Bike Shop

There are lots of guys sitting under trees in various parts of town who purport to do bicycle repairs. Most just patch tires.


Mr. Abass in front of his repair shop.

Mr. Abass runs a bike repair shop in La. He does a fantastic job. On this visit, he provided new handlebar grips and a gear shift tune up for $3, and I suspect that's more than he charges his regular customers.


My bike, with new grips, on the rack attached to the rear of my car.

Suppose we collected all the used bikes gathering dust in our garages, and simply gave them to Africans. I've given away a couple myself, actually, to some people who are now VERY happy. Good thing? I suppose so.

Can't help wondering, though, what would happen to all those shops in town (and their employees) that sell bikes if suddenly all their clients were able to get them for free. Free stuff always seems to have complicated and unintended side effects.

Tropical Plants

Fresh coconut for 25 cents available at the roadside by local plant nursery.

Bits and pieces of land throughout the city, though especially around the edges, are filled with all kinds of small businesses. They occupy rights of way, undeveloped parcels, whatever's available. They pay no rent, taxes, utilities. Their products are of course priced accordingly.


What they lack in expert advice, they make up in price and variety.

Moses (my expert gardener and chief of residential security) was astonished to find bags of potting soil just off Spintex Road near the Tema Motorway for just $1 (GHC 10,000), or about a third what we were paying at a more substantial gardening center in town, and with similar discounts on plants.

A bit hard for the "formal" businesses to compete, I suppose. There are some who'd favor policies to stamp out these "informal" ones, or at least force them to pay taxes and license fees.


Moses plants a mix of shade plants along the front fence.

Hard to know what taxes and license fees would do to businesses in the informal sector. Kind of like the public-policy debate over things like raising the minimum wage, or forcing food carts to pay higher fees when they operate in front of established restaurants. Would the little operations simply go out of business? Would there simply be more unemployed? Or would it allow the more established businesses to grow faster and pay more and higher wages themselves?

Meanwhile, my front fence looks much nicer.