THE Market

THE Market

Two weekends ago I wan in Kumasi which must be the economic and industrial centre for Ghana. First of all there are whole areas of the actual city, which is around 1 million people, dedicated to the manufacturer and processing of one specific commodity. For example there is one section that is totally devoted to auto parts and cars. There are rows and streets upon streets of nothing but car parts. One vendor will be selling nothing but hubcaps or fuel tanks or tires and this goes on and on in the district. Then there is the section where used clothing comes into town in huge bundles and stored to be shipped to the market. It is a street with shops packed from floor to ceiling with used western clothing.

Then there is the market.

Kejetia market is supposedly the largest market in West Africa. I’m not sure if this is actually true or not but regardless this market is HUGE. It is 10 hectares which is somewhere around 25 acres! There are stall upon stall of goods of all types and a buzz of constant activity. There are complete sections devoted to meat, used clothing, crafts, fabric, etc. When I mean complete sections I mean like a large department store sized section or larger. I don’t think there is any truly justifiable way to describe the atmosphere it is really something that needs to be experienced. Just the shear number of goods and people is astonishing. One weird part is that there will be stall next to stall of exactly the same goods, like 20 people in a row all selling the same multi-coloured plastic buckets followed by another 20 people selling the exact same selection of metal pot sets, or 100-200 people selling tomatoes. It is really remarkable. You could easily spend the entire day in the market. Food is easy to find as it travels by atop of a young ladies head shortly followed by a drink or fruit. It must to very tough to make living in this environment with plenty of competition and especially with stock that is perishable. There is also one section with used clothing that must be like every used store in Canada crammed into one spot. Everything from sports jerseys to business suits and everything underneath can be found. Really remarkable.

I would have liked to spend more time in Kumasi but I have to get back to Tamale to prepare for the workshop that we are running this week with the DWSTs.

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Just finished the workshop with the DWSTs it was two days of activities and discussions sharing ideas of best practices in the districts. The majority of it was the different members from the districts sharing ideas between themselves and working through some different ways to look at problems. It is pretty difficult to summarize the workshop here but it was great to see the participation and willingness of the team members and their effort to share ideas within districts. I am glad that I had some information to contribute and the investigations and studies we did in the field on the impact of the project and results in each district were very helpful. I had the chance to learn a lot about the interaction between districts and I hope that the workshop was helpful to all the districts. I believe that it helped establish a closer network between the different district teams and served as a forum for sharing ideas. I hope that the good energy displayed and lessons learned will be continued in the work they do in the districts.



Take care and God Bless,
Jason

Ps. Next issue will be a recount of my experiences as a butcher for a day and a half.