Summer 2010 in Ghana

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Breakfast at the hotel the next morning was only slightly more successful than our initial attempt at dinner the night before had been.  We paid a bit too much for cornflakes, powdered coffee, a few pieces of hard, toasted butter bread and some milk that was highly questionable.  Afterwards, we took a cab to Makola market, the large, central market of Accra.  Unfortunately, it seemed to be in quite a bit of disarray, with fabrics all over the place, soaps and plastic watches and shoes coming and going in all directions.  It was probably easily navigable for someone familiar with shopping there, but it was a little overwhelming for us, so we instructed our cab to carry on, and bring us instead to the Accra Arts market, which is outside of town, near the mall. 

When we arrived, we visited Faisal and Jimmy’s stores, and bought some jewelry and a few more trinkets to supplement our previous visit. I made friends with a Nigerian woman named Regina, who proudly explained to me how you could determine her tribal origins from the unique pattern of vertically and horizontally cut knife-scars on her cheeks and forehead.  She succeeded in masterfully overcharging me for two necklaces, because they were distinctive, and she accurately guessed that I really wanted them.  Afterwards, I complimented her on her excellent salesmanship, and she gave me two beaded bracelets for free (only then did I realize bemusedly the extent to which I must’ve been ripped off).

After we finished shopping, we decided to head over to the mall for some lunch, and maybe a movie to relax (if we could drag Will to see the Twilight sequel, that is).  We crossed the half dozen highways, entered the shock of air-conditioning, and ordered Diet Cokes, pizza, and a few burgers.  I even managed to coax two cups of ice (for Kelly and myself) out of the man behind the register at the coffee shop.  After lunch, we checked the movie times, only to be pleasantly surprised to find not just Twilight, but also Inception (a Leonardo Di Caprio movie that Will really wanted to see) playing shortly.  After moderate consternation, Will used his boyish charms to convince the ticket lady that we had, in fact, been foolish enough to get our wallets stolen at knife-point from a tent on a beach in Kokrobite, and that as a result, we did not have our IDs to prove that we were students (and thus eligeable for a four-cedi discount from the standard ticket price).  I guess we’ve become somewhat cheap, quibbling over a few cedis, but it was satisfying to be vindicated.  We bought little tubs of popcorn and supplementary Diet Cokes, and heartily enjoyed the movie. 

On our way home, there was a considerable amount of traffic, because a government tractor-trailer had broken down in the middle of the Tema roundabout, leaving little room for cars to navigate the already-choked transit hub.  As we finally emerged onto the highway past the roundabout heading towards the barrier, our taxi-driver looked apprehensively at the miles of immobile bumper-to-bumper traffic headed the opposite direction.  Above them, the huge African sun (it seems significantly bigger here, for some reason) was heading for the horizon in breathtaking Lion King style. 

Luckily, we didn’t admire it for too long though, because all of a sudden, two cars came careening down our lane (of the two-lane highway) in the wrong direction.  Our driver casually squeezed into the already-crowded right lane in the nick of time, muttering something about how the traffic wasn’t bad enough to drive on the wrong side, but he shrugged, nonetheless.  We were all frozen, the cab never having slowed below 70 miles per hour, the left lane of the highway now deserted as far as we could see in both directions.  Luckily, we returned home to Community 25 without further event, and were delighted to see Madame Emma’s warm, comforting smile as she finished preparing a delicious dinner of vegetable and chicken pancakes with French fries.