Market Day in Ghana

Every city and even the smallest of towns in Ghana have a market day.  Some of the larger ones take place all week long, but most happen on a specific day of the week.  They range in size from a few blocks to literally acres and acres.  In Sunyani market day is every Wednesday, all year long, and covers about 20 acres.  Market is the big social event of the week.  During the rest of the time, the wooden shacks and makeshift bamboo canopies look like skeletons and are eerily silent except for a few stragglers on the street front corners.  Then it begins.  Early, before the sun is even up, vendors, people from all the neighboring villages, and townsfolk are busy moving, hauling, and transporting wares of everything imaginable.  By 7 a.m., they're in full swing.  It is difficult to describe and is a total overload for all the senses.

The sprawling total chaos takes on a labyrintine aspect and little stalls spill out in every direction.  Narrow  passageways link section to section as the natives try to sell or bartar all kinds of goods:  clothing (some new-most used), textiles, plastic goods, jewelry, pottery, metal, automotive supplies, household items, fufu pounding sticks and bowls, sandals and shoes, and tons more.  We've decided that all of the goods that are rejects from around the world, are sent to Africa to be sold at their markets. 

Countless food and produce stalls are clustered in a haphazard manor and spill out in every direction.  Small plastic tarps are laid out on the ground, and sometimes no tarps, where tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cabbage and vegetables of every kind are piled high.  Melons are placed in huge stacks and mounds of the staple cassava roots are sometimes over six feet high.  Huge live snails, the size of softballs and considered quite a delicacy, slowly wiggle and worm around in their baskets as their seller constantly pulls them back. Bins and tables are piled high with smoked dead fish--heads, eyes, fins and tails, shriveled and with a stench that is so intense and foul, it makes one gag.  Yet it is one of the favorites for stuffing the local natives' meat pies.  Dead grass-cutters (large, grizzled-brown rodent-rats) are prized as bush meat and are hung on sticks, ready for the fufu stew.  There are stacks of rice, and barrels of flour and cornmeal, and all kinds of fruits.  The papayas, mangoes, and pineapples here are marvelous.

The stench and smells are overpowering, and walking through the maze one encounters aromas of sweet, foul, rotten, musty, smokey, and spicey along with human sweat and the intense cologne the Africans wear to cover body odor.  Flies are abundant as young men throw meat and chicken onto makeshift barbeques made from old metal barrels cut in half.  Dead goats are hauled in by wheelbarrows and I almost fell into a cart loaded with an entire cow's head.

The variety of sounds make the entire scene even more hectic.  Africans love loud noises and they have boom boxes cranked to deafening levels and preachers and politicians rant and rave over loud speakers as chickens squwak and the vendors yell back and forth at each other in Twi.  It is mass confusion.......and they love it!  Then at night, they take down, pack up their goods, go home and begin getting ready for next week.