Although it may not seem like a thrilling adventure to include in a blog, but shopping for home furnishings has actually taught me quite a lot about the Ghanaian way of doing business and has supplied me with many laughs along the way. In the last two weeks I have entered many many shops and encountered many shop keepers and sales people and have finally begun to grasp how business is conducted here. I have to admit, my first few shopping experiences were a little intimidating and frustrating because when you enter a store, most of the time, you are not acknowledged and almost never are you asked if you would like some help. It appears that customer service looks different here. The few times someone has approached me to ask me if I needed anything I was stunned and barely knew what to say. I almost took them up on it even though I didn't need any help just because I had the option to. I have learned that if you want something or need help while shopping, you have to be assertive and very very patient. You also have to be prepared to visit the store many many times before you actually walk away with what you want and need. For example, I've been looking for lamps which are not easy to find here and are quite expensive. Finally someone recommended a store that exclusively sells lamps so I was thrilled! I made it to the store and was pretty impressed to have found such a place. I started browsing and casually looked for a salesperson but didn't see anyone out on the floor assisting people. I decided to be patient and to keep looking around in the hopes that one of the employees would notice me and approach me to assist. I found a whole section of floor lamps, which is what I was looking for for the last week, and found them all to be reduced so I was even more excited. But, I couldn't figure out how to turn any of them on and had some questions. So I walk over to what appears to be a sales desk but the salespeople were engaged in a casual conversation with a customer but in a local language I couldn't understand. So I figure I'll wait and eventually they will acknowledge that I'm standing there. So I wait and wait and wait and none of them look at me and I don't want to be rude and interrupt but now it is getting ridiculous because they are laughing and clearly not conducting business with this guy. So finally I get the guts to say "excuse me, can someone assist me with looking at lamps?" The salesperson says to me, "yes, just speak to the salesperson" and goes back to his conversation with the other customer. I'm thinking, "who are you then?" and I don't see a salesperson! So I go wander over to the lamps again and finally the one salesperson comes over to me and I ask him a few questions. He is at this point quite helpful and attentive. So I find a lamp I'm interested in buying but am curious about their return/exchange policy. He laughs at me and says they don't officially have such a policy but he could do me a favor. I'm thinking, "wow, what a nice guy" and he says that in no way would I receive my money back but I could exchange the lamp for a more expensive item! I started laughing out loud and he was smiling too because it was so ridiculous. So basically the policy is that if my lamp was $100, I cannot just exchange it for another item of equal value but must pay for a more expensive item to replace my lamp. Ok...good to know what the "policy" is. So then when I'm ready to make my purchase the salesperson brings me to the check out desk to pay and the woman misread the bill and almost charged me only a fraction of what the lamp cost. Luckily for her, I pointed out her mistake. Then I was guided to another desk which is where you hand them your receipt and they go fetch your lamp for you. One of the guys brings me a dusty old box with what appears to be my lamp inside but the box looks like it has been opened a re-taped numerous times. I had an instinct that this was the last of this kind of lamp they had in stock and was correct. I just had a bad feeling that when I got home, this lamp would not turn on and then I'd be stuck with the Ghanaian Return Policy. So I asked the guy what would happen in that scenario and he just sort of gave me a look like, "then you'd be out of luck." So I asked them nicely to take the lamp out of the box and plug it in for me which they did with a few rolls of the eyes but I was pleasantly surprised when the lamp in fact worked.
Then there was shopping for fabric to have curtains made. I entered one store in which I received an unusual amount of attention and assistance. I had three sales people all pointing to fabric asking me if I liked them. One women pulled out a display book of sample fabrics to look at so I spent some time browsing through them and actually liked a few of them. After about 5 minutes of looking and her showing me what the book had to offer, she told me that their store doesn't actually carry any of the fabrics in that book. Hmmm...I'm not sure why we looked at that book at all but they didn't seem to think it strange to show me products they don't actually carry,
Sometimes the experiences here can be made more frustrating because of communication problems and different concepts of time which we'll probably get accustomed to after some time. We laughed when one of Alan's colleagues told him the story of when he asked his driver to pick up a "large tube of Colgate toothpaste" and the driver came back with two large bottles of Coke...this was clearly a communication issue and I guess the driver somehow heard "large," "tube=two" and "Colgate=Coke."
Alan commissioned a table to be made by a carpenter that works for his company and we were to pick it up yesterday from the man's workshop which he said was a few minutes from Alan's plant. So we borrowed his colleague's truck and driver to pick it up. The carpenter told Alan to call him Saturday morning at 8am to arrange the morning pick up. Alan called him at 8 and asked it we could pick up the table at 9:15am and the carpenter told us no problem. So the driver arrived with the truck promptly at 9am and we called the carpenter to get directions. He told the driver (now we are actually in the car ready to go) that he would not be ready until 10:30! It turns out he was not even in Accra but a few towns over and had no way to come in to Accra quickly. Alan got on the phone with him and flipped out a little and explained we had just spoken to him an hour ago, and he said 9:15 was fine. Apparently, there was a miscommunication. So we drove for an hour outside of Accra to pick him up at the side of the road and then he directed us for another 30 minutes to his workshop which was literally a work bench in the back yard of someone's shack in a little village. We had hoped that the last 30 minutes had gotten us partly back towards Accra given he had said it was only a few minutes away from Alan's plant, but they laughed at us when we made that assumption, and apparently we had gone even further outside of the city! Oh well, all in all it was a bit of an unexpected Saturday morning adventure and we got a perfectly made table and bedframe for $100!
All of these experiences are really great in that we're learning so much about various parts of Ghanaian culture and are just taking everything in stride. There is really very little use in getting frustrated or angry in any of these types of situations (although that is easier said than done) and so we try to laugh when things like this happen. I can already tell that I am becoming a better Ghanaian shopper because I've learned to be assertive, ask a lot of questions, and repeat back what I am told even though we're speaking English, to make sure I understand. Now, I just have to work on my bargaining skills!
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