This morning when we went for our walk we walked down by the open air market. We were out for our walk before the market woke up. We met a few vendors putting out their wares but for the most part everything was quiet; that is except for the garbage truck. Zoom Lion (the garbage company) has small 3 wheeled dump trucks that they use to pick up the garbage. The garbage trucks were out making their rounds. The trucks are fitted with music that sounds just like our ice cream trucks in the states. You can imagine our disappointment the first time we heard and looked for an ice cream truck only to find out it was a garbage truck. As they drive down the streets of Accra they play the music so the people will know they are coming. The people dart out of their houses carrying their bags of garbage.
As we walked past the market we stumbled upon an old wooden 7UP soda crate. Naturally I “NEEDED” the crate. The vendor that owned the crate was not around but an older gentleman told us that we could find some down the street at the community of Goatta. We asked how far it was; he said not far. The place he was pointing to was at the bottom of a steep decline. You know that what goes down must come up! We knew the walk back up the hill would be difficult but we decided that if we needed to we could hire a taxi to take us back to the hotel. The closer we got to Goatta we realized that there must be a language barrier involved because at the bottom of the hill was the biggest deepest gutter we have seen! I think the name of the place was really “Gutter” and it was mispronounced “Goatta”. Anyway we asked around and finally a middle aged man said he would take us to find one. He took us off the main road into the back alleys; it was very creepy! The houses were built so close to each other that there was only a single path winding around the houses. After about 2 minutes I was totally lost. I was happy that Steve was following behind me. At one point he said, “This is not safe! We need to be very careful!” The guy took us to one drinking bar after the other asking for coke crates. We only found plastic ones. We were so happy when we saw the main road and knew where we were! We gave the man a little monetary gift for his troubles and headed back up the hill to the hotel. Steve wanted to hire a taxi but I was having none of that. I wanted to go back to the 7UP crate and see if the owner had come out yet. The owner was an old lady and she said she did not want to sell the crate because she was using it. She said she was using it to cover the opening in the gutter to keep people from falling in when they came to her shop. First I offered her 20 Cedis and then I offered her 30 Cedis; she refused. I asked her if she would sell it if we brought her something else to cover the gutter. She did not say yes or no but she smiled. I took that as a good sign. Steve took it as a sign to hire a taxi and go back to the hotel. We decided to look around to see if we could find a scrap of wood or metal to cover the gutter. We stopped at a hardware store and all they had were full sheets of plywood with no means of cutting them. We decided to find the garbage truck and see if he had picked up any usable pieces of metal or wood. No luck with the garbage man. Then we spied a good sized piece of wood in a shop that sold handbags and dresses. . Her gutter was covered with cement. We asked the lady if we could buy the wood. She said she would not even know what to ask for the wood. I told her we would give her 20 Cedis. She was all smiles as she took the money. You know that she thought we had lost our minds! We went back to the old lady; I handed her the piece of wood and 30 Cedis. We were both happy. The whole venture cost an hour and half of walking and about 8 dollars.
Take care and keep praying for us, especially Steve! Ha!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
