To the Market

As promised, we spent Saturday at the Makola Market, a huge market something like Owino in Uganda. It’s in the old part of Accra, and the buildings are jumbled together so that you have to squeeze through little secret passages to see everything. Then the vendors are in teensy little closets (really doorways) crammed with goods. At one point, a woman said to us, “Come in!” but there was no actual “in” to come to. But it was nice of her all the same.

Bill said the market reminded him of Lamu in Kenya because of the alleyways and stone walls and ditches everywhere. You crowd by women carrying huge boxes of everything on their heads, stacks of things like soap or shampoo or electronics, and then some towers of tomatoes thrown into the mix. Here and there are tables of huge sea snails oozing in and out of their shells, not sure I’m up for trying them! Ghanaians like spicy food, so you find lots of little deadly peppers (we bought some and found out the hard way!) in the food stalls.

Wish we’d gotten a picture of the two women sleeping, each in one of two big pots facing each other in a little stall. There were lots of people lazing about – I think it’s the heat.

The other Fulbrighter here, Daniel, came with us, and Bill’s assistant, Prince, was our guide. Prince helped us figure out the tro-tros, and led us through the market and didn’t even laugh at us all that much. Daniel wanted some goat meat, so we went to the meat section of the market. We’ve already discovered that Ghanaians don’t always want their pictures taken, so we always ask first and some say no. But the butchers were fine with it, even posing. Some had big cow feet/hooves for making soup, and others had piles of meat with hair attached ... we were glad to get back to the snails.

We didn’t buy any goat for ourselves. Okay, we are pretty brave, but open sewers and flies and meat – well, we know our limits.