What can you Balance on YOUR head?

Today I witnessed a parade in Ghana.  Women only, trying to out-do each other, a battle for ‘the Strongest Neck.’  First came a woman with a bag on her head.  Not like brown baggin’ it, but a woman carrying her purse on her head, with no hands.  Then a girl came with a tray of apples, then a bowl of shish-kabobs.   She’d move to the side, take her bowl down and sell one to her friend.  A convenient, arms-free, snack version of the food truck, 
only suitable for a small town where everyone walked around and knew each other, in other words: Only in Ghana.   

The most impressive players in the parade were the mattress lady, the chicken coup lady, the pineapple lady(unpictured, but I was tremendously impressed that she could balance a bowl of about 20 pineapples and a giant knife on her head) and who could not be mesmerized by the BAG-LADY: an overflowing bowl of bags AND two big armfuls?  Wow-za!!!

The Bag Lady of Takoradi, Ghana

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Takoradi, Ghana was the smelliest place I have ever been.  You can see in this photo, a square drop-off in the ground.  It was about 1-2 feet deep and filled with garbage, old food and gray water and probably, wait for it…poop.  At least that is what it smelt like.  Going around the globe I’ve been to a few souks before, but this was the most-narrow maze of a marketplace I have ever seen.  If you got pushed, you would fall ankle deep into poop water.  The market was about two feet wide and there was a gap- filled with more gray water-about 3 inches wide right down the middle.  Nothing they sold was fresh by any American Standard.  The most disgusting thing they sold?  


Snails.  
And in case you cannot tell from this picture, they were huge. These are like the size of shells you put up to your ear to hear the ocean.  Of course they were by a basket full of tiny, living blue crabs, so I closed my eyes and squirmishly walked past.  I followed the line-all six of us tourists, fresh off a luxury cruise ship, trying to get a gist of the city, but really just wanting this experience to be over so we could breathe again.  It was about 85 degrees F and 90% humidity and we were on the top rack of an oven with kitty litter box fumes coming from the bottom.