The Shopping Continues

The shopping continued today as we checked out another of Accra's neighborhoods called Osu. Time Out magazine has Time Out Accra so we've pretty much been checking out all of the listings from the magazine. Today we really wanted to check out a store called Global Mamas because it's free trade and supposedly really cool. It did not disappoint. The majority of Global Mama's products are clothing and the quality and uniformity among the different samples was astounding. In the name of research I tried on as many things as possible and was shocked to find that all of the size smalls were actually the same size. None of the artisans that PCVs work with in Senegal are remotely near the level of the products we saw at Global Mamas. The marketing was also really cool and every product had a tag that was signed by the creator of the product. It's very interesting to see the artisan products here and how they differ from Senegal. I've spent probably 3 times more money in Ghana in three days than in the past almost 10 months in Senegal.

After shopping we did more shopping, also in the name of research. There's an artist co-op/ museum type place that has had various benefactors, the most recent being Kofi Annan. Like so many artisan products and ateliers that I've seen it came ever so close to being really cool. The building is huge, four stories, and right on the Gulf and filled with art from various Ghanaian artists. Everything is for sale and the products range from fine art to jewelry to clothing to children's toys. I enjoyed looking at everything, but there was absolutely no information about anything. The artists' names were next to their works, but no biographical information and the building was definitely in need of some repairs, some AC, and some water proofing. There was some really beautiful oil paintings on display, but the rest of the art I found fairly comparable to the quality of art that I've seen with Dioss going around Thies and taking pictures.

Tonight, we returned to Champs, the American sports bar chain, for trivia night. Although we got there an hour and a half early because the published start time is incorrect I did have chicken fingers and fries and free beer which made everything all better. We made friends with a Canadian couple and a British foreign service officer and made a valiant run at the championship. My incredible supply of useless knowledge came in handy as usual as I knew not only what color the sole of Christian Louboutin high heels are, but also the 59 year old golfer who came in second at last year's British Open, the Lady Gaga song Paparazzi, and that Selenium is not a radioactive element.

Tomorrow we are going to attempt to venture out of Accra on public transportation!