Today, we visited the artist
stalls in the Accra market. This market is like the art center in Kumasi,
except much larger, and the vendors sell more kitschy items, such as t-shirts
and cheap jewelry rather than handmade bags. It’s a huge grid of identically
spaced stalls with two-story walls, a veritable rat maze of vendors that nearly
sell the same thing, such that it’s impossible to remember which vendor
promised you that good price before you left to use it as bait for negotiating
elsewhere. We made friends with a vendor, who escorted us to the nearest ATM so
Roxane could try to withdraw more money for the market. I ended up buying ludo (which Shreya found for me!), a hand-painted t-shirt, two batik print shirts, kente cloth, a batik print fabric spread, 4 paintings, 6 pairs of earrings, a wallet, and some kente cloth jewelry. It was exhausting and
took almost three hours, but we all managed to find gifts for everyone back
home.
That evening, we explored downtown
Accra on foot. We didn’t know exactly where we were going, but we knew that we
could always call a taxi to take us home. We passed by a fashion show, a few
memorials, and visited an arts center that turned out to have a concert playing
that evening. While I was looking at the artwork there, a few of the volunteers
looked inside to see what was going on, and ended up making it all the way to
the stage of a gospel concert. On our way out, the local media asked to take
our photo on their red carpet, so we posed in our t-shirts and khakis along
with the locals in their evening wear. Once we got back, we spent a quiet
evening back at the hotel, looking through photos and watching on TV the
fashion show we had almost crashed.
Today, I wondered if I could have
spent more time here. Looking back, I think I could have stayed another ten
days to make my trip a full month had a packed a bit differently. First, I
would have brought more to do. I brought about twenty “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell
Me” podcasts, which kept me sane on long van trips or when one of our neighbors
at the hotel decided to blast music for a few hours. I wish I had also brought
TV episodes or movies on an iPad, so I could share them with the other
volunteers (I did get to share “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” with Shreya, thus
introducing a Canadian to the wonders of NPR). I also wish I had brought an
easy game like Cards Against Humanity, which I considered bringing but thought
the other volunteers might be offended by (boy was I wrong).
I also ignored my own comfort in
exchange for packing light, which helped since we changed hotels so often, but
also meant I lost amenities that I regretted. Washing clothes every few days in
the sink gets old fast. I also ran out of my nasal steroid that keeps me from
getting constant sinus infections, and the smoke and dust here is not helping
anything. When I get home, I’m going to get a prescription for antibiotics and drown
in some hot tea and tissues. Next time, I think I would leave behind some of
the snacks I packed – many of which I left in Ghana for the other volunteers,
since we bought snacks on the road – in exchange for more clothes, medication,
and an iPad full of entertainment.
Going home is going to be an adjustment. Having access to clean bathrooms, internet, and a variety of fresh foods is going to be a real treat. Never have I wanted a salad more than now. My parents called to ask me what I would like for my birthday dinner when I return, and I replied "vegetables." All of these seem like privileges rather than rights now, a point which hit the UOregon folks as well.
Despite this cultural shift, I will be bringing the culture home with me. First, in the form of the gifts from the market. I've taken photos of everything I could (by the time I took the photos, I had already given away most of the gifts) and put them in the album. Second, is in the form of food. The most common here are fufu (see how it's made here), banku, and jollof, which are so popular that the Falls Rest Stop restaurant consisted only of a line for each one. I was not a fan of fufu or banku, since you have to swallow the dough whole and I prefer to eat slowly and enjoy flavors. Rice dishes here were always delicious, especially jollof, and were easy to get vegetarian or with a boiled egg. You can also order rice with fish, but it's a small, fried, bony fish with barely any meat that is as difficult to eat as horseshoe crabs. For snacks, you can buy fried yams with hot sauce, corn on the cob (which is cooked so it's halfway between popcorn and corn), plantain chips, dough balls that taste like donuts, peanuts, and popcorn. At street vendors, you can find a variety of grilled meats and fresh fruits which they will cut for you. We often got pineapple and searched for days for mangoes, which few would sell to us because Ghanaians buy them when they are still crunchy, which the vendors have learned the obruni don't like. To drink, we had Milo or Nichoco chocolate drinks for breakfast, mango or pineapple juice when we could find it, and Alvaro soda. Pretty much any fruit drink you can find there is delicious. I'll be trying my best to recreate my favorite dishes from recipes online, but nothing will beat the real thing.
By far the best dish I’ve had this trip has been red-red, and the
only recipe I could find for it anywhere was here.
The rest of the blog is devoted to pescetarian international cuisine, so of
course I (a pescetarian who is easily bored with American cuisine) have big
plans for using this blog as my go-to cookbook from now on. The author is a
former Peace Corp volunteer, so if you’re interested in reading an actually
well-written and well-illustrated blog about volunteering in Africa, he’s cataloged his trip here.
The photos below are, in order: downtown Accra, food, the market, and purchases from the market.
The photos below are, in order: downtown Accra, food, the market, and purchases from the market.
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