The Busiest Shopping Day of the Year

For those of you who have seen Erin around the Holidays, she's a Christmas FANATIC. She has her favorite obscure Christmas song (Oh Bambino by the New Christy Minstrels), she craves an all-carols-all-the-time existence, and she loves decorating the instant Thanksgiving ends.

As you probably guessed, Ghanaians don't celebrate Thanksgiving (or other colonialist holidays we love so much), and the American ex-pat community is so small that the upscale grocery stores don't bother catering to our purchasing power. For our last Thanksgiving in Ghana we couldn't find a proper turkey at Koala, our local cosmopolitan grocery store—apparently Butterball Ghana Ltd. doesn't exist. Ultimately we purchased a turkey from a local poultry farmer for a price so exorbitant I'd rather not discuss it. This year we are living somewhere new, and our apartment doesn't have an oven (only stove). So this year, after celebrating a non-traditional, Ghana-style Thanksgiving (we watched the season one finale of Nip/Tuck and ate Indian food), we decided to try to make our Ghana Christmas more festive.

Earlier this week we went by Koala and found they were already selling Christmas decorations. We wandered the store, Erin's eyes bright with Christmas possibilities. After playing with lots of ornaments and petting some garland, Erin found a wiry artificial Christmas tree that went up to about my knee. For 20 whole dollars we could own the fake-tree version of Charlie Brown's infamous evergreen. We made a pact that the day after Thanksgiving we'd drop by Koala again and pick one up.

Later in the week, we spoke to some friends who had recently visited "Game" and "Shoprite" – two new stores in Accra. Our friends described Game as a "Target" doppelganger and Shoprite apparently looked like a typical US supermarket. Like Walmart, these places are supposed to have guaranteed low prices. On Thanksgiving we decided that we should take a ride out there to check out Christmas decorating options before fully committing to Koala's tree. The day after Thanksgiving we got up early, jumped in a tro-tro, and headed off for the new stores.

As we approached the stores we both glanced at each other with the "HOLY SHIT!" face. Game and Shoprite are located in "Accra Mall"…Accra Mall is a freakin' suburban US shopping mall! It is not "like" an American shopping mall, it "is" one. As you walk through the glass box of automatic doors, you feel awash with a wave of air-conditioned air. The mall is completely enclosed with faux-marble floors and high ceilings. The shops have full glass fronts and beautiful merchandise showcases. The bathrooms were nicer than your average American mall bathrooms…they were more like high-end department store bathrooms: marble appointments, cherry wood stall doors, turbo-charged hand blowers.

Granted, the mall is not completely finished yet. They are still constructing the second story, and the food court still looks like a concrete shell. That said, it has its two anchor stores up and running, along with, get this, a Sony Centre that rivals the one in Old Orchard Mall (for you Chicago/Evanstonians). Since Puma sponsors the Black Stars (Ghana's national soccer/football team), Accra Mall boasts a Puma store. It also has a handful of local and national clothing boutiques, a teacher/education store, a hair and nail salon, a Pottery Barn-like home store, and a mall optometrist.

It was as if, just in time for Christmas, we had found an oasis of American consumerism, a materialist Mecca, a slice of blue light special heaven.

"Have a FUN-BELIEVABLE Christmas!" and "Guaranteed Low Prices Guaranteed!" signs greeted us as we entered Game. Game really does feel like Target. It is about the same size of a normal target, with about 20 aisles and departments around the outside – electronics, home, sporting goods, office supplies, etc. Game doesn't seem to sell clothes, but everything else is very similar to your low cost superstores. This is kind of amazing for Ghana. Max Mart and Koala, the other major superstores in Accra are about a quarter the size of Game. Rather than 20 aisles plus separate departments, Max Mart and Koala have about 3-5 aisles for each of their two floors. This is a fundamentally new shopping experience for Ghanaians.

"No Way!" Erin exclaimed, "They have Kit-Kat bars here for half as much as Koala or Max Mart!" Chocolate is usually hard to find cheaply here in Ghana, despite cocoa being one of Ghana's top three exports. Last year, the market was flooded with Lindt 70% cacoa chocolate bars, which we could buy for $3.50. Now there is a lack of supply and they are going for $8.00 a piece at Koala and Max Mart. Kit-Kat bars, which you can buy for $1.50 at Koala, were being "regularly" sold for 70 cents, and on sale today for 50 cents. WooHoo! We piled confections high in our cart.

We roamed the store for a while and found the sporting goods section. Erin tried out an "ab roller," and I played around with a cricket bat, trying to figure out why it was flat on one side and beveled on the back side. We checked out the wine section, and found a bottle of Hardy's Chardonnay (which won our wine tasting a couple of years ago) for about $7. We hugged some pillows. We browsed.

We turned a corner and voila! Christmas Central. Two aisles devoted to Christmas decorations. Rather than Koala's limited stock of trees (small and stumpy or large and pricey), Game had about 10 artificial trees to choose from, with a variety of colors (evergreen and snow white) and sizes. The smallest tree was about the same height as the Koala Charlie Brown tree, and at $5 it was a quarter of the price. Ultimately, we found a tree for $35 that is as tall as I am and looks rather full. We grabbed some lights, and some red and gold ornaments that resemble our decorations from home, and walked out of Game less $65 but rich in chocolate and holiday cheer.

We also visited Shoprite, which does resemble an American supermarket. A box of Corn Flakes and other dry cereal often runs you about $10 at other local grocery stores, but at Shoprite you can get you flakes on for only $3.50 a box. They also had frozen pizzas, and tv dinners, conveniences which other stores in Accra don't offer (too bad we can't heat up a pizza without an oven). As we browsed around Shoprite, I noticed how we and the other obrunis were the only folks with full shopping carts, and how the Ghanaians seemed to be walking around, cartless, taking it all in, but without really purchasing anything. It made me wonder about the longevity of the Accra Mall. While there were plenty of shoppers, there wasn't much buying. The boutiques seemed completely empty (except for the salon). Ghanaians haven't been socialized into mall shopping, and it seemed that for them, the mall was merely a spectacle of consumerism (a tourist destination), and a marker of class, rather than a viable shopping option. Without disposable income, a culture of consumerism, or the practice of filling a shopping cart, I wonder if this beautiful, modern mall will survive.

On the one hand, I don't want to encourage rampant materialism in our Ghanaian friends. On the other hand, it felt really nice to "go to the mall" the day after Thanksgiving. As sad as that might sound, it felt like home. It felt like the beginning of the Holidays.