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.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

I’ve encountered a seemingly small obstacle in my first few weeks. Personal hygiene is not something I am fond of sacrificing, and approximately ¼ of the weight of my luggage could be attributed to my desire to maintain a socially acceptable minimum aseptic standard. In retrospect, this may be overkill , but I was merely trying to live by the Boy Scout motto be prepared.

Since clothing is an extension of the physical, laundry is, of course, compulsory. Thankfully, my office has a small washing machine that makes the task of doing laundry much more efficient and manageable. Due to the naturally hot environment, clotheslines and clothespins are seen as a credible substitute for a dryer. Again, no problem.

Problem: timing. I have quickly emerged among my peers as the most accurate weatherman in all of Accra. Inevitably, the entire community now knows that when I put my clothes on the line to dry, a deluge is merely 30 minutes away. For whatever reason, anytime I go to dry my clothes, it inevitably downpours, resulting in my clean clothes smelling worse than before they were washed and impossible to wear. I blame it on the fact that we are at the end of the rainy season, where it rains nearly every day. But this hardly seems like a credible excuse when everyone else is managing fine.

At the current rate, I’m quickly running out of fresh clothes and have amassed a suitcase or two worth of mildew. It won’t be long before I’m entirely out of clean clothes and resorting to a clothing line similar to that featured in the Emperor’s New Clothes.

That's Where We Want to Go, Way Down in Ada Foah

There’s a long standing question used to gauge personality; Mountains or Beaches? While I have developed a love for exploring the outdoors, somewhere along the incunabulum of my youth, I developed a beach bias. Much of my youth summer was spent on the shore – where I became intimately familiar with my family’s beach condo in Dewey Beach.

I used to enjoy leaving our property to go hang out in the sand of the beach property next door. The owner was a crotchety scrooge of a lady, who had her collection of water toys, that served just that purpose; to be a collection (the transition from the Hoveround electric scooter to the jet ski was just too much). I enjoyed hanging out on her beach searching for the horseshoe crabs that occasionally ventured to shore to mate. It didn’t take long before the Grinch posted a wired fence along with a no trespassing sign. Needless to say, she and I did not get along. She never even game me a chance. So a young lad was interested in mating arthropods; why rush to judgment?

I also have (mostly) fond memories of crabbing off the dock (the equivalent of fishing for crustaceans). There, of course, were exceptions. The dock was structured such that there were narrow offshoots from the pier’s main walkway. My grandfather specifically instructed me not to venture onto the narrow walkway; my plump and uncoordinated body made me ill-suited for anything other than the main dock. So, of course, like any boy would do, I ventured out onto the side pier. The crabs were more abundant out where the pier was narrow I rationalized. Well, it didn’t take long before I bellied up in the bay, and now there I was, trying to stay afloat in (abundantly) crab-infested water! My grandfather just shook his head. That will teach you. It did. Next time, I would forgo catching crabs off the dock in exchange for catching (horseshoe) crabs on the spoilsport’s beach.

Alas, my youth harvested in me a yearning for the beach. Not surprisingly, I’ve managed to spend my first two weekends in Ghana at the beach. With my new collection of Obruni colleagues, we decided to venture to Ada Foah, an expat friendly beach resort a few hours outside of Accra. So we took a taxi to a bus to a canoe to an island and by nightfall we arrived at Ada Foah. Accommodations are provided on a reservation system akin to what I call first-come, first-served. So since the apparent travel across the universe took longer than expected, all rooms were already full. As were those at the neighboring resort. We were luckily able to negotiate a room – the resort’s shed. Seven guys in one shed. I don’t know. I heard the Ural Mountains aren’t that bad.

Trans-Atlantic Transition

A funny thing happens when you go from the daily well-travelled routine of a consultant to the unknown working environment of Ghana. You’re life is like a pineapple upside down cake right side up, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the bread (and sans peanut butter, but oh how I miss peanut butter…okay so just jelly); life is incomprehensibly crazy. In advance of my full time job as an Obruni, I found myself running ragged across the Washington DC metropolitan area preparing for my great departure.

