On Monday, we set out on a four-hour drive to Kumasi, where we would remain until Friday.

With a population of over two million people, Kumasi is Ghana's second-largest city, nearly as populous as Accra. It's known as the Garden City because of its lush and diverse vegetation. More significantly, Kumasi is the capital city of the Ashanti (or Asante) region - one of ten administrative regions in Ghana - and the ancient seat of power of the Ashanti Empire. (Less significantly, Kumasi is twinned with nine cities around the world. Its only Canadian twin is Kitchener - née Berlin - where I was born.)

In Kumasi, we met up with Sabrina, an American who volunteered alongside The Woman in Haiti, in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that devastated that country. Sabrina's in Kumasi on a Fulbright Scholarship, doing research work at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.

On the grounds of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital is the Okomfo Anoyke Sword Site. This unassuming building was built around a relic that's sacred to the Ashanti people.

Inside the building is a large room. In the middle of the room is something that looks like a well but that is, in fact, simply a circular concrete wall protecting the objects within. And inside the circular wall, in the center of this sacred space, is... a rusty metal object surrounded by empty Schnapps bottles?

This bears explaining.

If you think of the Ashanti Empire as a sort of West African Camelot, then Okomfo Anoyke is its Merlin. Born at the end of the 17th century in eastern Ghana, Anoyke lent his considerable - and possibly magical - skills to the Denkyera and then to their adversaries, the Ashanti. Tradition holds that when the Ashanti finally defeated the Denkyera, two remarkable things happened:

First, Anoyke caused the Golden Stool (more on that below) to descend from heaven and to land in the lap of Osei Tutu (the Ashanti king and the Arthur of this story).
Second, Okomfo Anoyke drove a sword into the ground, two symbolize the newfound unity of the Denkyera and Ashanti peoples.

The rusty metal object in the photo above is the hilt of that sword. I've heard conflicting stories about it. One guidebook insists that the sword mustn't be drawn from the earth, for on the day it is drawn forth, the unity of the Ashanti people will end. But according to our guide at the Sword Site that day, the sword can't be drawn from the earth. He told us that Muhammad Ali himself, during his 1964 visit to Ghana, had tried, and failed, to draw forth the sword. And since 1966, when the Sword Site building was erected, no one has been permitted even to touch the sword.

As for the Schnapps bottles: they're here because many rituals performed by fetish priests entail pouring alcohol - typically Schnapps - on the ground. Why? To quote our Jamestown guide: "For the ancestors." (Obviously.)

Now, about the Golden Stool - the Holy Grail of this story...

Among the Ashanti, and other peoples, an ordinary stool is a chieftan's seat and the symbol of his leadership. Here are some examples:

The Golden Stool is another thing entirely.

The Golden Stool is not merely a symbol of the leadership of the Asantehene, the Asante king. It is also a symbol of the entire Ashanti people. Indeed, it is said to house the spirits of all the Ashanti: those who have died, those who now live, and those who have yet to be born. Since the Ashanti, rather reasonably, believe that one cannot live if one's soul is taken, it follows that loss of The Golden Stool would be tantamount to the annihilation of the Ashanti.

This explains the events of 1900. At that time, the Gold Coast (as Ghana was then known) was a British crown colony - the Dutch having quit the area a quarter-century earlier. A war between the British and the Ashanti - the fourth to be fought in the nineteenth century - had recently concluded, on terms quite favourable to the British. But Sir Frederick Hodgson, the British governor, went too far when he tactlessly demanded that the Ashanti surrender the Golden Stool. The Ashanti not only refused Hodgson's demand; they also took up arms again. So began the The War of the Golden Stool, which produced many casualties on both sides - but not the Golden Stool itself, which the Ashanti did not surrender.

These days, The Golden Stool is rarely seen in public. We did not see it. But we did see the False Stool - a replica originally constructed to fool the British - on display within this building at the National Cultural Center.