Friday at Accra Central. Organized chaos.

Ghana has not been immune from the worldwide economic troubles. Yesterday, I paid nearly $1.50 for a beer at an Accra Central chop bar. Can you imagine? I remember when a Star beer was 60 cents. Okay, so it’s a big beer, twice as big as a Heinie, but still, that’s a lot of money in this economy.

Accra Central on a Friday is an amazing place -- crowded, colorful, noisy, smelly, even a bit dangerous. But only for a couple of obronis. Yesterday, a new found obroni friend and I ventured to the big city to do some shopping. Leslie is a high school math teacher (they call it maths teacher here) who is here in Ghana for a year on a Fulbright teacher exchange program. She is teaching at Tema Secondary School, just a hop skip and a jump from where we live, and also my husband’s alma mater.

I picked her up at the school and ventured to Accra the long way around, meaning the Beach Road between Tema and Accra. When you want to move at a fast clip, you have no choice but to take the Tema Motorway. Unless there’s an accident, and there have been significantly less accidents since they removed the cattle bridge a few months ago, the Motorway zips along at speeds of 70 and upwards. Some Ghanaians consider it their own personal Autobahn and rocket past at 100 mph. Fools, all… you never know when a cow is going to cross the road.

But, I digress (as usual). Leslie loved the fact that we were taking the scenic route. She got to see the ocean finally (she knew it was somewhere close by, but had no idea how close – a mere 5 minutes away!). As we approached Nungua, I told her about Evelyn, my “potato lady” who owns a tiny produce stand across from the Regional Maritime Academy. When we lived in Nungua, we stopped there a lot for fresh produce, namely potatoes, because we knew that from her they wouldn’t be soft or rotted. Now that we live in Tema near the motorway we don’t often come around, but when we do, we either stop and buy something, or beep the horn when passing. It’s funny, without fail, as soon as she hears the distinctive sound of our Nissan Quest’s horn, she spins around or looks up from whatever she was doing and grinning, from ear to ear, waves wildly with both hands. Sure enough, she was there yesterday, and grinning and waving to beat the band. I love that lady.

So, off through Nungua we traveled. It was really neat driving with Leslie. It’s like looking at Christmas through a kid’s eyes. Leslie was “Ooh, look at that” or “Oh, what’s that place?” It was kind of fun to play the tour guide, pointing out the place with the fantasy coffins and watching the vendors go by carrying all sorts of things on their heads.

After about an hour in traffic, we arrived at the parking lot near High Street. No matter if they’re packed, when the guy sees our Nissan he knows it’s us and always squeezes us in. Somewhere. It was the same yesterday. He directed me to this tiny spot and I edged my way in. He asked me where “daddy” was. I told him that “daddy” was home and I was free for the day with some money in my pocket. Oops! Must remember to zipper my mouth, next time. Before I could even take two steps away from the car, he tells me that he will be traveling for a funeral that afternoon, and hoped I could help him with “transportation.” Soft touch that I am (and also to safeguard my car!), I offered up 2 cedis. That’s about $2, and more than he probably makes in a day.

You’ve likely read about my shopping experience at Melcom, so I won’t go back into it. Except to say that I still cannot understand WHY THEY CANNOT RESTOCK THE STORE AT NIGHT??!! Every aisle is crowded with shoppers and an equal number of clerks who are bent over boxes and stocking shelves. You can hardly move. After about 15 minutes of madness, we gave up and left, without a single purchase there.

From there we went to Methodist Book Store for Leslie to find some books for the students she tutors. I picked up a couple of used books for the kids, but nothing for me. Paperbacks not written in this or the previous decade are of no interest to me, nor do I find it scintillating to read books with big-bosomed raven-haired vixens.

We walked across the street into Rawlings Park, which has turned into a giant flea market and decided to stop for some refreshment. Beer, Coke, sausage on a stick and beef kebabs. Total price GHC 5.90. Total rip-off. But such is the economy here. Everything has gone up in prices.

We had good seats at the restaurant, right in the firing line. Every single hawker with a bowl on his or her head had something to offer the two obronis. Batik and wax print shirts, only GHC 5 – perfect if we weighed about 250 lbs each, but anyone with a Body Mass Index of less than 25 would be lost in these shirts (I’ve a BMI of about 20, and Leslie probably even less). Oh, BTW, this site calculates your BMI for you and it’s pretty simple. No maths teacher needed.

We also had a couple of bead vendors pass by – one person was selling bootlegged 8-in-1 and 9-in-1 videos with Chinese subtitles, another sold kitschy wooden signs that said something like Jesus Loves Ghana, and a very large woman with a huge bowl of kitchen sponges on her head. Everyone else got a dabi (no), but we stopped the sponge lady. I really needed a new kitchen sponge. Naturally, the obroni price was GHC 3 for 5 sponges, but the obroni counter-offer was GHC 2, which was still probably more than they would have cost an obibini (black person). Oh well.

From there I found a guy selling football kit out of his station wagon. Well, Sean as you may know is a football freak. Not the U.S. kind, but the European/U.K. kind with actually kicking of the ball at all times. Sean loves Chelsea (the team, not Clinton), but loves individual players and I asked if they had Rosicky. I was informed it was Rosisky. Anyway, he plays for Arsenal and he’s #7. They had a brand new shirt and shorts set for GHC 20. Now, that’s not really a bad price. It’s running way higher than that on eBay and I wouldn’t have to ship it. But, since I knew I was getting the obroni price, I countered with GHC 15 and we agreed at GHC 17. Not too terrible. And, guess what, it is NOT Rosisky… I was right, so there!

Leslie was anxious to take some pictures of the market, but Ghanaians don’t usually like for people to do that, so she just bought something and then took the vendor’s picture. That worked out fine. One guy, who was carrying a string of dead rats and mice was willing to take a little gratuity in exchange for the picture… guess Leslie didn’t need a dead rat. Just kidding. He was selling rat poison. But it was pretty funny, in a gruesome kind of way.

After the rat guy, it was getting too hot and too crowded, so we made our way back to the car, battled the Friday funeral traffic, and within an hour we were back to our little hamlet. We arrived home dirty, tired, sweaty, smelly (at least, I was), slightly sunburned and with a blazing headache (again, me). Tema, home sweet home.