On the first day we took a bus into Accra, I was so exhausted, I slept the whole time (imagine me sleeping on the bus!). I made that journey a couple of other times and got to see the sights and the people. Everett had to get his India visas so I travelled with a group of people without him.
We had lunch at a restaurant on pure African time. I was afraid to get a native meal because I doubted I would eat the whole thing, so my friend Chelsea and I got a joll of rice and a pizza to split. I also had ordered a coffee.
The rice came out first and it was so spicy, we had to take breaks eating it and eventually couldn’t eat anymore. An hour later my coffee came out with an omelet. I had only asked for coffee but I guess he was confused that I was having coffee without breakfast. The coffee was powered (like instant coffee) with real sugar cubes. So my friend and I ended up splitting the omelet and toast too. I think an hour after we had finished eating, our pizza arrived. We were able to eat all that food because there was such a long wait. The pizza was okay but nothing like pizza at home. It was wonderful and relaxing to have a meal that slow, I know not everyone felt that way but we able to talk a lot.
Many ordered the national dish which is fufu. It is served with a hand bowl to wash your hands because it has to be eaten without silverware. Fufu looks like dough but it is a maze and is actually very bland. It needs to be dipped into the soup and is served with either chicken, beef or another meat. That soup is the part with taste- it is also really spicy.
After that we took a cab to the market and because we were white, we were constantly being approached to buy things. The women all hold things on their heads. The men don’t do it as much but they do it to help their mothers or when they were trying to sell things. We had two boys approach us and they both had a rack of sunglasses on their head.
The market was simply streets of people sitting on the sidewalks selling their wares. The market varied from everyday items like razors, dustpans, clothes, and pencils. They come out here every day and wait for someone to come by and purchase their merchandise and afterwards, they have to pick up everything only to return tomorrow and sell again.
The hagglers and street vendors here are very aggressive and have a lot of successful tactics to get your money. They start a conversation with you get to know you and then flip out their wares. They welcome you to Ghana and ask you how it is. They are very persistent and won’t leave. Some guys followed my friends for a long time so eventually you buy something to get them off your back. Also they will put your name in a bracelet or written somewhere and say it’s a gift from Ghana… that you need to pay for. It is also culturally acceptable to bargain, so it has taken me a lot of time to get used to this aggressive way of buying and selling. In the beginning, I tried to be polite and say no but by the last day, I was saying no right off the bat. I did not like to be that way and denying them my attention but it was just getting ridiculous. In order to bargain with them (to get them to lower the price), you have to walk away and say you’re not going to buy it. Then they will lower the price to what you want. I started to get the hang of it near the end of our visit.
The schools we passed by-all the children had uniforms. The girls in Ghana are required to have short hair until they graduate high school to show they are a minor. All of the kids looked the same. I wondered how much it costs for the kids to have the uniforms. Also the uniforms help to disguise the financial differences between the kids. The private schools are separated by gender. Many parents send their kids to private schools so that the children are not tempted to engage in sexual behavior and also to keep the girls away from guys with bad intentions.
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