Grocery Games

One thing I have yet to fully grasp is the local flavor for pricing products. I do most of my grocery shopping at the local MaxMart, located just down the street from where I teach. And a month and a half into my residence in Accra, I have yet to comprehensively understand how goods are priced.

One thing I have picked up on – the use of discount pricing is rather popular for items that are overstocked and also that are going to expire yesterday. Actually, the MaxMart must have just hired a local marketing director, because just last week, they introduced a campaign where, if a consumer spends 40 cedis (the local currency) in a single purchase, the lucky consumer is shuffled to the wheel. The wheel, much akin to “The Big Wheel” on The Price is Right, is spun amidst bated breath as fellow shoppers wait to see which expired perishable is selected among the farrago of provisions. Speaking from experience, my colleagues and I have changed our consumer behavior. Instead of making separate purchases, we now pool our purchases to see which day-too-old crème cookie we can walk away with.

But my favorite game to play at the grocery store is actually what I’ve come to call the “Scavenger Hunt.” It’s not a well advertised game, but it’s a game in which the consumer scavenges around for the best price-volume ratio. Sometimes I even wonder if MaxMart has a random number generator used to assign prices to the products. For example, a basic can of Heinz Baked Beans can sell for as cheap as 1 cedi. Directly next to the Heinz Baked Beans sits a can of Heinz (same brand, same volume) Pork Baked Beans selling for 10 cedis. What?

The other day, I walked in to quench my thirst and buy a Coca-Cola. I had four options as diagramed below where price (in cedis) is the unit of measurement:

Scavenger hunt success. I’ll take the larger volume for the cheaper price with the pre-chilled convenience, thank you. I’m already enjoying the weekly scavenger hunts. I can’t wait to see what type of hunt MaxMart rolls out for Easter!

Coasting through the Cape

With Eid Ul Fitr and the complimentary bank holiday, I was presented with a three day weekend for the first time since arriving in Ghana. So what better way to spend it than to travel to the (in)famous Cape Coast. Famously known as the home to Kofi Annan, and the ancestral home to Michelle Obama, it also boasts the Cape Coast Castle, infamously known for being a critical trading center during the slave trade.

The Fellows and I set off for Cape Coast on Friday, at sunrise, with the notion that the intercity bus ride would afford us a few additional hours of sleep. What we did not anticipate was the Ghanaian approach to mass transit. After paying our fare and boarding the bus, we took our seats and shut our eyes, only to be awakened (or Awakened, depending on how one looks at it) by a traveling preacher.

Since he was preaching in Twi, the local dialect, a language for which I can cogently only decipher select phrases such as what’s up? and thank you, my initial inclination was to believe that mayhap he was giving us a safety presentation. As it turns out, he was simply preaching. Defeated in my attempt to nap, the rest of the bus attentively hung to his every word, laughed at his jokes (which I came to find out later from our Ghanaian colleague, were using us as the punch line!), and even worshiped together in song. The sermon concluded near the end of our transport, where the preacher pulled out some over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs and peddled them off to the eager consumer. By the time I stepped off the bus, I was not only exhausted but was entirely disillusioned by this exploitation of religion for personal financial advancement. Ironically, the anti-inflammatory drugs might have served me well right about then.

Between stops at some seaside resorts and a side-excursion to Kakum National Park for an adventurous canopy walk, stories for another time and place (place being defined as stationary, not transitory) we soon again found ourselves in need of transportation. Having spent the better part of an hour waiting for hauling, we befriended a local university’s campus Christians who happened to have a chartered bus and happened to be travelling in our same direction. They generously opened their bus doors and allowed us to stand in the aisle. After a quick opening prayer, we (we being loosely defined) proceeded to worship using a video that spliced together various hymns recorded in the 1980s. The only one I recognized was You Raise Me Up, to which I had difficulty relating after my first church-on-the-go.

One thing is certain; my weekend in and around Cape Coast raised my understanding of travelling church to a whole new level.

If a Tree Falls in the Woods

Before I left for Ghana, my Staff Manual specifically stated “There is less of a concept in Ghana that the noise someone makes, at any hour, intrudes on someone else’s privacy.” It went on for a few paragraphs, which I wrote off as a mere jeremiad – after all, I survived living in an American university setting. Well, it didn’t take me long to realize that I had underestimated the Ghanaian decibels and overestimated my numbness to my surroundings.

As it turns out, it is socially acceptable (heaven knows why) to make a ruckus at any time of day. A hypothetical example: Everyone is sleeping in our hostel because it is hypothetically 1am and you are watching the sports highlights in the TV room. You find out that your favorite team won the game. It is entirely acceptable for you to make merry down the entire hall to ensure everyone else is immediately aware of your team’s victory.

For the most part, the human body adjusts. I don’t know the science behind it, but my subconscious has learned to treat some audible stimuli as white noise, like the blind roosters who don’t realize that it’s only 3am. There are a few exceptions to this policy.

For the first few weeks, I swear someone had set up a theater stage right outside my window. In ten minute intervals, a throng of Ghanaians would be cheering and clapping for the performance that just ended. I guess I can’t complain since they had the decency to provide me a courtesy balcony seat that normally demands a premium price. Thankfully, I have not been invited back in a few weeks, and am hopeful that it was more of a traveling act than an established venue.

Then there are the morning buses. The buses are the primary transportation to and from schools, churches, magic shows, basically anything. Best practice is to quite literally sit upon the horn until you are guaranteed that everyone in Western Africa is aware of your arrival. My hypothesis is that the horn serves as a final alarm clock if you have (heaven knows how) accidentally slept through morning speakers blasting Michael Jackson or Alan Jackson.

And just when I thought I had seen (or rather heard) it all. This morning the local Ghanaians literally erected a church right outside my window. Commencing at 6:30am, nothing shy of 100 Ghanaians joined in worship and praise, attempting to collectively reach the ears of the heavens. And in true Ghanaian tradition, the worship portion of the service lasted until after 9am, when I finally left my hostel. On my way out, I couldn’t help but notice that the devotees all stood beneath a large camouflage tent. No wonder the parish was singing so loudly; they were simply trying to get God’s attention, and seeing as God couldn’t see them beneath the camouflage, they were making a solid appeal to His other senses.

I’m not sure if my life is The Truman Show, but I’m fairly certain that if a tree were to fall in the woods here, first, the woods and woodpeckers would be transported right outside my window, second, chainsaws would be responsible for the fall, and third, just to be sure, it would come crashing through my window.