About Kumasi, Ghana
Packs of girls line the streets, sitting asleep in oversized tin bowls. Colorful scarves cover their hair. They have on flowing gauze skirts and rubber flip-flops wedged over muddy tube socks. Dark scars run down their cheeks like teardrops, unlike the speck on one cheek of most hailing from the Ashanti Region. Crowds of Ashantis shuffle past these huddled girls. Mismatching aprons identify their purpose. They are a fixture, no different than the open gutter littered with small plastic bags that drinking water was once sold in. But like the empty bags in a city that has only a handful of trashcans, they don't belong. Anything that can be eaten is sold in a plastic bag. If it was packaged in a factory, the wrapper might be stamped with the suggestion "Keep Ghana Clean" and a picture of a stick figure throwing little squares in a bin. Most people of Ghana have never seen the shape that the crude symbol depicts. Telling a Ghanaian to throw away an empty bag is like telling one of these girls on the sidewalk to go home and get a job. These girls are kayayoo, or porters, who have migrated from the northern regions of Ghana to eke out a living in the cities of Accra and Kumasi. The tin bowls are used to carry loads of goods atop their heads for whatever tips they can scrape up. They literally guard their bowls with their lives while resting, leaving nothing but each other to guard their young, fragile bodies. Much of the time they sit waiting for work to come along, disillusioned by the myth of quick cash that lured them into the city. Perhaps a girl has a sister who had run south and painted a pretty picture of city life to hide the reality of her misfortune. Her family may or may not know where she is, but one thing is for certain - nobody knew she was leaving home until she was gone, save a confidante sibling.