The Market Place: Part One
The following two part article combines market going experiences in Medina, Kumasi, Accra, and a fetish market in Togo.
Orange dust billows up from the ground as the tro-tro comes to a rattling stop. The van’s sliding door opens, and the old men and the big Mama’s file out. Someone hands me a baby. I cradle the obibini ba (black baby) as I step down, plunging into a cacophony of smells, movement, and second-hand merchandise. I hand the baby back, and the Mama slips into the crowd. She perfectly melds with the undulating mob, and despite her colorful clothing is, in an instant, gone from sight. To my right, I notice a man peeing into an open sewer. I appear to be the only one who notices.
The crowd here is packed tight enough to make you claustrophobic. It never stops moving, and I don’t see how anyone can buy or sell anything when nobody ever stands still. The market is flooded with people, and floating above the teeming mass like leaves in a river are bundles—small, large, and over-large—balanced upon the heads of street wise Ghanaians. I have to duck suddenly as a woman with a large beaten-tin tray of dried fish almost beans me. Stooping, I accidentally back into a lady selling bags of drinking water, and she sucks her teeth at me and purses her lips. The market smells like the inside of a shoe, now like a tire fire, now an outdoor butchery or a glue factory, but every once in awhile the scent of ginger and sweetbread is detectable in the malodorous fog.
Train tracks lie over pitted and uneven ground. The crowd navigates the tricky surface with ease. The decayed railroad tracks form a large circle that skirts the periphery of the largest market in West Africa. In the middle lies chaos, streams of blood running from meat seller’s stalls, shouts of “Obruni!,” and enough sensory stimulation to last a week. This is the Kumasi market on Saturday, and it’s time to dive in.
The place looks like the 16th century is having a rummage sale, or at least it would if it wasn’t for the radios and the graphic tees. A lady next to me is selling crabs from a bucket at her feet—her shirt reads “Naughty Girl.” After walking past ten stalls whose wares are limited to huge piles of used footwear, I knife through the crowd and into a narrow alley. Women squatting on their heels look up at me with a mixture of confusion and boredom. Every ten feet or so someone grabs my arm, “Obruni, look, look. I give you good price.” And I have to explain that I appreciate the offer, but I’m good on the fist-sized forest snails for now.
Due to my never ending bad luck, I have entered the smelliest, rankest part of the market—the meat and fish section. Laid out on blankets that cover the ground are all varieties of eatable corpses: fresh tuna fish, dried barracuda, grilled tilapia, piles of intestines, bowls of pig's feet, big sheets of hog's fat, a newly slaughtered goat, and, the coup de grâce, shoulder high stacks of neatly layered smoked grasscutter (Benji-sized jungle rodent). Ten seconds in the place puts my four years of experience in a Kroger meat department to shame.
Half-stunned and wholly gagging, I turn into another alley. Right in front of me is a shop draped with animal skins. Civet, leopard, and antelope cover the rickety boards that serve as walls. Rows of dried birds lay next to rows of dried lizards which can’t even compare to the piles of stacked skulls—dried heads really—of all varieties: baboon, horse, dog, hyena, and even lion. Not to mention the paws—maybe gorilla, maybe chimpanzee, maybe the missing link, but definitely the hands of some poor creature. A stiff civet skin is moved aside, and a black hand with long fingers and hoary nails beckons “Bra Obruni (Come Whiteman). Special juju for you. Bra.” I step behind the curtain into a dank shadowy room. I’m looking for some special magic, and the man just might have it.
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-Kegen Dean Benson