The weekend before I parted with the 3G network, I attended the wedding of two of my good friends, Bernard and Liz. While walking to the wash room at my friend’s wedding, I was approached by a boy asking my age. When I informed him that I was 24, he seemed unable to believe I could be so old. In turn, I asked him his age. He was 9. He then proceeded to inform me that he felt sorry that I still had my braces on, seeing as his sister, although only 15, already had her retainer. Really? Well, thankfully my braces finally came off, along with my pre-teen guise. But the normalcy was short-lived. I simply swapped abnormalities; going from adult braces to being a white-skinned American in Ghana. I guess I just can’t resist being different.

There was also the matter of health. Before my year-long adventure, there were, of course, the compulsory vaccinations (and the not so compulsory ones the travel clinician tried to persuade me to take. A three part painful series for rabies that cost $200 per shot – no thanks on account of this not being Jumanji and just think of how much peanut butter I can import with $600). On top of that, I had my first MRI, held at Children’s Hospital. Well, the great thing about Children’s Hospital is that you can choose what music you want to listen to during the testing. The selection book contained a diverse set of albums from Hannah Montana 1 to Hannah Montana 2, so I selected the most mature album, John Legend, which consequently lulled my into a sleepy state that was difficult to combat. Lesson learned. Next time, I’ll pick something more upbeat. Maybe Ricky Martin.

And on top of everything else, I studied for and took the Graduate Management Admission Test, most commonly known as the GMAT. By practicing my critical reasoning skills, I learned about important facts of life. For example:

Question: It is true of both men and women that those who marry as young adults live longer than those who never marry. This does not show that marriage causes people to live longer, since, as compared with other people of the same age, young adults who are about to get married have fewer of the unhealthy habits that can cause a person to have a shorter life, most notably smoking and immoderate drinking of alcohol.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument above?

Answer. Among people who as young adults neither drink alcohol immoderately nor smoke, those who never marry live as long as those who marry.

Since when did the GMAT need to start providing social commentary?

But the transition is officially complete. After a few frantic weeks in the States and a few frantic weeks in Ghana, (and a few sleepless nights and a few foodless days on account of illness) I believe I have successfully transitioned. What better way to start my next chapter; True Life: I’m an Obruni.

Fauna No More

The other weekend, my roommates and I had a handful of friends over. In the course of our normal (or abnormal to any other reasonable person) conversation, the topic inevitably progressed to animality. For whatever reason, I have found myself in a congeries of conversations with this peer group, ranging from the reproductive nature of sea creatures to the posturing of quadrupeds during sleep.

So it was only logical that our conversation inevitably turned to a unique food item that speculators believed included animal product; the marshmallow. This stout cylindrical fluff, best known for its leading role in the delicatessen s’mores, was suggested to contain horse hooves. Amidst gasps and outright denials, stealthy investigation led to the conclusion that in fact, animal bones, skins, and hides are used. To top it all off, due to the extensive processing, the federal government does not even consider the marshmallow an animal product. Woof. (At least, that’s what I think the wolf said before he was skinned!)

I seemingly found this information fascinating and repulsive, and marshmallow abstinence is an early front runner for next year’s resolution. While recounting this story to my friend Ben, he decided to illuminate the fact that red velvet cake contains the food colorant carmine, which happens to be made from Central and South American ground beetles. Turning to my viral myth buster, Snopes, I once again felt victimized by this unpublicized reality. One might call this egoistic, seeing as the actual victim in this cake is the beetle.

Based on my fairly scientific research, this simple sample of two reveals that the fifth food group atop the pyramid is not fats, oils, and sweets, but rather horses, beetles and unicorns. It hasn’t been proven yet, but I’m putting money on nutritionists discovering traces of unicorn horn in that trendy cupcake shop down the street.