A Hot Mess Indeed

Today was ridiculously busy for me. I decided to be ambitious and get the Manhyia Palace (home of the Ashanti king), Kejetia Market and the Armed Forces Museum in, in addition to more souvenir shopping.

First stop was Kejetia Market, which is reputedly West Africa's largest market. 'Insane' doesn't even begin to describe this place. It is about 12 hectares in area and has more than 10,000 trading stalls, selling goods ranging from fish to dishwashers to fake football jerseys. You know those pretty garden mazes with the 12ft grass walls out in like the midlands of England? Imagine that the garden is 50x bigger. And instead of lovely, manicured walls you have dilapidated shacks with corrugated rust roofs. And there are 50,000 people sweating it out with you, clamoring for goods every which way. I ran into a couple of Peace Corps volunteers who asked me what the market was like. All I could tell them: overwhelming.

One could easily get lost in there. Unlike the market in Takoradi or in Accra, you really can't see above the stalls. And there was a point where I was basically trapped for about a minute in this sea of people that wasn't really going anywhere. Never smelled so much of Africa before. But despite the craziness of this market, it actually does have some order to it. The clothing and textile stalls are in basically the same place, the food sellers (I failed in my attempt to avoid the fish market--possibly the worst smelling place ever) are in the western part and bead sellers are all together. And prices actually seem quite standardized between stalls. Oh, the market economy. I was able to snap some pics from the high ground, but I think the fact that I didn't get robbed of my camera and backpack was more of a "triumph of luck over judgment", in the words of the Bradt Guide. The Peace Corps volunteers I talked with had just been robbed in a taxi of their phones and cameras. In broad daylight. :(

Manhyia Palace was definitely cool, and I certainly learned a lot about Ashanti history and what not. The Armed Forces museum was quite entertaining, and I got lots of pics of rather out-of-place looking British colonial officers of the 1900s. Cool uniforms, though. I'd write more, but must conserve internet cafe time.

I had lunch again at Vic Baboo's, which I discovered is part of the Baboo Bazaar. I got bored so I thought of some slogans:

Don't feel blue at Vic Baboo's.
Use the loo at Vic Baboo's.
I pity the foo' who don't go to Vic Baboo.

Ah, it's such a good place. Maybe they can expand to America or something. Tomorrow I'm returning to Legon to wrap up my time in Ghana. Home in a week!