Recounting my first real foray into Koforidua

I was in Koforidua this weekend for +Barcamp Koforidua. To say the least, it was epic! Too many interesting things happened. I am capturing some of what happened pre, during and post Barcamp Koforidua on Saturday below. You should check out Buildup & intro and Speed mentoring & Breakout sessions for more info on what happened at Barcamp Koforidua itself. We had some interesting conversations about Koforidua & Koforidua flowers.

Me, @Abocco @ahiabor on our way to bckdua. Koti wan chop our money http://t.co/jgR0HzNGMu
— Bubune Kofi (@kbubune) November 23, 2013

I don't know why the police chose us to stop us. Maybe it's because we were in a little traffic and I wasn't smiling. The Koti did chop our money o! It's getting to Christmas, they won't be sparing people koraa. Ask +Bubune Sorkpor & +Seyram Freddy Ahiabor. +Victor Ofoegbu would also bear witness.

2:33pm in Koforidua, Ghana. Super organIzation of Barcamp Koforidua at All Nations University. Kudos to the @bckoforidua team. #233moments
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) November 23, 2013

The Barcamp Koforidua did an awesome job putting the event together! Kudos to +Eric Amonoo +Jemima Abochie +duncan qwame +Nkansah Rexford +Samuel Tinagyei +Xatse Lionel & +Samuel Twum on this.
zvds

Very interesting discussion about #Koforidua at Barcamp Koforidua now. Follow @bckoforidua #bckdua for updates.
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) November 23, 2013

It was revealing to see how many people actually commute to work from Koforidua to Accra each day. I learnt that Koforidua Flowers actually comes from a local Adinkra symbol. Koforidua Flowers stands for beautiful ladies in popular parlance, you know "bodacious and blessed beloved beauties". A few came to the Barcamp too :-) It was also clear that Koforidua was a place people loved to live at. There is very little traffic because of the good transport network, and the weather is great as well.

Just had a huge buffet lunch at Barcamp Koforidua. Waakye, fried rice, 4 pieces of chicken. I selected the food with my eyes lol. #bckdua
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) November 23, 2013

I love to eat. I don't always think about food portions when I am about to do justice. I couldn't go eat #LondonMama waakye but I did have some at the Barcamp. Great selection of food choices by the way.

As we do usually at the end of Barcamps, we sang three songs. The national youth anthem - "Arise Ghana Youth for your country". Yɛn ara asaase ni, the unofficial local national anthem for Ghana in Twi, composed by the late Dr. Ephraim Amu. We topped it off by singing the Ghana National Anthem. Interestingly, almost a third of the women at the Barcamp were Nigerians. They paid heed to the patriotic songs though, I think I even caught one lady singing some.

Apparently, it rains a lot in Koforidua, maybe every day at 2pm. The rains started right after the Barcamp ended. They came to rain on the Koforidua flowers. I managed to go through it to get to the #vimride. It wouldn't start. The battery had fallen. One taxi driver refused to help us jumpstart the car. That wasn't beautiful at all. We finally had a Good Samaritan via Samuel Twum and we were on our way to getting Seyram to a station to Accra. I wasn't returning to Accra that night. I had to spend a night in Koftown and sleep here. Literally o! :-)

Speaking in Koforidua "You wanna know all the flowers went? They are covered with oil down in Takoradi". - Whit Alexander
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) November 23, 2013

We're staying in a 6 bedroom house in #Koforidua & the rent here is like 300GhC a month. Wow. #Koftown yeah? #Kofcity yeah!
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) November 23, 2013

After the Barcamp, we went over to Whit Alexander's house, he's the founder of Cranium & Burro Brand. Beatrice, Victor, Bubune and myself joined Whit & Carol for dinner. We had really great conversations. Memorable ones too. We talked about how we couldn't find many 'Koforidua Flowers'. Well, see what Whit said lol. We slept over at Whit's place (he had enough beds for all of us). The housing prices at Koforidua are simply awesome.

Whit has a lot of cool paintings in his living room. Kwame Nkrumah. Barack Obama. Bob Marley. JJ Rawlings shaking John Kufuor's hands, etc. And Muammar Gaddhafi. I saw Gaddafi's Green Book for the first time. That guy was nuts lol. Anyway, we had some wine and some beer there as part of dinner. And chocolates too. Probably as a result of that, we had just a little trouble getting out of his area to go party more seriously. And as for partying more seriously, that deserves a whole blog post of its own. So here :-)