But I don't WANT six keychains for my family....

Hey, everyone! It’s so hard to keep up this blog because the internet at our school is completely unreliable. Anyways, everything is going well; we’re over the culture shock phase and are just enjoying all the new experiences.
However, there are several aspects of Ghanaian culture, at least modern culture, that are surprising and at the same time, make me feel a little disappointed. For example, we visited two little craft villages, one that produced and sold kente cloth and one that is known for its wood carvings. Undoubtedly, the crafts were amazing. The kente cloth, each piece, is wonderfully colorful and has a meaning. The wood carvings were intricate and well made. But, and this is probably going to sound way worse than I mean it, the people were the worst part of those villages. Everyone wants to sell you something all the time! We were watching a demonstration of how the kente cloth is woven, and before our guide could even start talking, people were berating our group to buy this and that. And it’s sad for a few reasons, but first, they aren’t selling things that anyone even wants, so we’re all constantly telling them that no, we do not want a keychain, even if you give us a good price. Second, they sound desperate and we feel bad that we’re affluent enough to travel and visit these villages, and we know that most of the children we see playing with pens and pencils will probably never ever get to travel outside of Ghana. But the adult men, and it was literally only men, were so hard to deal with. We understand that comparatively speaking, we are much wealthier than the people selling us their wares, and that’s probably why they were so eager to make sales. They would all crowd around and start pulling people in different directions, telling us to visit their store and buy something. The only problem is that everyone sold basically the same thing, so we already knew that we weren’t going to visit each store, much less buy something from each of them. One time, a man put a bracelet on my hand and told me it was free, a gift. I asked several times if I could keep it and that I didn’t have to pay anything for it, and he assured me it was just a gift. Ten minutes later, he comes back with a whole bunch of handmade cards (he hadn’t made them himself) and told me that since he gave me a gift, I have to buy something from him. He wasn’t very happy when I simply returned the “gift”. I guess I’m just totally used to salespeople not bombarding me as I walk into a store, but this was so out of hand. Once we got to the wood carving village after being in Kente, I was pretty good at brushing people off. I’m sure the men trying to sell us things are very nice, but it was impossible to learn about what they were selling because they were just concerned with selling something. Okay, so, the people themselves maybe aren’t the worst part, but their sales methods are…effective, but a little extreme. It was just very difficult to enjoy our time in those villages with people constantly at us to buy something. I don't know, I mean, it's sad that learning about culture has to be centered around money. But then again, I don't know what I expected because people try to sell me things everywhere I go. Haha. Oh well. Maybe for future travelers, it would simply be helpful to be forewarned, and that way they can avoid the unwanted attention.