More video from the Cape Coast parade

Here's a couple more videos from the parade in Cape Coast.

The first one, which runs 22 seconds, shows men in traditional African skirt-type of dress coming down the street waving flags. The tri-colour flag with the star is the flag of Ghana, while the second, green flag is likely the flag of a particular tribe or area.



How different from any parade in Canada is that? You'd never have people swinging any kind of stick in a crowd like that back home. Someone would definitely be sued!

This second, 13-second video shows a period near the end of the procession, when the chiefs of the various tribal areas were paraded down the street.



Each chief is resting on a thing that's like half chaise-lounge, half box. It's carried on the heads of four or six men. Behind comes a man waving an elaborate umbrella up and down, and following them are drummers. A large drum is balanced on the head of one man, while the man behinds him beats on it with a hammer. (Again, I apologize for the lack of audio!)

When the scene pans to the right, you can see the long line of other chiefs on the way (mainly by their umbrellas). You can also see at the far right a man balanced on a shrine to a crab. He stood there for more than an hour, hooting and dancing and waving a large Ghanaian flag.

Some of the chiefs were preceded by brass bands or dancing groups or groups of women blowing ceremonial horns -- or all three. Spectators cheered and applauded as their favourite chief went by.

After all of the dozen or so chiefs went by, a flatbed truck following that was blasting a local highlife artist's music on giant speakers, with young people hanging on and dancing all over. The guys in the truck were tossing samples of local gin and condoms into the crowd. Seemed like a reasonable combination.

The man whose head bobs into the scene at the very end was our unofficial guide to the parade. He told us he had been an electrical linesman but was currently unemployed. He was very well-spoken and wore a tidy collared shirt and dress pants, had a fancy cell phone and gold jewelry. Later, I asked him to write down his phone number for us, and he could barely write his own name -- he checked the spelling several times. Just an odd sort of window into life here.