cultural tidbits

A few cultural tidbits everyone should know when arriving in Ghana.

The Ghanaian hand shake has a little extra. Remember when you were a kid and had a secret hand shake and would snap your fingers together at the end. Well the Ghanians do this always, no matter women or men. I’m not too good at it and I’m just not getting the snap down, but at least I understand what is going on. At first I was so confused.

When you order prepared food to go, you first order your starchy staple and then you will go through the different sides and then a meat, be it fish, hotdog, gizzards, chicken or something else. They also use the skin of animals for adding flavor to cook, but they eat it as well. It is really rubbery and takes a bit to get used to it. Also when you order your quantities you do it by how many pesewas (cents) or Cedis (Ghanaian dollar). For instance I could order 80 pesewas Joloff rice, 30 pesewas salad and one cedi fish. This will come all together in a plastic bag to take home and eat. It is important that the rice and rice and beans (Wakye) is hot, which is a sign it was cooked recently but also less likely to have bad bacteria.

This is the night cafeteria  or the market where I get my lunch and supper most days.  It as open air market with several food vendors with several different types of traditional Ghanian foods. In addition there are fruit and vegetable vendors as well as vendors that sell household goods.