My friend Marina and I decided to adventure out to Kaneshie Market this week - one of the more hectic markets in town. It's in a bright yellow structure which is 3 floors and is surrounded by vendors outside selling mostly veggies, fruits, dried fish, and chillies. Our goal was to buy some traditional Ghanaian fabric as we heard that the top floor was devoted to just this. We asked Marina's housekeeper, Elizabeth, to join us to help us sort out quality fabric vs. non-quality fabric and to help us get some better prices. We first stopped on the second floor where Marina, a yoga instructor, was looking for some plastic mats to teach yoga on. We were lucky in finding them. It was definitely tight quarters shopping and we found ourselves constantly repostioning ourselves to get out of the way of bustling shoppers around us. Of course buying from one vendor made the next door vendor very upset and she asked me why we didn't buy from her. Then she asked me for 1 cedi to get some food. I've learned that the best thing to say in these situations is "tomorrow" because that implies tomorrow we'll be back to shop from her. At least that is what Frank, our driver, always says when street beggers come to the car when we are at the stop light.
Then we ventured to the 3rd floor which was vendor after vendor selling the most vibrant beautiful cloth you can imagine. No two patters were alike which made it impossible to decide. Then inside the middle of the market floor were tailors, one after another, busily sewing traditional Ghanaian outfits, some even with detailed embroidery on them. We watched them work for a while. We also learned all about the various levels of quality from Elizabeth who was an excellent guide. Here is Marina as we try to make the impossible decision.
We did finally make a few purchases and have decided we feel confident enough in our cloth knowledge to do this on our own next time. And next time, I am definitely going to take more pictures but for the first time, it was a little overwhelming just taking it all in.
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