I have had the chance of frequenting the market in Kumasi since I have been here. Let me just say, I already don’t enjoy shopping back home… where it’s simple to know where to look for a certain item, you can drive to Walmart in 3 minutes on a nicely-paved road (I am even talking about the Lloyd), and people do not touch you, grab your arm, yell at you, or offer you a marriage proposal. I’m sure these things happen on rare occasions back home, but it doesn’t even come close to the market experience. My USI friends who came to Ghana for two weeks at the beginning of May were able to experience the market at least once, but it certainly is a new experience every time.
My first visit to the market was the weekend after I came to Ghana. My friend Cecile and I decided to go into Kumasi so that I could exchange my traveler’s checks and we could buy some sugary food items (which they don’t seem to eat often here). I basically just followed Cecile through the market, praying that I would not lose her among all the people and that I would not get pick pocketed. I had been warned to hold my bag closely to my side if I went through the market. I think I was probably a bit too paranoid during that first experience, because it was uneventful in the sense that nothing out of the ordinary happened. We even found a supermarket and were able to buy raspberry jam and juice. Since Cecile had been in Ghana a few weeks before I arrived, she knew the ropes pretty well. She knew the ATM machine that worked for Mastercard, so we went there to withdraw money. Unfortunately, this past week I found out that the banks have stopped accepting traveler’s checks altogether (we went to about 5 banks before someone told us this), so I have been living off of the money of my friends and that which I was given when the USI group was here. Fortunately, the Ghana cedi is worth less than the American dollar, so money here goes a bit farther than it does back home.
This past weekend we went into Kumasi to the market twice. On Saturday, I brought my credit card to withdraw money from the ATM that worked for Cecile a few weekends ago. As we tried the machine and realized it wasn’t going to work, a kind man named David informed us that the bank for that ATM had moved locations and the working ATM for Mastercard was on another street. He offered to take us there, so we followed him. We walked about ten minutes before coming to the health food store that we had wanted to find (the one good thing about that trip!). We kept walking past it and finally came to the bank. The bank had a line of about 25 people waiting for the ATM. We decided to wait. After a few minutes of standing in what I thought was the end of the line, a man came up to me and told me that I had to stand in the back of the line. I was very confused, as I thought that’s what I was doing. Apparently in Ghana they don’t stand in the sun, so there was another whole line of people standing in the shade of a big sign on the street. When they noticed that I was not understanding the concept, all of the people started climbing the stairs and taking their place in line, in front of me. I ended up waiting over an hour to use the ATM, and when I finally tried my card, the machine ate it. So there we were, 3 hours after leaving home, and we had accomplished nothing.
After going to the health food store where we purchased Millet and honey, we made our way to the cultural center and browsed around. We didn’t have enough money to buy anything, so we left and promised to be back the next day. The cultural center was much different from the market. We were the only two people in the store at one time – it was nice for a change. We decided that since we were nearly money-less we would make our way back to the tro-tro station and head home. As we were walking along the busy street, two kids came up to us – a boy about 9 years and a girl that looked 12 – and latched onto our arms and started grabbing at our clothes. They wouldn’t let us go so we both pushed them off of us and told them “no,” and hurriedly went on our way. Luckily we still had our phones, cameras, and the little money we had with us.
Then, at the tro-tro station we found the line for the tro-tro to Esaase-Akropong. It is always the longest line. There was a man working there who grabbed Cecile’s arm and would not let her go. He was asking her, “Wo din de sen? (What is your name?),” and telling her that he wanted to marry here. Usually we can just ignore those things and walk by, but he would not let go of her arm for some time. Finally I tried to pry his hand away and she kept pulling away from him and he relented and let her go. We saw him a few more times waiting in line.
All that to say, it was not an enjoyable market experience on Saturday. We returned Sunday to go to the cultural center and this worked out better – we didn’t spend much time in the market or at the station. Below is a picture of one of the tro-tro’s that I have been talking about. They are the cheapest form of transportation here (about 80 pacewas – less than $0.80 – to Kumasi). I rode in one of these with 39 passengers at one time, amazing!
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