curio stalls

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AN - Our friend Janneka was leaving Ghana in the next few days, so she decided that she was going to Ghanas Art Centre to pick up some last minute souvenirs. Both Chantel and I decided to join her.

After a morning of some school work, we met up with Janneka, where we decided to take a tro-tro to Accra’s tro-tro station. The tro-tro ride there wasn’t too bad; just the usual hot, sweaty, stuffy, reeks of b.o., cramped and rocky. Once we got to Accra’s main tro-tro station, the images that we faced was truly that of a developing country; the smell was worst. Perhaps the worst smells I have ever encountered in Ghana. Once we got of the tro-tro it was overwhelming the amount of people around us: of course we understood it was a transportation hub, but the number of people moving about, weaving in and our of tro-tros, vendors, hawkers and taxis looked so chaotic. I’m sure it wasn’t as chaotic as it appeared, but to my senses, the tro-tro station lacked visual order: no lines on the ground, no signage, no information booth, no conductors, no parking lines, no human lines and no visual system. The three of had asked someone where the Arts Centre was, the man was very helpful in directing us. That’s one thing about Ghana, often people are very happy to help, and when they don’t know the direction themselves, they will find someone for you. So once we left the gates of the tro-tro station, the awful smell only got worst. A combination of garbage and human waste fumes suffocated me. At one point I though I was going to collapse from holding my breath too long. The amount of garbage around us was incredible, the gutters (often 3 feet deep and 1 foot wide) were full, and the streets were littered with plastic bags and other unidentifiable crap. On the walk to the Art Centre, we passed a man peeing into the gutter right in front of us. We then came to a very large road, about six to eight lanes wide, you can never really guess how many lanes there are because the lines on the roads are often worn off to the point where they are no longer visible or simply they just never existed. On this road busy of automotive traffic and some foot traffic, sat an elderly man, extremely tin and completely naked sitting on the side of the road begging. After passing the elderly naked beggar, about 10 meters away on the side of the road we passes a young girl about 12 to 13 years of age remove her pants and to defecate. These image were shocking at first, only later reminded me that I was in a developing country.

Once we got to the Art Centre, it was huge. Vendors each had a space of about 3 metres bye 5 meters at most. Hundreds of vendors lined up against teach other stretching and curvy around like a labyrinth made to confuse and tempt foolish tourist into emptying their pockets. This labyrinth had narrow hallways where 3 people could not walk shoulder comfortably. This make it advantageous for the vendors. It was hard to ignore them when they were so close you could smell their breath. 9 our of 10 vendors wanted your attention, yelling and sometimes grabbing on to our arms as we try to pass, they would yell after us, “Friend, I have something to show you, “ “You are Chinese!” “Come, come, sculptures!” “You are Japanese!” “Miss, miss, I have nice things. Come!” “You are Korean, US born!” All this shouting got annoying really fast, we were noticing that we often went to the vendors that didn’t approach us. Now the prices and barging, that’s a whole other story.
Chantel and I are getting quite good at bargaining. In the beginning when we first got to the Art Centre, we just kind of wandered. We might see what we liked and asked about the price, but we usually left it. The thing is, these vendors basically all have the same goods. If what you want is not at the price you want and bargaining is not getting it to that price, then 50 other vendors will most likely have that exact item. So, Chantel and I wandered for a little bit until we felt we were more comfortable. We finally settled on one vendor that had a little bit larger space. It was a mother and son that looked after the space. It was a good start, because when we asked them the price of something, it wasn’t as ridiculous as what the other vendors that we encountered told us. We left with way more items then we thought we would, and all for a very good price. I would say that our bargaining skills are phenomenal; we definitely left each transaction on a higher note then those selling us the ornamental tourist crap. For example there was a tiger-eye necklace that Chantel wanted. The price they were asking for was 320000 cedis, which is about 32 US dollars. After 15-20mins of bargaining we got the necklace for less then a third asking price at 100000 cedis; pretty impressive if I could say so myself. We definitely had a few vendors that we favoured more then others. We think next time we return, we will just go straight to those vendors. By the end of the day, we had shopped till we dropped. We had spent about six hours at the Art Centre. Our friend Janneka had purchase some good items herself, including a very large and heavy drum.

We all decided that it would be best for us to take a tro-tro back to campus instead of a taxi since we just spent a lot of money on shopping. This tro-tro ride was awful, once again, hot, crowed, and it was dark outside. There was a lot of traffic, so the tro-tro driver decided to take an alternate route. Since it was so dark outside, we couldn’t figure out where we were going. It was awful, one of my biggest fears is being lost and it truly felt like we were lost. Well, the three of us clearly looked frighten since a few people asked us where we were going and offered us help. We ended up getting off a lot further then where we would have gotten off if the tro-tro driver had stayed on course, and even if we gotten off the right stop, it was already a long walk to our dormitories. We finally got home, took a taxi from the main gates of the campus to our rooms; we could have sworn the drum was getting heavier and heavier, but I’m sure it was because our strength was dwindling. That night, Chantel and I slept like babies.

CHANTEL - Today, like almost everyday, we start out in the morning at the office trying to tackle the growing pile of work that we are supposed to do. We then meet up with Jeneke to go to the National Cultural Centre, aka The Arts Centre, which is actually an area full of stalls selling Ghanaian crafts, jewellery, art, carvings and other stuff that us tourists really love. This market, like the other one, took a lot of the fun out of shopping because all the sellers are really aggressive - every stall you walk by they call out to you and come after you and insist that you come see what they have and that you buy something, they then tend to get quite put off and occasionally rather rude when you say you’re just looking. We know we have to bargain for things but we haven’t quite got a feel for prices so we need to ask around a bit to get a better idea. Unfortunately we’ve gone to the market on a really quiet afternoon so we are some of the only tourists there, which means that every single person is after us to buy there stuff. We both know what we want and start working out a system of bargaining. An and I make a really good team and decide to only buy from people that don’t hassle us and that actually let us look around. We find a mother and son team that have a lot of really nice stuff and the women is a pleasure to bargain with because she is fair and really nice - women in general are easier to bargain with here, the guys are all too pushy. We buy a ton of stuff from her and get a feel for how much we should be paying for anything else we are interested in. An wants an elephant family and some more statues so we find another stall where the seller (this time a guy) is super nice and gives us the inside scoop on how the whole market works. This cannot be an easy way to make a living, stall after stall of roughly the same thing, it must be tough.

We get back to the room to find the power out yet again. Janneke decides we are having a makeshift little bit of everything dinner by candlelight in our room. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches, tomato and cheese salad, crackers and cheese, and hummus from a can make our gourmet meal for the night. Food really does taste better by candlelight.

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