To Market, To Market...

Adrienne, Meghan and I went down to Osu (Eastern Accra) to buy a cellphone for me today. I got a decent phone from a place that sells refurbished (read: old) phones at decent prices. Adrienne had gotten a great deal and so she got me a phone with charger, battery, simcard and 150 units (Ghanaian phones work on a pay-as-you-go basis). I got it to keep in touch with my parents and Maleaha. To call Canada is expensive (the largest phone card will last about 15 minutes, I'm told), but incoming calls are free, so if you call me, we can talk until the cows come home. I'll post the number later.

So after that, we took a cab across the downtown core to Makola Market. And let me tell you it was something else. Perhaps those of you in the West are familiar with the concept of a "farmer's market", where a street or area is closed off and there are vendors selling various produce or home-baked goods. In Ottawa, we have the Byward Market, which is a very large area with people selling trinkets, fresh local fruits and veggies in the summer and maple syrup and Christmas trees in the winter.

The market here is in downtown Accra and it is immense, to say the least. It spans a larger area than Byward and is packed with phonebooth-sized kiosks and stalls. To walk through it is to walk through a giant maze of interconnected alleyways with barely enough room for two people to pass by. Imagine Indiana Jones trying to navigate the crowded markets of Cairo, the giant book-burning multitudes of Berlin and the mineshafts in Temple of Doom - all within the same hour.

There were people selling beautiful textiles and silks. There were fresh yams, carrots, peppers, and ochre. There was fish of every kind, live chickens and crabs (in the bucket), pig's feet and meat of indeterminate origin. There was cheap jewelry, wigs, pots and pans. There were old men begging and young girls sewing. We walked through stuffy corridors, alleyways and streets lined with filled dumpsters for over half an hour before we got to what seemed to be the end of it. The worst of it was going through the areas with the meat stands. Meghan and Adrienne are both practicing vegans in Canada, so it was all the more harder for them. The market was pure Africana and we experienced it in full. We walked through the entire thing back and forth and around (and probably didn't even see half of it) and saw no other white people in the entire labyrinth. We easily saw thousands and thousands of Africans, but not a single Obruni*.

So many people were excited that we came into the market, because they tried to sell us everything and a number of people were just happy to see white people. Children would shout "Obruni! Obruni!" and we would look at them and smile and they would smile back in wonder. One large lady, about our age, came right up to us and gave us all giant hugs, for no reason! (Yes, I still had my wallet and cellphone after the incident) We knew a few words in Twi, so a simple "Eh-tee-say?" (how are you?) or "Madasee" (thank you) made us a lot more approachable and the people more easygoing towards us. I suppose many whites come through Accra and don't bother to learn a single word of Twi, so we are a novelty.

Afterwards we took the long cab home during rush hour. We got pizza near the university - my first Western meal in a week. After today, I think I earned it. We met some young Ghanaian-Americans who had been in the country for a month and seemed to be eager to return to Southern California.

Hannah told me today that she and Lisa drove by a dead woman who had been hit by a tro-tro (minibus) on a busy road. Talk about sobering. I thought our day was tough. It was easily the worst culture shock I've experienced so far.


We laughed, we cried, we haggled. And we're slowly getting better at the latter.


*Obruni is Twi for "white person"