Madina is a suburb of Accra, but in many ways it still feels like the city. In the market area there are the same long rows of sellers sitting behind tables piled high with fruits and vegetables, cans of tomato paste, biscuits. There are big wicker baskets full of red palm nuts. People are calling out the prices of their goods: "Thousand, thousand!"

I was walking down such a row of tables, carrying a black folder full of questionnaires. The task was auditing. It's one of my favorite parts of the job. The idea is to verify the data collected by the field workers and to make sure they're giving out accurate information to potential loan clients. Practically it means sitting down and talking with people.

There are a lot of interesting characters to meet sitting behind the tables, all kinds of people, really. Some are loud and ebullient, joking with the other sellers; others are quiet, even sullen, just doing their business.

Behind the tables on the street where I was walking there was a big building with an inner courtyard. According to the sign it was actually the Madina Shopping Mall. I went inside there and found fancier shops with cement-block walls and lockable metal gates. The owners of these were also part of our study sample and had answered the questionnaires, too.

I came to one woman selling babies' and toddlers' clothes. Her shop was a wide, shallow recess into the wall with a blue-and-white awning extending into the courtyard and dark blue metal doors opened wide. The walls inside the shop were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, which were mostly obscured by the many outfits displayed on hangers in front of them. Under the awning were tables stacked with carefully-folded product.

The shopkeeper was busy when I approached. She was negotiating with a man who wanted to buy two denim outfits and a pink princess dress. Also, her two young daughters had just arrived from school. They were wearing the usual navy-and-white jumper uniforms and had bright, fancy backpacks. The first thing they did was to greet their mom and give her a hug; then the younger of the two, maybe four or five years old, started the process of taking off her sandals. They were the leather kind that buckle and they put up a good fight, but she got them off after all, lying on her back and using one foot to push the strap off the heel of the other. Their mom asked them about their days at school and about their homework, which they were to do "straight" (i.e. right away).

She completed her negotiations with the man and then turned to me. I had been waiting a couple of minutes on a bench seat she had offered. She apologized for keeping me, but Couldn't I see she was busy today? Well, it had been no problem at all.

She sat down beside me on the bench and we went through the questionnaire. Since we collect some data on the respondent's household, an auditor gets to hear a little bit about the living situation of the interviewees. When I asked her about the source of drinking water for her household, she responded that she and her family drink only filtered water. "I know the tap water can become contaminated at times. Then if somebody falls sick, we have to pay for the hospital. It is better to take only pure water. The cost of taking pure water always is less than even one hospital bill. And nobody would fall sick from drinking it."

Looking over this account I suppose it doesn't sound like much: just a mom asking her kids about school and describing the rationale in her choice of drinking water. I certainly don't mean to imply that these things-attention to kids' education and health-are rare in Ghana, either. Maybe it's more that they are remarkable everywhere, the elements of a well-ordered personal universe. There is a hopefulness in it; more than that, there is the unmistakable, quiet radiance of attainment and dignity. The mother watching her youngest daughter lying on her back, laughing, trying to kick off her sandal.