To market, to market.  Last Thursday we went to two street markets:  Makola and Ablobloshi in downtown Accra.  These are market stall affairs, although a lot of folks can’t afford or don’t have seniority for a stall and line the streets with some fruit, fabric, used clothing, etc.  You can find a lot of stuff there.  I won’t say “everything,” as I would in Hong Kong or Shanghai, because a lot is just difficult to find here.  There are a lot of imports, many of them from China.  The long years of military rule and consequent plundering of businesses has really hollowed out their manufacturing sector.  They (and SEED!) are working to bring it back, but it’s slow.

True to SEED form, in addition to familiarizing us with the area, this was a working field trip.  We were given the task of interviewing 2 or 3 vendors at each of the 2 markets.  We were to engage them and ask about their business – how they started it, a day in the life, what happens to leftovers at the end of the day (for food sellers), and how they got their financing.  The last one is a doozy, and deserves a little sidebar to share some of our learning from Peace Corps training.

The extended family holds a very strong bond in Ghana and much of Africa.  “Strong bond” is a drastic understatement.  Extended family is THE support structure here.  Government is… “preoccupied,” and infrastructure is dodgy if you have any urgent needs.  This has other consequences, too..  Here, the helping hand extends to finances.  If your relative or close friend approaches you for money, you can’t refuse.  Can’t.  To do so more than a few times means that you are going to get cut out of things.

This necessary (in this culture and poverty level) and generous practice takes a particular toll on small businesses.  If a relative sees you making money, buying stuff, or even having a stall that is well-stocked with inventory and has an important need, they may well ask for a loan which probably won’t be repaid, at least not directly.  This often hits businesses just when they are starting to grow and keeps them stagnant.  Hence, folks are not only unwilling to share information, but go to great lengths to hide it even (or especially) from their loved ones.  But as regards our interviews , who in the world wants to tell a total stranger – a foreigner –  how they get their money?  This is also a serious obstacle for us as coaches to overcome.  We have a very critical need to see the REAL financial statements, etc.

Back to the market.  This place was bustling.  Foot traffic, cars, and motorcycles were all around.  The gutters are about a foot wide and 2 feet deep, so you have to nimbly hop back and forth to avoid getting creamed.  It all works quite efficiently, but I’m a long way from understanding the pattern.  As a tall man, I have a deathly fear of umbrellas.  Not of using them, but getting abused by them.  The pointy parts are all at my eye level.  Now try bobbing and weaving as 3 or 4 young ladies come at you with stacks of shirts, water sachets, eggs, you name it, all balanced on their heads.  Fortunately, they know what they’re doing, enough to make up for my clumsiness. But I fear it’s only a matter of time before I upset the applecart, so to speak.

I interviewed a shirt seller, a produce vendor, and a mother-daughter team selling herbal medicines.  Oh, and I got blown off by a couple of others.  The shirt seller was my first and I hadn’t really adapted my approach.  She was sort of willing to talk and echoed a sentiment I heard from many:  business is bad, and it’s been bad for about 5 years.  The global economic slowdown left its mark, and hasn’t yet relented for these folks.  Her shirts came from China and Italy where her sister is on the road working with suppliers.

The ladies selling food were great.  If I understood correctly, they are a team of mom and at least 2 grown daughters working the place.  In addition to produce, they had a big bowl tasty looking little blue crabs climbing over each other trying to escape.  These required a 5 AM trek to the waterfront a few miles away and back to set up and be open by 7.  At the end of the day, the leftovers went into their own cookpots or the trash.  They were very engaging and we got to joke around a bit.  I bought tomatoes and garlic which, it turns out, we already had tons of back at the apartment.  But then, you can never have too much garlic.

The herbal ladies were similarly helpful.  They had loads of stuff I didn’t recognize.  I asked what they were.  That was a futile gesture because the explanations meant nothing to me.  It appeared that herbal medicine sales are doing well.  They had to rebuild after a fire about a year ago took out all the stalls in that particular area.  They did it and are thriving.  That speaks volumes about the entrepreneurial spirit here.

We found out later that for each category of merchandise, there is a “king” or a “queen” who calls the shots for the group.  If someone is pricing too low, or moves in to the market without their say-so, they encourage them to try another approach.  Next time I’ll seek those folks out and try to get their perspectives on Ghanaian small businesses.

No pictures from this part of the trip, but clearly I’ve made up for it with my verbosity!  I will not be taking a whole lot of photos of the local folks.  Here you must ask before snapping one.  There is a great sensitivity about people exploiting poverty by photographing people in need and then making money off it in the west.  Think of how we might feel if some foreigner just started shooting pictures of us  in a market or a park with our children.