Great Day-- morning

The day was great from the start. I woke up at 7 a.m. to take advantage of the morning because there is nothing like an African morning. The noise in the street is minimal, the bargaining hasn´t begun and the sun welcomes you, without choking you, as it does in the later hours of the day.
No one from the fortress (NYU housing) was up yet so I figured I would visit Rosemary and her sister Joyce at their food stand by the alley.
Joyce, who is 22 years old and has braided hair and was wearing a shining pink top, is the wild child. With her loud voice and her always present smile, this free spirited soul, a self-proclaimed “city girl” told me that she can´t wait to travel around the world. She didn´t know exactly where Colombia was (actually she didn´t know it existed), so I drew her somewhat of a map and she said that, although Ghana is her favorite country and she loves Accra, she would come visit me someday.

Rosemary, on the other hand, who is only 16 years old, was more quiet and gentle, but exuded an aura of maturity and genuine kindness. She is perhaps not a wild soul like her sister, but she carries a golden soul. She told me that her favorite food is meat, but that she is fine eating it only on Christmas Eve because she knows it is too expensive and her mother cannot afford it every day.
After talking with the girls for a while, my stomach was rumbling so I went ahead and bought a pineapple juice and chocolate wafer cookie. The cookie was surprisingly good. Cookies here tend to be too dry for my taste, except for Hob-Nobs, which NYU provided for our house at the beginning but which we devoured shamelessly in one week and have not been able to find them since. The pineapple juice on the other hand has become one of my great addictions in this trip. Other addictions include, Orange Fanta, fried plantain chips, both sweet and salty, plantain slices and cubes, and Ghanaian dishes that I hope to write about soon.
Back to the great day. While having my breakfast I asked Rosemary and Joyce to tell me about their own eating habits. When they realized I hadn´t tried Kenkey, their everyday breakfast, Rosemary ran out and bought me some so I could eat. Kenkey is a traditional Ghanaian dish which is prepared by boiling fermented cooked maize and mixing it with raw maize. The final product is then wrapped in corn leaves. While it was still hot, it was actually pretty good, a little tasteless, but good nonetheless. Then, it started cooling off, its texture disappeared and I realized the amount of Keneky was massive. I really couldn´t eat more than a quarter (picture below), so I took it back with me. Rosemary and Joyce refused that I paid them back for the Kenkey, repeatedly saying it was “a gift, a gift!”Already this had made my day.
Once I got back to the “fortress” I wasn’t feeling too well and my assumption that it was because of the Kenkey was reaffirmed after Sam, one of our drivers, laughed while telling me that “Kenkey is very very heavy.” He knew what he was talking about.