Field Notes, Day 7

Impact Hub, Tea Baa GH, Makkola Market with Apetsi, Dr. Reid’s Goodbye Dinner

We walked to the Impact Hub, not too far from Roots Hotel. It was actually just a hop away from Shop Accra. The Impact Hub serves as an incubator for developers, entrepreneurs, and Ghanaian thinkers who want to create businesses and products, discuss ideas, and organize in order to produce substantive results. After touring the cool facility, we hung out in the yard and met three men working with the Impact Hub to make their ideas a reality. Santos was one of these men, he works to design custom shoes and bracelets, and I was so impressed by his work that I ordered a pair from him. From this group, we heard stories of leaving their places of origin in order to learn more about entrepreneurship and research everything from health disparities and transportation. This meeting followed the trend of our group continuing to meet young movers and shakers working in Ghana to develop projects geared at facilitating systemic changes in various fields. None of these innovative people that we’ve met were over 30, yet they were doing social research and developing plans to create new things and improve their fellow man’s way of life.

We then enjoyed some iced tea at Tea Baa GH next to Shop Accra before we we went to Makkola Market with Apetsi. He took us by Tro-Tro to the market, which was crammed and overwhelming (even if it was meant to be one of the market’s slower days). We walked past streets covered with rows of market men and market women beckoning us. Stands and piles of bags, watches, cleaning supplies, shoes, soft drinks covered any trace of a sidewalk and reached all the way to roads. We were lead to a line of stalls selling fabric, because our group told Apetsi that we all wanted custom made clothes. He told us that each of the fabrics had different meanings and names depending on the colors and the patterns. Red and black were meant for funerals, some patterns resembled snakes, granite, and Apetsi said one was called “cow shit.” We avoided the cow shit one… I picked out a red, yellow, and blue granite pattern and asked for three yards in order to make a dress.

From there, Apetsi took us to his village so that we could get measured and see pick out designs from a seamstress and tailor. Upon arrival it was already dark, there wasn’t much light in the village, and the structures where people worked and slept were wooden and box-like. Women took our measurements and we made our choices from a wall covered with pictures of example dresses and magazines that they showed us, the men in our later did the same with the tailor. Our seamstresses treated us kindly and helped us make our decisions, but when we went along to visit men’s tailor we were accosted by a drunk man who kept trying to speak to us in Twi. That wasn’t the most pleasant experience, but we soon got away from him and loaded onto Tro Tros, walked a bit, found a taxi, and returned to the hotel to get dressed for Dr. Reid’s farewell dinner, because he would be returning to the United States early. He took us to a fancy restaurant in Accra, I ordered Italian pesto pasta and we toasted to the incredible experiences we have had with him by our side. We were reminded that this particular trip may be one of the most extraordinary that the African Democracy Project has facilitated.