Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Ghost stories in the monkey cemetery

After spending a night in Kumasi, where I spent hours catching up on the internet, a group of us started making our way north. We wanted to take our time because we couldn't do anything until the banks opened on Monday, so we stopped at the Boabeng Fiema Monkey Sanctuary outside of Techiman, in the Brong Ahafo region. The story behind this place is kind of fun. There was a hunter walking in the bush one day and he came upon a fetish that was being guarded by four monkeys - two Monas and two Black and White Colobus. The hunter took the fetish and the monkeys ran away. The next morning when he awoke, the monkeys were at his house in the village, guarding the fetish again. The hunter then consulted the fetish priest, who told him that the monkeys were the children of the fetish god. If they liked the monkeys, they should keep the fetish and treat the monkeys like fellow humans and protect them. The monkeys therefore live in peace with the villagers to this day. The come and hang out, mostly in the morning, and even get buried as humans when they die. So if you visit this place, there are monkeys running around every, somewhat similar to the way goats roam about all over the place in other Ghanaian villages.
The monkey cemetery was definitely the highlight of the tour. We were staying at the guest house in Boabeng that night and couldn't resist the urge to walk through the forest to the cemetery after dark to tell ghost stories. It was fantastic, and SOOO scary.
If you want to see pictures, I just put them on flickr.
Off to my site now...