On our first weekend in Kumasi, we decided to head out of the city and explore some of the towns which lay to the east. Our first stop was in the village of Bonwire, famous across Ghana for the production of the colorful cloth known as kente.
As soon as we got out of the trotro in Bonwire, we were approached by guides. It seems there’s exactly one reason for foreign faces to appear in this town — and that’s “kente”. Without even bothering to ask what we were there for, a guy indicated that we follow him. He brought us to the town’s main production hall, and gave us a quick tour. It was so efficient and straightforward, it didn’t bother us not to have any choice in the matter. And the guy was super-nice.
(By the way, good luck if you ask for directions to “Bon-wire”. The town’s name is pronounced closer to “Bon-ray”, and nobody will understand if you say it the way in which it’s spelled. We spent a very frustrated five minutes at the tro-tro station saying “Bonwire“, until finally giving up and saying where they make kente. “Oh, Bon-ray! Why didn’t you say so?!”)
Try these Kente Cloths
