Salakka was buying a toothbrush.
It was for one of the kids. Let's call him Boy Number One, cos that's actually what he really was for Salakka.
Boy Number One liked to talk and sing, and he liked to do it loud. He was social and positive, but also had a strong mind and wasn't afraid to show his opinions. So, a bit like Salakka herself, maybe. And now she had promised to get him a toothbrush.
She went to Madina Market, of course. One could buy anything there. (Anything except tampons and real coffee, that is.) And there was a small shop for almost every item alone, it seemed: one for bags, one for flash lights (ok, lights et cetera), one for cell phones, one for local fabrics. Many for toothbrushes.
They weren't actually even shops. Toothbrushes and -pastes were sold from carriages pushed by men who walked up and down the chaotically full streets. It wasn't difficult to locate one of these toothbrush sellers and start bargaining.
When she had bought a toothpaste for herself, Salakka had done her best to get not the obruni price but the real, local one. In this case, she didn't have to bargain a lot after all: the brush prices were down enough for her already. The problem appeared to be finding a soft toothbrush. All of them seemed to be the hard ones, and Salakka knew how horrible it was to brush with one.
"It has to be soft! It's for a child!"
The man kept searching the huge pile of brushes and finally found a soft brush. Salakka paid, thanked and found her way to the tro-tro station and home, where, in the afternoon after school, she delivered the brush to Boy Number One.
He looked at it and frowned.
"It's soft!"
It was in vain to try and explain it was good for children's gums to use a soft brush. It had to be hard for Boy Number One, a soft one would not do. In the end, it made sense. Here, everyone's teeth were so strong, why wouldn't the gums be, too? And anyway, Ghanaians were used to a bit harder things than the Europeans.
Later, Salakka got a new brush for her Boy Number One.
A lot later, four years to be exact, she was spending her holiday in a small village on the west coast of Ghana, and needed a new brush. She went to the village's only shop that sold brushes and, knowing what she wanted, specifically told the shop owner that it had to be a soft one.
"This is a soft one!" sweared the man. Salakka paid, thanked and found her way back to the guest house, where, brushing her teeth, she found out the brush was extremely hard. Maybe she could have guessed it from the text on the cover that said in huge letters: HARD.
