Let me take you on a tour, this is the place we go to every three days for fresh food. Fly covered food but fresh food nonetheless…. You’ll need a strong stomach. I only wish this was ‘smellynet’ too so you could really experience it.
I’ve taken to walking into town. It’s cheaper and the only exercise (apart from cleaning) I’m getting at the moment. It takes between 20 and 30 minutes depending on how hot it is. This is the path I walk down along the main road into town from Tamale.
Everyday new piles of ‘mud’ get shovelled out of the open drain beside the path and piled up onto it. I never see anyone removing them, although they do I have noticed over time, as where the piles are along the path is constantly changing. It turns out this is the stuff they used to fashion into bricks. I’ve discovered is the same stuff piled in heaps either side of the drain they are (still) making along our street as it dries rock hard. When it rains it sticks to your shoes like glue and dries on them like it’s been baked in an oven, so hard you need a chisel (a machete here) to get it off. Thankfully the drain on our street is nearly finished but we’ve worked through a series of unconventional, often unstable, bridges to enable us still to get access to our compound.
Food is seasonal and the market reflects this. Often things run out until the next harvest so one day you could be buying sweet potatoes and the next they are nowhere to be found but the following day there are bucket loads. We can get white potatoes like we would get in the UK, only here they are called Irish potatoes and they are difficult to find. I can’t show you yam alley (Yam chips and pepper sauce are a particular favourite of mine), I didn’t go there this weekend, and any way, it’s slowly changing into cassava alley… we are in for a seasonal change in the root vegetable variety. I can’t show you green peppers either, yesterday they were there and today they are not. Not sure they’ll be back for a while now.
We have fruit too, lots, seasonal again. We have yellow melons and pineapple at the moment, more bananas than you can shake a stick at and apples too. They’re expensive though. I tried a sweet apple today, Hananah gave to me while I helped out in the shop – was more of a hindrance to be fair, but it’s the only chance she gets to speak to anyone as she works in the shop 5.30 – 10pm every day. She isn’t even allowed to go to church. Sweet apple looks like a small durian (sp) fruit you’d get in Asia on the inside; tastes like icing sugar (too sweet for me) without the smell of rotting flesh (thankfully). Mostly you’ll find fruit sold in stalls outside of the market, beside the road or found in huge bowls on the heads of women and children, mainly girls wandering the streets selling from the bowl on their heads. This girl is selling small bags of pure water. it’s how you get it clean and safe here… that is of course if you pick the reliable brands….
Sometimes the don’t carry things to sell….
I’ve even seen a backpack being carried on the head… and a suitcase?!
The market is littered with small drains….
...and stalls, both new and old….
It is a 'market labyrinth' and you have to use landmarks to navigate yourself round. This is the case for everywhere, village, town, region. Often you’ll hear ’turn left at the baobab tree and right at the next pile of rocks’ No one tells you how big the tree is or how tall the pile of rocks are….no one has heard of a map. And no one needs to, there’s GPS now. Some vols are mapping the schools in Bolga municipal on GPS… let’s hope the idea takes off as smart phones clearly are and they map all the schools in the region. Maybe then the statistics office will be able to say exactly how many schools there are that are junior and senior high schools… maybe I just didn’t ask the right question…
Meet the dried fish stall…
..the fabric stall….
...the tomato and garden egg stall…
...the salt (with iodine) stall…..
...the cabbage (the veggie of the season) stall….
...the butcher stall…
….with entrails….
...the green leafy things (taste alright actually…. No idea what they are)….
...the onion seller and her onions (I did ask her to smile when she asked for her picture to be taken!!)…
...the handmade huge wooden spoons…
The cooking pots for street food (now you know why they have huge wooden spoons)….
...and the pig; wallowing in shit down an alley off the main market…..
Shove in the hustle and bustle, the motos, bicycles, children, goats, pigs, piglets, chickens and other fowl criss-crossing everywhere, the shit (literally) and the smells, some good… some bad and you have two hours of my day, every third day. Love it.
Great photos. Fabric & wooden spoons look good but I am not sure about that meat. Think I would have to be veggie!
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