Market Day
To an introverted westerner who grew up shopping in supermarkets and malls, and finds those places tolerable during low times, but very hard to be in at rush hour or in the holidays, market day is a special kind of hell. In Dzodze, in Ho, in Accra, market day is a time when Ghanaians flood a public square with booths, canopies, tables, baskets, turning the center of town into an extremely crowded shopping center with mud floors, no refrigeration, and little apparent organization. I went to market day in Dzodze hoping to find shirts made of Ghanaian fabrics, rhythm instruments, perhaps some authentic craft items I could bring home as souvenirs. What I found was baskets of fish, some of it smoked, much of it raw, all of it fragrant; live crabs; live chickens; fruits and vegetables; toiletries; used books; CDs; piles of used clothing and shoes; beads; and, the closest to anything I was actually looking for, booths of beautiful textiles. The last led me to consider bar...