Market Favourites

By Stephanie Fox -
The Fruit Lady

We like our fruit lady very much.  The fruit lady is our last stop each week at market. We usually buy several apples, plus some of whatever is looking best that week.  She always greets us with a very big smile and very warm welcome. She says we are her besssssst friend, and usually plunks an extra orange or banana into our bag (and is sure to look at us with a great big grin after the show of appreciation).  On weeks when we have a lot to carry we leave it at her booth while we do our rounds at the market. Once she was wearing shimmering purple eye shadow (women rarely wear make-up where we are) and I told that it looked nice. She was so happy she told me to come back behind her stand and dug through her purse so she could show me the little case of eye-shadows that she had. Then she wanted to put some of the purple on me right then and there. After tactfully dodging the situation (and I mean dodge nearly literally) Andy and I had a good laugh imagining what a scene I would be arriving back to Boabeng with shimmering purple smudged up to my eyebrows to accompany the beads of sweat rolling down my face, red-brown in colour from the road dust.


The Vegetable Lady

The fruit lady is a nice lady, with a nice smile, always polite, always friendly and always happy to see us. We like her for these things of course, but perhaps equally we like her for the goods she has available. She carries potatoes, carrots, lettuce, green peppers, green beans, and cucumbers– all ingredients that, although existent, are hard to find elsewhere in the market.  Like the fruit lady, she usually holds an extra pepper or extra carrot up and then plunks it into our bag, always sure to show us how much she appreciates our business.


The Tomato Sisters

The sisters are two young girls, say 15 years old, from whom we buy ocra, tomatoes, garden eggs and hot peppers. They leap up, holler down the aisle and wave eagerly at us when they see us coming. Then they advertise the produce of this week with utmost aggression, competing comically and furiously by stepping on each other’s toes (literally), telling us not to listen to the other, and pushing the other out of the way. We always do our best to be sure that we buy and equal amount from each one. Once we have told them what we would like to buy they do their best to try and talk us into buying their other products, advertisements busting with enthusiasm and reassuring positivity about the quality of their produce. I am not sure if they are sisters or friends or if at the end of the day they are actually sharing their profits, but they are always digging into each other’s coins to find the right change for us.


The 23 ladies. 

These ladies own a provisions shop in Nkoranza. There are 3 of them, not 23. Almost every young Ghanaian woman that I have met has asked me if I am married and where is my husband. I always say yes, and that he is coming to Ghana soon.  Then they ask ‘how old are you?’, and I say 23. Turns out that these girls who own this shop are also 23, and they think this is great. Now when I arrive they say ‘hello 23!’ or ‘welcome 23!’. 

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