend in and
about Kumasi, a city of a million and a half or so people,
four and a hours away, and a little more advanced than Cape
Coast. About half of the road there is dreadful, full of
pot holes and stretches of unimproved dirt, especially
challenging at night when I drove home. The mission's four
senior couples and President and Sister Sabey were all
together. We ate wonderful food, especially the cuisine in
an Indian restaurant which was the best I have ever eaten.
And the owner of our bed and breakfast fixed us a dinner
one evening which was quite a treat. Good food is rare in
Cape Coast and there are only a few restaurants here which
we think of as being marginally good at best. None of them
offer food which tastes anything like that in the United
States. You might surmise that we are not going to be
difficult to please when we get home in three months.

We stayed two nights in a delightful bed and breakfast
called The Four Villages. It has four bedrooms, each
designed and decorated in one of the styles of four
different African tribes. A white Canadian and black
Ghanaian married couple run the place and do an excellent
job. Everything is plush and clean, and breakfast is as
good as anything we might enjoy in the states, including
home made sausage and tasty marmalades made from papaya
and mango (which fruits I can normally do without).

We visited a village where kente cloth is weaved in a
centuries old method and style, complete from making the
string to weaving the fabric to sewing various items. No
machinery other than a foot pedaled sewing machine was seen.
Everything is done by hand in the crudest of circumstances,
but the results are beautiful.

We visited another village where brass tools and decorative
items are molded in the primitive methods of thousands of
years gone by. The artisans work in the dirt in the open and
in thatched roofed and mud walled enclosures with primitive
tools. They use compressed palm leaves and mud made from
dirt and charcoal dust to form their molds and string to
provide the passage ways which channel the melted brass. It
is not difficult to envision that this is the technology
which Nephi used to construct the tools necessary to build
his boat.

Finally, we visited a cultural center where traditional
Ghanaian art is displayed and sold. There were stores
specializing in painted art, sculpture, pottery, leather,
wood, brass, and clothing. Frequently the store owners
are the artisans themselves and you can watch them at work.

--Elder Turner