Just around the corner from Vic Baboo’s famous Adum Restaurant, a tourist landmark here in Kumasi, across the street from the lower side of BARCLAY’S BANK and across the street from the front of the NATIONAL INVESTMENT BANK, is a small, somewhat neglected bookstore. The only sign in front declares in white paint MEDICAL BOOKS AVAILABLE on a plywood board.
Well, there’s lots more available than just medical books. Recently, a large shipment of second-hand books most still in boxes arrived
boxes of second hand books
Well, what a treasure trove of titles and authors! It was like going down memory lane meeting favourite authors and titles from my youth. There was Michener and The Drifters, Ken Kesey and Sometimes a Great Notion, James Baldwin and Another Country, Bernard Malamud and The Fixer, Philip Roth and Portnoy’s Complaint, Henry Miller and The Tropic of Cancer, and even a Canadian classic Mordecai Richler and St Urbain’s Horsemen to name but a very few.
How lovely to discover in the most unlikely of places so many books that marked the passage of an earlier life of far away and long gone. I was tingling and with each revelation, my gleeful “ohs” broke the silence of the bookstore.
Mr Boateng at his bookstore
And I made a friend too, Mr. Boateng, the lovely ole proprietor, who was so patient with me. Ya see, most of the books were stacked one on top of the other making it hard to browse the offerings. So I asked permission to rearrange the books spine forward so customers could effortlessly read title and author. With in no time flat, I was busy grunting and oh-ing for more than an hour.
How pleased Mr. Boateng was! He had made a new friend and his store was gradually taking shape. How pleased I was! I had made a new friend and my new Adum haunt was gradually taking shape.
MADinGhana's Blog 
Ian Utley
May 28, 2010
Oh that looks a nice place. I’ll come and join you there whenever i get to kumasi. Do they sell Culture Smart! Ghana?
villagerainbows
June 4, 2010
Wonderful – next time I am i Kumasi, make sure you take me around to meet Mr. Boateng. Sounds like he has some great titles there…
Happy browsing, and better yet, happy reading.
Nina Chachu
June 10, 2010
Interesting. There was a used bookstore in Accra, in Osu, and it was quite popular, and had a large collection of cheap mysteries and romances. But it seems to have disappeared? I guess the attraction of high revenue in Osu meant that covering the rent from used books wasn’t really viable.
Oppong Gabriel
December 17, 2012
Please, do you have a medical book written by Kathry A Booth 6th edition ie Anatomy ,physiology and disease. Email:oppongevergreengabriel@yahoo.com
madinghana
July 12, 2013
Alas, the store has closed down-now the space is used as a provisos store…yet another one!