And This Little Carcass Went to Market

I went to the market today, as I have gone many days this trip to shop for a variety of items. The first time I went I felt very overwhelmed. There were simply too many stimuli there for me to function properly. But since then I have grown accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the day at the market.
I am able to see fresh foods and produce in surplus, some even rotting. There are fabric stores draped from floor to ceiling with kente worth hundreds of cedies and simple patterns used for school uniforms of the students. There are cell phones and shoes both perused and cleaned for selling. There are fresh crabs, smoked fish, and fried plantain chips carried by the women on their heads in large silver bowls on top of rolled material. These bowls are balanced like acrobats as they maneuver gingerly through the crowded streets.
And the honking! Five seconds do not go by without someone, a taxi driver especially, honking their horn. Rules of the roads seem to be suggestions. And horns are used to imply a few things: do you need to get picked up, I am dropping someone off, I am passing you, I have passed you, get out of the way, I am going over the speed bump, we have made it over the speed bump, I am passing the other car… And yet I have yet to see anyone get hit.
I honestly feel that the markets are a heart of culture and creation. The hagglers selling things to make ends meet, the peddlers vending things on the side for extra cash. People shopping for meats and spices for their dinners, and tourists shopping for flags and carvings for friends. The commerce of exchange is ceaseless at the down town market.
My most recent visit at the market I felt more comfortable, although I still had a person much more versed with the area than I am come along with me. I was buying fabric for a dress and a men’s shirt and having an ice-cream sachet. As we were walking a young man ran buy us yelling something in Fante and while I was not quite sure what he said, just as I am unsure with many of the words and conversations at the market, but this message seemed urgent. Just as soon as the young man passed another was walking by, clearing a path of shoppers along his way. As he walked he had a slab, a carcass, balanced on his head. It must have weighed just as, if not more, than his own strong frame. With every heavy step he took he sent vibrations up to the meat which still had tens of pounds of fat hanging on to its flesh. The animal had been skinned. It had also already been gutted, but still was blood red and drenched with it blood, as it dripped from the portion of animal which was soon to be sold. I was shocked. My face sure enough caught the attention of an older man who was selling DVDs and he laughed at my sheer amazement of the situation.
Lots of thoughts passed through my mind. I wanted to immediately become a vegetarian; there was no way that what happened to that animal had been humane. I wondered if all the blood, which dripped down the street there after in a dotted line, would get trekked into shops, and taxis, and homes. I thought about what I have eaten while here, and if that meat had been carried through crowed streets in the same way. I asked my friend if he had ever butchered an animal, he explained of course he had. I repeated the ‘of course’ in my mind.
The only meat I have ever had to deal with has been prepackaged with small plastic green leaf trimmings adorning the slices. I have never had to really think about the person who raises the animal, the one who goes to work every day and leaves with dried blood under their nails, the person who sells the meat, and the one who has to sell meat knowing it will go bad by tomorrow. There have been still things I haven’t thought twice about since being in Ghana.
For one thing my blackness has finally been validated. I am recognized as a Black American and the uniqueness which comes along with this makes my children go crazy with questions. But my identity as an American who hasn’t been in contact with fresh meat at markets was very clear to me today. As we continued down the market we ran right into the back of a pick-up truck which had three more slabs of meat, by then I had concluded it had to have at one point been a cow, with horse fly’s enjoying free samples. The world did not stop for me or my amazement. The world did not stop for him to carry the slab down the block, on the contrast many people passed by mind with the same intensity they had before. But for that moment, that small instant within the organized chaos of the market, I was able to seriously consider myself, who I was (and how I honestly differed from that carried slab of meat).