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The end of year holiday season in Ghana has become a thing to witness, participate in or dread, if you are a stressed-out local.
The ability of Ghana to draw a sizeable number of Christmas holiday revelers is still a wonder to everyone; a source of frustration to city – dwellers and envy of our other West African neighbors. The holiday season is a monster of a thing that awakens every December and works itself into a frenzy for about four to six weeks and leaves the country to catch its breath for the rest of the year, as it plots in a quixotic attempt to slay a Christmas monster that keeps getting bigger every year. It draws a mishmash of holiday participants both home and abroad; celebrities and commoners; tourists and returnee Ghanaians.
Ghana has achieved near mythical status/powers as a destination for Christmas partying, reconnecting and discovering ancestral roots, finding peace of mind all in a 6-week period of unacceptable levels of tramc jams from morning till way past midnight.The tramc jams really signal the advent of the holiday season. It creeps up on commuters slowly initially and then becomes the conversation starter at the water cooler, social media chatter, fodder for dinner conversation at home and the best excuse for tardiness and absenteeism in a country that runs partlyon Ghana Man Time (GMT). All the tramc starts in Accra Central, that mysterious place that a lot of us hardly ever visit in a year, but suddenly draws us in with the promise of attractive discounts, the latest fashion and supplies to create the most memorable Christmas one can afford. Some of the biggest markets in the capital are situated within a few kilometers of each other in Accra Central, to avoid confusion for non-Ghanaians.
It is the real epicenter of trade and economic activity in the city and serves other markets like Kejetia in the Ashanti Region. Ghana runs on the backs of market women who rule this commercial hub. There’s Makola Market where the understatedly rich women who run Ghana’s households source everyday items; Kantamanto Market where second-hand clothing baronesses feed the thrift market and sustain Accra drip; Agbogbloshie Market where traders of all kinds deal in fresh produce and
food stuff; and Kejetia Market which is touted as the biggest market in West Africa. The real movers of Ghana’s economy are its market women.
While ground tramc builds up thanks to the seasonal market activities, internet tramc experiences a frenzy of its own. Online market stores lead the charge in the fight for eyeballs and attention on social media. Every social networking site you use as your preferred means of escape is suddenly awash with ads with discounts, promotions and sales of fashion, lifestyle and household items targeted at the rest of us who cannot bamba with the big boys. A new kind of market women is emerging and thriving online. The same ingenuity that has created some of the best supply chain systems in the country has spilled over into the internet sphere with similarly spectacular results.
Instagram accounts that are used as online shops are mostly run by women within the Millennial age bracket, selling used clothes acquired from Kantamanto and cosmetics bought from Makola, as well as providing services like personal grocery shopping for busy people or folks who can’t speak the language of the Accra and Kejetia market women.
The online storefronts are the networks for distributing Makola and Kantamanto goods; the owners are the diplomats who are at once university educated, street smart and internet savvy. These women are sitting at the nexus of bulk-breaking, last mile delivery and zero warehousing cost and are saving a lot of people from being swallowed whole by the open-air markets. The holiday season and its tramc is brought to you in any part of the country by Santa’s biggest helpers both online and at your closest open-air market.
