Doris and Dan
The Catters Hostel, our new home in East Legon - just north of Accra and south of the University - is a 10-by-15 room we call home. And since this is our home in Ghana, we have made it our business to get to know the neighborhood.
We discovered the bread guy on our way to that little French bakery one morning. He sells whole wheat bread out of the back of his van, which he parks on the side of the road, where there is no sidewalk. But don't let this fool you: this guy is all-business. He's got exact change waiting in his shirt pocket; he keeps a close inventory of his supplies and his sales on the little clipbox he hugs close to his chest; he wears a suit and sunglasses; and somehow he does not sweat. His whole wheat bread, by the way, is quite tasty.
We happen to live off one of the main roundabouts in and around Accra. This means two things: (1) it's easy to commute to and from home, and (2) the craziness of Accra's traffic and tro-tros awaits us as we step out the front door. Yet at the center of this circle lies an oasis of calm where Golden Triangle Chinese Restaurant offers disco lights and pretty damn good (if not HOT) Chinese food. Note that the vegetable curry comes with shrimp.
We recently met Doris and Dan in our search for groundnut paste (a.k.a. peanut butter). They own the little shack two steps down from our hostel. Shacks in Accra are microcosms of the NYC Deli. They sell anything from ginger cookies to canned mackerels to toilet paper to candles to wine-in-a-box to malt drinks to cereal. We entered, hesitantly looking around for groundnut paste. Doris smiled and said the groundnut paste was "finished" - an ambiguous term meaning she did not have any - but that she was happy to trek over to Makola market downtown to get us some. When we came back the next day, I immediately noticed three jars of groundnut paste - a small, a medium and a large - displayed on the shelf. Doris and her husband Dan welcomed us. I picked the medium jar, and Doris revealed her business strategy to me as I took out my money: she had payed 15,000 cedis ($1.55) for it at Makola market and was selling it to us for 16,000 cedis ($1.66). That mark-up was certainly not enough to cover her transportation to and from the market... or maybe she was deceiving me and I was naive enough to believe her. Yet Doris and Dan were friendly. Their little shop was neat and tidy and with now two additional jars of groundnut paste on display. I payed her 20,000 for the groundnut paste, not really sure whether I was being nice, duped, condescending, or just plain fair...
My third week in Accra is coming to a term and the turf is slowly gaining familiarity. We have found our running circuits; we know where to escape to for Chinese food; we have learned how to cross the road when vehicles have *absolute* priority; we have a bread man, a mango lady, and doris and dan; I have experienced a wide range of interviews: some are laborious and disappointing; others are random and invaluable; still others are complete misunderstandings. The other day I found myself asking a Nigerian "businessman" to stop calling me "baby" and to stop giving out my number to random people who thought I was in town to "have a good time, baby". Not all interviews will make it into this dissertation.
Our hostel is off a road called Lagos Link. It's on a roundabout named Tetteh Quarshie, a traveler who introduced cocoa to the country in the late 19th century. It's a 2 minute walk from a French bakery. And a 15 minute walk from our running circuit on campus. In sum, it's home... for now.
We discovered the bread guy on our way to that little French bakery one morning. He sells whole wheat bread out of the back of his van, which he parks on the side of the road, where there is no sidewalk. But don't let this fool you: this guy is all-business. He's got exact change waiting in his shirt pocket; he keeps a close inventory of his supplies and his sales on the little clipbox he hugs close to his chest; he wears a suit and sunglasses; and somehow he does not sweat. His whole wheat bread, by the way, is quite tasty.
We happen to live off one of the main roundabouts in and around Accra. This means two things: (1) it's easy to commute to and from home, and (2) the craziness of Accra's traffic and tro-tros awaits us as we step out the front door. Yet at the center of this circle lies an oasis of calm where Golden Triangle Chinese Restaurant offers disco lights and pretty damn good (if not HOT) Chinese food. Note that the vegetable curry comes with shrimp.
We recently met Doris and Dan in our search for groundnut paste (a.k.a. peanut butter). They own the little shack two steps down from our hostel. Shacks in Accra are microcosms of the NYC Deli. They sell anything from ginger cookies to canned mackerels to toilet paper to candles to wine-in-a-box to malt drinks to cereal. We entered, hesitantly looking around for groundnut paste. Doris smiled and said the groundnut paste was "finished" - an ambiguous term meaning she did not have any - but that she was happy to trek over to Makola market downtown to get us some. When we came back the next day, I immediately noticed three jars of groundnut paste - a small, a medium and a large - displayed on the shelf. Doris and her husband Dan welcomed us. I picked the medium jar, and Doris revealed her business strategy to me as I took out my money: she had payed 15,000 cedis ($1.55) for it at Makola market and was selling it to us for 16,000 cedis ($1.66). That mark-up was certainly not enough to cover her transportation to and from the market... or maybe she was deceiving me and I was naive enough to believe her. Yet Doris and Dan were friendly. Their little shop was neat and tidy and with now two additional jars of groundnut paste on display. I payed her 20,000 for the groundnut paste, not really sure whether I was being nice, duped, condescending, or just plain fair...
My third week in Accra is coming to a term and the turf is slowly gaining familiarity. We have found our running circuits; we know where to escape to for Chinese food; we have learned how to cross the road when vehicles have *absolute* priority; we have a bread man, a mango lady, and doris and dan; I have experienced a wide range of interviews: some are laborious and disappointing; others are random and invaluable; still others are complete misunderstandings. The other day I found myself asking a Nigerian "businessman" to stop calling me "baby" and to stop giving out my number to random people who thought I was in town to "have a good time, baby". Not all interviews will make it into this dissertation.
Our hostel is off a road called Lagos Link. It's on a roundabout named Tetteh Quarshie, a traveler who introduced cocoa to the country in the late 19th century. It's a 2 minute walk from a French bakery. And a 15 minute walk from our running circuit on campus. In sum, it's home... for now.
posted by cla at 2:47 AM
1 Comments:
Hi there ladies, greeting from sunny cali - keep up the interesting blog posts, s'il vous plaît. Glad to hear that you managed to find things like peanut butter, chinese food and a french bakery.
T.J.
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