market day

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February 10, 2007

CHANTEL - Today is market day. We have been hassling Priscilla to take us there for some time because we need stuff for our room and we both need to find some clothes. The market was not at all what I expected. It’s actually one gigantic outdoors second hand shop with thousands of stalls crammed together. I love shopping and I generally enjoy markets, I braved one of the world’s biggest outdoor markets in Thailand and thought it was great, but this market was not fun. Way too crowded to look at anything properly, so much stuff everywhere, with people yelling at you and grabbing at you - we found a few things but I was not a fan. It’s enough to try and get through it with the heat and the smell, buts it is another when people are grabbing onto your arm every step you take and you cannot even move through the crowd. Also everything is second hand, which I don’t really mind but found kind of interesting, a lot of it was stuff we recognized from at home and wondered how it all found its way to Ghana. Managed to find a few long skirts and some flip flops (I have already destroyed one pair since being here). We then wander around downtown Accra some more and go the Ghanaian version of a department store. We were in need of a kettle and some towels but it ended up being the most complicated shopping experience ever. It took us few tries to get the system right but what you have to do is go around, find what you want, have a lady write down the code number for what you want on a scrap of paper, take all the scraps of paper to the cash register, pay for everything and then go back and find all the things you bought. You then take everything down to the desk, get in line, get it checked over, head to another line, get everything bagged and then have everything checked again on the way out. Whew. It takes a team to shop here.

AN - The market was really interesting, I’m glad I did it, but I hope to never do it again. As Chantel explain above, it was truly insane. Overcrowded, hot, sweaty, everyone is yelling at you, often grabbing your arm to get your attention. The atmosphere definitely made me think about the time I was lost in Woolwards. It was just so overwhelming, I felt like a child again, lost in a department store. I remember thinking; I had to make sure that at least one of my five friends had to be within arms length. There was no way I was going to be lost in that market. I mean often when you are lost somewhere, you could often find the perimeter of the area you are lost in. In this market I was not able to differentiate north, west, south or east... to be honest, in that environment I had trouble figuring out left from right. However, one of the most interesting things about this market is the amount of used clothing around. I mean, almost all these stalls were used clothing. Everything from track pants, shoes, dresses, blouses and even underwear. It was also interesting to look at the labels on these items of clothing. I was looking at a tank top and realized that I had the exact Gap tank top in my closet in the hostel. It was really interesting to wonder how exactly this tank top came to be here. I also asked the price of the tank top out of curiosity. The asking price was 80 000 cedis, which is about 8 dollars US. What’s that in Canadian? About 10 dollars CDN? Anyways, I couldn’t believe how expensive clothing was. I mean the tank top was clearly used, yet they were asking for 8 dollars US. According to me, that is quite expensive. I mean I bought the tank top at home on sale for 9.99 CDN, brand new, with a good return policy and all. I guess it’s the geographer in me. Always wondering how something got to where it did. I’ve notice that I’m always looking at goods and reading where things are manufactured and who it was imported through. At this market, some of used clothes had the price tags left on. The tags were more then often price tags of used clothing stores. To my surprise there was a lot of clothing that had the Value Village price tags on them. This discovery amazed me, and I wondered if perhaps someone bought these items of clothing at Value Village and shipped them to Ghana to be sold or if Value Village dealt directly with someone in Ghana. The other discover that I made was about the shoes. The women’s shoes were often used, the men’s shoes were often unworn, and often designers, and name brands. I looked at the shoes more carefully and would see that there were the slightest damage that took place during the manufacturing of the shoe. For example there would be a slight knick or scratch at the rubber, or the logo was slightly askew; I would say that the average person wouldn’t have notice these little imperfections on the shoes, but they would be considered defective at the factory. At some of the shoe vendors, they had all these sandals and shoes from the Gap. I recognized these items, because I worked at the Gap to pay for school for six years. Anyways, with these shoes, each of them had a damaged/defective sticker on them. I recognize these stickers really well because I use to fill them out all the time. Damaged/defective stickers would be placed on the item because the clothing/footwear item was either damaged by a customer or that the product it self was defective. We would do inventory on all these items in the end of the year (this often took days), place all the items into a bag, box them, and ship them to headquarters, which in the case of Gap Canada, that was Toronto. As bottom rung sales people, we always wonder what happen to those items, because often they were still usable; often only damaged by a stain of coffee or dirt on the floor. I remember one year my store manger had permission to drop off the items to a salvation army during the holidays. I don’t know if that was Gap’s way of being a better company around the holidays, or if they just couldn’t deal with the stuff over the holidays. Anyways, I remember asking my manager if she was allowed to do that: just give the stuff away, and she said, headquarters allowed it this time, and she should see why not since they just throw the stuff out anyways. So maybe Gap doesn’t just throw their damage and defective items out, maybe they ship it to Ghana where it could be sold in overcrowded markets… or not.

CHANTEL - Today was also the day that An and I finally did our laundry. And no joke it took us the whole evening to get it done. We had both let our piles of clothing grow until we were out of things to wear (hence buying new clothing) so we felt it was time to bite the bullet and get to it. We had asked Reuben how we should get our laundry done and he laughed and told us that we are in Ghana so we are going to be doing it by hand. He then brought us some buckets so An and I found ourselves in the showers crouched over buckets of soapy water trying to figure out how to get the superdirt of Africa out of our clothing. I am at the point now where I really do not care how clean things are - as long as they don’t smell too bad. Tackling that monster load of laundry was quite the workout, as was hanging it all to dry in the courtyard.

AN - Next time I plan to pack OxyClean!!!

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