2 adventures

Hello!

Since I last wrote here I have had two adventures. The first adventure was going to Makola Market on Saturday with Kristin. We woke up early, donned our market wear (tough sandals for navigating puddles and uneven dirt paths, lightweight shirts and skirts, sunscreen (borrowed) and sunhats, which are good b/c they shade your face but don't interfere with glasses or eye contact), and took a shared taxi to the market (everybody goes to market on Saturday) (cost about 30¢ each). The market is right in the middle of Accra, not far from the ocean, and sort of bleeds out into the surrounding neighborhoods, people selling their wares in wooden stalls or just laid out on the sidewalk. The market consists of thousands of little wooden stalls, some with walls (the fabric ones have walls so they can hang their fabric on it for display), many without (not necessary for the food ones—they like tables better), all crammed together, winding around irregularly and delightfully. The area where the taxi dropped us off was the food section, so we wound our way through it: vegetables, fish, chickens, snails, pig feet, mounds of spices a foot tall, just sitting on a sheet on the ground, all smelling foody but a little off-putting.

We started asking various merchants where the fabric section was, because the food section seemed to go on forever, but eventually we found it—stall after stall of beautiful crazy fabric. At one of the first ones I found a large black, white, red, and light orange print (about $3/yard—I was taken for a ride on that one); at another, a teal-orange-and-many-other-colored batik (about $1.50/yard), and finally a reddish orange and black patterned batik (also $1.50/yard) (sounds like a lot of orange but it isn’t the main color in any of them except the last). I will put pictures up as soon as I can. I could have stayed there for hours. For some reason they put most of the fabric stalls, which are mostly very narrow, just a few feet across, in the covered part of the market, so it can be very hard to see them—sometimes I liked them in the stall but when I brought it out into the pathway I didn’t like it anymore.

When K and I had had our fill of fabric (which, for me, really, would have been never, but it was already quite hot and we had other things to do), we attacked the rest of our lists. I wanted a big (big as in, the circumference of my arms is smaller) straw hat, such as the women wear in the market—they aren’t floppy (have a hard rim) so they shade your body too. We also wanted novels, a new totebag for K, a belt, flip flops, I bought a glass necklace, and I think maybe that was about it. Finding all of these things took at least an hour and a half more, and we were quite exhausted and happy at the end. We had also each had a coconut for refreshment—they lop off one end and you drink the oddly flavored water inside, then they chop it in half with a machete and you eat the slice of fresh coconut inside. These coconuts still have their green outer shell and don’t taste anything like that horrid coconut you get on cupcakes in the U.S. I think they are generally unripe, because the coconut inside only takes up a small part of the area; the rest is water. Afterward, we wandered down a street, finding an iron, a post office (some of you will be receiving postcards soon!) and a restaurant for lunch. After lunch, exhausted, we went home and relaxed for a while.

Not long after we got home, I received a call from the rental broker, Hanson Yow, whose office I had wandered into a few days before, hoping he would help us find a place. He said he had 2 apartments to show us that were within our price range. A few hours later, K and I went to his office, where he explained that we would have to pay 100,000 cedis upfront (about $10), and then after we got an apartment, one month’s rent as a fee to him. Since our upper limit for an apartment was $600, this we considered unacceptable. So we managed to argue him down to $200, but only if he could also lower the rent to $500, which he seemed to think he could do. So we all trooped downstairs and got into a taxi, and the second adventure began. Hanson told us we would need to go and pick up his friend, who was familiar with the landladies. As it turned out, this friend, Mister William, knew all the landladies and the locations of the apartments, and our man, Hanson, knew nothing. We waited about 20 minutes for Mister William to come out of his house, and the first thing he asked us was our names, and the second was what day of the week we had been born. He said he could tell that Kristin had been born on a Thursday, and when I said I didn’t know what day I was born, he surmised, given the shape of my face, that it was probably a Sunday. He also managed to guess that Kristin is part Native American (this we found very impressive).

We finally took off to see an apartment. The landlady was not home there, so we could not see it. We then went back to Mister William’s house so that he could pick up some information. We then saw 7 more apartments. The first was too expensive. The second was still being built. The third had already been taken. The fourth was both too expensive and already taken. The fifth landlady wasn’t home.

We finally saw 3 apartments that were both available and within our price range. The sixth was all right, not great, although in a neighborhood that had lots of stands and people about, which we like. The seventh, in the same neighborhood, was much too small and had lots of barking unfriendly dogs, and an incredibly small kitchen that we’d have to share. And the eighth was the best. It was large, had its own kitchen, two bedrooms, a view of the ocean, and a balcony. There were two drawbacks: the first was that it was on a very busy street, and we were warned to walk with our bags facing away from the street so that motos wouldn’t drive by and snatch them. The second, that it would take me much longer to get to work. But I think we would have been willing to compromise on this, if later events had transpired differently.

The eighth apartment was the last one, and we headed back to our part of town to drop off Mister William. When we got to his house, he started talking with the driver of the taxi in Twi (local language), and then turned around and explained to us that he was trying to get the driver to lower his price. The taxi charged 80,000 cedis/hour (about $8/hour), and we’d been out for three hours. While this doesn’t sound like very much for a taxi for three hours, it is quite a lot here, and Hanson had never told us that we were responsible for paying the taximan, AND we’d seen five apartments that wouldn’t work at all, which could easily have been divined by calling ahead. So I refused to pay. And refused. and refused. K and I talked, and considered paying part, but I felt ripped off, and we decided not to pay. Hanson, who would be stuck with the bill, asked us to pay and we would then discuss reducing the commission later. But by this time I suspected that there was no way the lower commission would still be available, because he was going to have to give a big chunk to Mister William. And, of course, our paying any future commission was not assured and becoming less so by the minute. Plus Mister William agreed that it was unreasonable for Hanson not to explain everything in advance. So after more stalling by Hanson, K and I just left, and walked home. We were very worked up and rehashed it over and over, and finally agreed that we were through with Hanson Yow.
Sunday we were going to go to the beach, but my digestive system was in revolt, so I finished a mystery I bought at the market, and it rained.

Work has been fine—I’m on my second draft of my article about the right to information. Tonight I will go with Kobby (a Ghanaian with whom Kristin and I played pool last week) to see about another apartment. Maybe tomorrow I will do some laundry. And on Thursday perhaps an outing to an Italian restaurant. On the weekend, K and I are thinking about going to a local beach that has a cheap resort; I hope to sleep in my tent. Yesterday was my sister Patrice’s birthday. She is 26 years and one day old and has fulfilled one year of her Peace Corps commitment in Burkina Faso (directly north of Ghana). I wrote her this text message poem, patterned after an old Sesame Street song:

When yer turnin’ twenty six
and yer poop is really slick
it makes me mad,
very angry, very very angry,
real mad.

Happy Birthday Tc!

Not much news otherwise. Over and out.

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