02/06/2024 Bikepacking Ghana Day 182 : Cold Stores

“I want to marry you. Can I be your wife?”

It has been several days since I’ve received a marriage proposal. At home you could go your entire life without a woman asking you to marry her, but South of the Sahara, if it has been a few days since you’ve received a proposal, you start to wonder if you missed washing off some of the monkey poop in your last shower.

This proposal happened as I was asking questions about some smoking 55 gallon barrels surrounded by coconut husks. The setup looked very similar to the palm oil processing I highlighted in episode 163, but they explained that they were making stucco instead.

“I’m sorry, I already have a wife,” I replied.

The two working women were smiling, and so was the guy nearby. I am starting to think that these occasional requests for marriage and daily asks for money are mostly a joke… a way of starting a friendly and humorous conversation with a foreigner.

“But don’t you want a second wife? I can be your second wife!”

I told her that my current wife would probably not be very happy with a second wife. They laughed and smiled, saying “I love you.”

“One black woman, and one white woman. That is good, don’t you think?” she continued, still laughing.

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Apart from these risible conversations which I have daily, Ghana is otherwise less “different” from the US when compared to the 6 previous countries. You’ll notice that I haven’t written as much about this country - but the way I feel on the road is still somewhat different from home, because of the signage.

Like home, there are plenty of signs telling me who to vote for, but unlike home, the candidates will sometimes align themselves with God.

Speaking of God, there are tons of billboards promoting various Christian churches… and notably multi-day fasts - up to 17 days! That probably wouldn’t go over as well in Eastern Senegal where the people were tall and thin. Here in Ghana, though, fasting doesn’t look like it would be a problem.

Of course, the billboards constantly have you thinking about dead people. It seems you only get to put up a sign if you lived a long time, giving the misconception that Ghana is a country full of centenarians. It isn’t. In fact, out of 201 countries, Ghana takes place number 162 with a life expectancy of 63.8 years. I meant to mention this earlier, but Ivory Coast is notable for an extremely short life expectancy: There are only 7 (mostly war torn) countries with shorter life spans. I wonder if this is related to being downwind of the Harmattan’s that bring dust from the Sahara, coupled with the smoke from all the burning.

Another difference from the previous 6 is that I receive a lot less child abuse. That’s because the kids actually go to school, and leave me alone more. Also schools here are not advertised as a gift from an NGO or a present from the government. They’re “just school” like one would see at home: There is no sign out front promulgating the organization who paid for it

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Yesterday, Kevin Shaw asked me if people had been building their businesses using loans from NGO microfinance. I like these types of questions and projects, but I feel like I’m a little too late to find out because Ghana doesn’t seem to be the recipient of as much NGO activity as the other countries.

Just yesterday, I posted something to the effect of how I admired the business owners because they were always honest and responsible. So you can imagine my disappointment when ONCE AGAIN, I say something, only to have my theory disproven. My analysis and simplification often seems to be wrong.

The first place I stopped for food, I sat and snacked. Celine was the polite young shopkeep, and when I asked Kevin’s question, she said, “I do not own this shop; I rent it.” People love to joke and smile when we talk about marriage, money and moving to the US, but whenever I ask about school, work, or business, they become diffident, or seem to have trouble understanding my English words. It’s not a favorite topic. Nevertheless, I pushed forward, and asked if she would like to own her own shop one day.

Yes, she would.

So as I was packing up, I grabbed some extra cash and told her this was to go towards her startup. Microfinance.

Yes, I have become the type of person I complained about at the beginning of the trip - a white person giving handouts. Maybe I’ll talk about how I have changed my opinion on that tomorrow....

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The next place, they had saved the money themselves; it wasn’t NGO money. Again, the conversation felt strained. During all of my conversations, I’ll just sit and observe behavior. For some reason, it irked me when the store's resupply delivery arrived. The woman got up and started unloading the truck, while the man continued to watch cartoons on his phone. I almost got up and helped her myself. I know you guys don’t like to hear this kind of news, but I feel like I see the women doing a disproportionate amount of the manual labor. Meanwhile, it’s usually men who approach me asking for money or a job, claiming, “there is no work here.”

The third opportunity to answer Kevin’s question came when Theresa (who I met in a previous episode) texted me. I asked about her shop and received the following:

“But u see I will explained everything to you I mean how my sweet mum started her business she is called Mary she started with selling fried rice outside this small business give her an amount of 50000 cedis** in one and half year time,after this she started to build up another thing that is to add selling of fresh fish and ingredients needed for stew and soup so people start asking about different things so she started bringing new things and now it become a provision and a cold store*** so this how her business was started”

That story made me happy.

Thank you, Kevin, Connor Murphy, and Megan for your questions or comments that inspired fun interactions with locals!

**50,000 cedi is $4,000 USD.

***All the little shops are called “cold stores,” but to my eyes, that just means “tiny shop; about the size of 1/2 a shipping container, and maybe has a refrigerator.”