Day 1275 - Big Crazy Market

So crazy I didn't get any pictures!

This morning we got up and hung around a bit, and then I headed over to the Guest Center.  Yesterday, we'd run into Mr. Mensah, who works there, and was a friend of Anna-Marie's (did I already say this?  It was a looong post).  His sister is a seamstress, and so he called her over and we talked about getting her to come by the flat to measure me, Ruth, and Melissa and make some shirts/dresses for us.  She'll be here at 8AM on Tuesday, so I have to remember to set the alarm!

Then, we went down to Makola Market.  We were lucky enough to catch the MMT bus, and though it was a bit of a long trip (Accra traffic is a nightmare), we made it there in one piece.  I even managed to find us a number of fabric shops, which was our main target.  We all got some fabric - certainly enough for two shirts for me and a dress each for M&R, plus we're probably just going to see if we can have dresses/skirts made for Ruth out of any large enough leftover pieces.  Ruth picked out a nice piece of pink fabric with purple geometric designs.

And of course, she remembered the promise of beads.  She had definite ideas of which bead shop she'd seen to go to, and despite my trying to show her others, insisted on a strand of pink sparkly plastic lozenges. The woman running the shop was nice enough to let Ruth watch as she made them into a necklace, and threw in two elastic wristbands made from the leftover beads.

From Makola, we walked up (not that bad a walk, though today was pretty brutal hot) to the National Museum, where I got to try to explain what the model slave ships were all about to Ruth in age-appropriate terms.  We settled on, "it was very sad."  Fortunately, she was also excited about Kwame Nkrumah's chair, and she remembered that the stools were what kings sat on.

Then we jetted over to Osu, grabbed some needed curios for folks back home from the AACD store and some needed lunch for the rest of us (I took us to the place where we could get chicken and french fries and somehow still didn't get Ruth to eat much), and then after a few false starts and missed turns, got to the Osu Children's Library.  Ruth did a puzzle, and then I read a few stories to her and the other kids there.

Then a long cab home where Ruth fell asleep and I managed to spill satchel water all over myself.  And, of course, Ruth wanted to watch Ratatouille again...

Tomorrow: Grammy and Grampy arrive!