A-tisket A-casket

Friday: A-tisket A-casket

We had a late start this morning because two of the four of us fell prey to last night's dinner. Thanks to Imodium we were able to head out around noon. We went looking for the famous casket companies of Ghana. Some of us were expecting a large showroom full of caskets, instead they were small workshops on the side of the road. Now these are not typical caskets, but instead custom made caskets in different shapes. For example you could get a fish casket, robot casket, Star Beer or Coke bottle casket, hammer casket, a Canon camera casket, crab or lobster casket, a tro tro casket. We even were able to see them working on a hammer casket that is going to be shipped to Belgium. We enjoyed wandering through the neighborhood along with Ghanians, children, chickens and sheep. We stopped a music/DVD stand where we purchased a burned CD of Hiplife music for Afro Club Tilley. We watched chickens being slaughtered on the street. And a funeral procession which was loud and noisy with honking horns and a pickup truck  overloaded with men dressed in black with the casket. They were followed by many tro-tros full of people. The women were in black and white. We learned that funerals are usually on Friday followed by thanksgiving on Sunday, a gathering where mourners give donations to the family of the deceased. 

We hopped on a totally packed tro-tro (18 people plus driver and conductor) shoving Señora way in the back. We road to the tro-tro station in Accra. The ride cost each of us 45 pesewas. You can't beat the price, so we jumped on another tro-tro headed to Osu. Here we ate lunch at Dynasty Chinese Restaurant. This was the first restaurant that was indoors and air conditioned and we enjoyed it immensely. We topped it all off with Italian gelato down the street. We are now expert negotiators for cabs as we managed to talk a driver down from 8 cedis for the trip to the hotel to 4 cedis. 

Back at the hotel, our friend from the cultural center, Ose came to us in the lobby loaded down with Kente cloth. We drove a hard bargain and each ended up with treasures. Each day here in Ghana is jam packed and leaves us exhausted and ready for a shower.