To Market to Market

Sherri and I decided to venture out to the Mikala Market, in Accra today. We heard it was a large market, but huge didn’t begin to describe it. It was ginormous. Every possible space along the side of the streets were occupied with vendors selling everything from cloth to okra to sandals to cow tongue. We decided just to start out in one direction and either come back that same way or make some sort of a circle around.

I have learned that owning a pair of sunglasses that people cannot see your eyes is a wonderful thing. That way I can look at things in the corner of my eye without the vendor seeing that I even have a hint of interest in his product. As soon as that hint is shown, you are drawn in and almost forced to buy whatever he or she is selling. So as we continued to make our way down the street, the amount of people became more and more- so much so that I almost wanted to hold on to the back of Sherri’s shirt to make sure I didn’t get lost from her! It was VERY overwhelming- people on everyside of you, vendors yelling “Obruni!” or yelling every African female name in order to guess ours so we would turn and be enticed. At one point we were heading down a street literally packed with people, when the crowd started to part like the Red Sea- a truck was coming through.

Now the street was already full of people, so now imagine all these people cramming to the sides in order to let this 6 foot wide truck through. I honestly thought my toes were going to be crushed by the tires, but couldn’t look down to see how much room I had, because if I did, my head would have been knocked around by the truck! I think if I leaned forward two inches I would have kissed that bright greet truck. But God was good once again and kept the both of us safe.

I can’t begin to explain how large and busy this market was- it went on forever- it had to at least been one square mile- it was huge! I made the comment to Sherri that it was like the Mall of America- all on one floor, with 30+ vendors in between every store with even more random things to buy. I think that out of the three million people that live in Accra, 2 million of them were in the market that day! At one point I looked at Sherri and we both said, “This is not a place to take a group, or my parents for that matter.” Anything you can imagine was there- my most frequent comment was, “this is amazing!”

One of my favorite parts about learning a small amount of Twi, is when you are walking down the street or in a market like this, and the Ghanaians are speaking to you in Twi, and not really expecting an answer. So when you turn and say one small phrase to answer their question, first of all they are surprised, and second of all they all bust out in cheers! It is so funny!

So as the clock was ticking away we decided we better find our way back to our vehicle. Thinking we had made a circle or something close, we found we had weaved ourselves quite a distance away from our truck- and our directions were completely turned around. Thank goodness Ghanaians are so friendly, they were all willing to help us find our way home. It was very interesting to me that we were the only white people we saw the whole time- probably because it was such an overwhelming experience. But a good one. I had a wonderful time, was able to speak some Twi, and just enjoyed the people in general. Ghana really is a wonderful place.