More about Zebilla - the market...

You buy fresh food in the market.  The range of recognisable food (to us) is quite limited.  Local produce includes sweet potatoes (in season now and fantastic) and tomatoes (apparently year-round and full of flavour; texture can be a bit hit and miss); yams (though we have seen these arriving in lorries so we’re not totally sure they are local); ground nuts (that’s peanuts).  There are onions but they might not be local; green peppers, which we think aren’t local and are pricy; red peppers, which we have experienced once and were so fiery that we’re giving them a seriously wide berth; and there are a couple of varieties of a mysterious green vegetable which goes by the name “garden eggs” and looks a bit like a tomato but is a lot more dense and tastes bitter until you’ve cooked it for quite a long time.

The fruit we’ve bought so far seems to be imported though some of it could come from other parts of Ghana – oranges, apples and bananas.  We’ve had pineapples twice from Bolga and we’re told they will make it to Zebilla but they have got here yet.  Zebilla supplies its own needs for watermelons and exports them within Ghana – we got one from a friend (and it was unbelievably delicious) but we haven’t succeeded in buying one yet.  We also got a pawpaw in Bolga but misjudged its ripeness and ended up throwing it away. 

The way selling works is that the seller makes little piles of her wares on a mat on the ground – so you get 4 or 5 large tomatoes for 0.5 Ghana cedis (15 pence) or a bigger pile (or maybe a small bowl) for 1 cedi.  We haven’t seen people haggling over prices but we’re told that they do – we normally pay the asking price but when we do it’s common to find a couple of extras put in too, which might mean that we should have haggled.  When you’ve bought, the wares are put into a small black polythene bag (known locally as a rubber).  We seem to be the exception in having a shopping bag.

There are various sorts of flour which is either sold in transparent polythene bags in quite small quantities (maybe a pound weight); or there are much bigger bowls, which however you seem only to be able to buy from if you have a container to put it in (and the skill to carry it away on your head).  There is also millet and maize – mainly in the large bowls; and ground nuts are sold the same way, and there are also a couple of varieties of dried beans.

Our impression is that people mainly buy quite small quantities – enough to last until the next market day.  Some people do have fridges – but certainly not everybody and my guess is that the majority don’t – but there is a ready supply of fresh food so there probably isn’t much point in trying to buy in bulk. 

There is fish – sometimes you see quite large, fresh fish, but mainly what you see is quite small fish, up to the size of a sardine, which have been dried in the sun.  The stall-holder has a big pile and you indicate what volume you want and agree a price.  We haven’t tried this – we’ve stuck to canned fish, you can get mackerel in tomato sauce and sardines.

If you want poultry, you go to a different market place and select your bird live.  They arrive at (and leave) the market in small cages beautifully woven from local rushes (maybe the stalks of millet), or with their legs tied together and slung over the handlebars of a bike or motorbike.  This is an eminently sensible way of ensuring that you get fresh and healthy produce.  We haven’t overcome our squeamishness about this yet.  You can also buy quartered fowl, which has already been cooked. 

Eggs are for sale both fresh and pre-boiled.  They are all free-range of course, and they come with various natural material adhering to the shell, as living proof.  The yolks are surprisingly pale, which makes me wonder whether the more vividly yellow yolks we are used to have had their colour artificially enhanced in some way (I recall hearing on the radio once that if you feed a chicken on maize, its meat will be more golden than one fed on other grains…)

There doesn’t seem to be a regular market place for goats, sheep, pigs and cattle, and as a general point these creatures seem to be for keeping rather than eating, except on special occasions.  We went to the tail end of a funeral recently and were told that they had slaughtered a cow to feed the guests, and there was a recent muslim festival when we understand livestock were killed – but it isn’t something we have directly experienced.  There is an abattoir in Zebilla if you don’t want to slaughter your own; and in a couple of places in the market, there are butchers’ stalls where you can see the whole animal minus its skin, in various stages of being cut into manageable pieces.

Along the road by the market there are small stalls/shops with electrical goods, hi-fi, hardware, clothing and the like.  And there are people hawking their wares around on their heads – quite a lot of pre-cooked food (“street food”) comes this way, and bananas tend to also (apparently because they bruise a bit less than they would on a stall?)  Recall at this point that Jane has previously described all the stuff that walked past on people’s heads when we were waiting for the bus from Accra to Bolga -  basically anything that can be hoisted up there (and a good many that you wouldn’t think can) stands a chance of coming past.  Zebilla doesn’t boast a particularly wide range, there is more in Bolga.

What I haven’t really attempted to describe here is the bustle of the market, its colours and its smells.  The market is a lively environment, thronged with people and activity.  The participants are predominantly women, but there are plenty of men there and neither shopping nor selling are entirely female pursuits as far as I can see.  There are plenty of children – mainly girls - and in school we have been told that pupil attendance on market days (ie every third day) is significantly poorer than on other days.  It’s quite common to see small children – certainly as young as eight and maybe even younger than that – walking round the market with goods on a tray on their heads.  Water in sachets is a common item for children to sell.

In Zebilla there are two quite large covered/roofed areas, each maybe the size of a tennis court, where sellers set out their wares.  There are also smaller stalls, which are recognisably market stalls, and have a roof which keeps off the hot sun (and rain in the wet season).  But in addition to this, at least as many sellers again, probably twice as many or even more, simply set themselves up on the ground.  People selling similar items tend to congregate together, so for example there is a large tree outside the main market square where vegetable sellers assemble; there is a street of yam sellers (at present infiltrated by sweet potato sellers); we recently learnt that water melons are sold further up town at a different place – that might explain why we haven’t seen one to buy yet, so will have to be checked out urgently (the water melon season isn’t long so one has to gorge while the opportunity presents itself).  

Apparently there is a system for allocating market stalls (official and unofficial) to sellers, and that you’re not allowed simply to pitch up with your wares.  I don’t know how true this is or whether it’s enforced – many laws in Ghana clearly aren’t vigorously enforced, but I have the suspicion that the market is such an integral part of local life in these rural areas that it’s rules will be a matter of keen public interest and hence complied with and enforced by peer pressure even in the absence of an efficient regulating bureaucracy.