Kente and Cops and Snakes oh my!

All is going well at site so far. I have made a couple new friends in town but i think once school starts i will be able to use my students to get to know the community a little better. I have mostly being going out of my house every other day or so to do little household shopping here and there. I go to the next big city, Hohoe, a lot because they have a better market, more things and my bank. Me and the other PCV's also meet there a lot for our weekly/bi-weekly get togethers at one of the local spots. We've been doing really well about keeping busy on the weekends, either meeting there or elsewhere. This past weekend we went to Kpetoe(pronounced pet-way), a small city outside of Ho, for a Kente Festival. Im not sure if i explained kente earlier in my blog but briefly: it is a material that Ghanaians make and they are actually quite famous for it. They weave these strands of material together to make intricate designs. Its really cool to watch being done, ill have to videotape it one of these days. I had all the intent of taking tons of pictures of the festival but of course when i got there i left my camera inside at my friends house after i was already at the festival. typical. But the festival was great! It was kind of like going to a summer carnival. There were crowds of people walking up and down the main street and music was blasting and there were many tents set up displaying all different kinds of kente. Kente is actually pretty expensive to buy so i didn't have enough $$ to buy some this time but im sure ill get something over the next couple of years. There were quite a few PCV's there enjoying the festivities and even our Country Director came and joined in on the celebration. After we browsed a bit we went over to a spot to get some food and drinks. Then there was some guy just walking around with a 4-5 foot python on his neck so naturally i called him over. I think it had just eaten because it was pretty calm and i asked to hold it around my neck. Funny how ill scream at the smallest spider but here i can hold a python on my neck and laugh about it. craziness. SO we had left our things at another PCV's house while we toured the festival and when we go back apparently one of the ghanaians who was also staying in the house compound had lost her camera. We were asked to search around for it and check our things and what not. and we all were saying "we don't have it" but somehow what started as just looking around for the camera became we STOLE the camera. It caused a big scene at the house and they were all talking rapidly in the local language, i think one of my friends could make out from there talk "white man" and "thief" so that didn't inspire optimism that the situation would be resolved quickly. So they called the police. sweet. What you don't know about Ghana is that thievery is taken extremely seriously. If someone is caught stealing, there have been many cases where the person is beaten to death. so yeah we were a little worried. After talking to the cops and going down to the station and searching the whole house we were needless to say, pretty pissed. I mean 3 of us had our DSLR's with us and kept saying we all have nice camera's why would we steal yours?? So it took a couple of hours but finally when we where about to sprawl all of our belongings out on the front porch to be checked we heard a commotion from inside. Apparently as soon as we stepped outside the "lost" camera miraculously appeared in the same place we had put our bags down earlier, kind of like someone was trying to frame us. Thankfully the police chief i think obviously knew it had been placed there and he let us go. What sucks though is our friend who stays in that house, who will most likely move out now because well if i were him i wouldnt stay there either. But i guess to take away from this is that shitty things happen, but i wont hold it against Ghana :)