To Market, To Market

Wednesdays are market days at our trading center. During the rest of the week, it’s hard to find most fruits or vegetables in town unless you are growing them in your own compound. But on Wednesday, the traveling market comes to us and sets up in a big field behind the dukas (small local stores). Vendors set up early, wheeling in their bicycles laden with pineapple or matooke. Women lay their tarps out on the ground and string more up above, piling their fruits and vegetables into perfect pyramids on the ground. The fish-mongers position their products, whole, dried fish which have spent hours strung on the front of a matatu to get there. Hawkers can be seen in the early morning trudging along the roads to the market, carrying immense wooden boards filled with sunglasses, watches, hair nets, toys, hats, and more. The smells of popcorn, fried banana cakes, and samosas fill the air, ready to be snatched up by children on break from school later in the day. Those selling clothing drive wooden poles into the ground, making racks with banana-fiber fastenings and carefully hanging their freshly-washed and pressed trousers, skirts, dresses, and shirts. Men sort hundreds of shoes in enormous piles and the iron-mongers carefully arrange pots, pans, and knives in an attractive display under their newly-erected tarpaulin covers. Tailors bring their old-school sewing machines onto the field and set up near the clothes, ready to alter that oversized H&M or Abercrombie dress or top someone just picked out of the piles for sale. Young boys similarly set up next to the home goods section with their jury-rigged stationary bicycles, the chain attached to a grinding stone, offering to use pedal power to sharpen your newly-purchased knife.

I generally head to the market to meet up with Kris after school on Wednesdays. I take the shortcut through the fields and behind the stores to emerge into the festivity that is market day. A constant stream of people can be seen on the roads all day, walking to our trading center to buy food, meet with friends, swap stories, drink beer, and make deals. Dodging low-hanging tarps, we walk around to see which village woman has brought the best produce that week. Fruits and vegetables are sold in pyramids five or ten deep that sell for 1,000 or 2,000 shillings (about 30 to 50 cents). The women pack each pyramid into a small clear bag, twisting the tiny amount of plastic left at the top into a knot with their deft hands. They offer to place the bag in your woven basket and your money immediately disappears somewhere in their aprons. Many times we will often also get “bonus,” an extra tomato or potato thrown in from a random pile apart from the pyramids, for greeting and thanking them in Runyankore – it almost never fails to make people laugh appreciatively, as it is usually the first time they’ve ever heard a foreigner speaking their language. We are also often parroted in well-meaning hilarity among people around us that we aren’t even talking to.

Kris: Wassibota, nyabo! Good afternoon, ma’am.

Men hawking shawls: Haha, wassibota nyabo! Naamanya! Haha, good afternoon ma’am! He knows!

Kris: Ninyenda emondi, enkumi ibiri. I want Irish potatoes, for two thousand shillings.

Men: Emondi! Naayenda! Naayenda emondi, hahaha. Potatoes! He wants! He wants potatoes, hahaha.

Kris and I grin good-naturedly (most of the time) and wave to the hawkers, moving on. Market day is very social and we often see people we know from surrounding villages. Running into Maude, she bargains with her friend selling pineapples to get us 100 shilling discount (about 3 cents). We go with her to price beans she is planning to use in the rows of her new banana plantation. She decides that the price per cup is too expensive and we walk with her back to her bicycle – she is one of the only women I have ever seen around here who rides. On our way out of the market, we browse through the clothing section and I find a pair of jeans with a broken zipper that I really like. I bring my purchase to the woman lying on the ground in front of the clothes and begin to haggle. While food has more standard prices, when it comes to other goods, haggling is expected – and enjoyed! She starts off by quoting me 7,000 shillings. After a lot of dramatic gesturing at the garment, “Eh!” noises, and other sounds of outrage and protest made by both of us, I get her down to 4,000, a little over a dollar. Knowing Runyankore comes in very handy when haggling for a fair price!

One of our market day hauls, complete with new pants!

Now it’s time to walk about the trading center to get our daily supplies. First we go visit Donna to get our milk. She greets us happily and ladles milk into a small plastic bag for us which we carefully place on top of our other purchases. 

No refrigeration here - just a vat of milk straight from the cow. Before drinking it, we have to make sure to boil it.

Across the street we buy our bananas from the women we have affectionately dubbed “The Banana Ladies,” who are always ready to chat and quiz us in local language. 

The Banana Ladies meeting my mom!

I bought my skirt in the U.S., Constance bought hers here, and we two people who live halfway across the world from each other randomly wore them the same day in the same tiny village.

Finally we head back up the road and make Robert’s duka our last stop. Robert and his family run a small general store and have made us feel welcome since we first moved here. There we purchase our bread, flour, sugar, and eggs. Looking into my purse, I realize I don’t have quite enough money and Robert waves me off, telling me to just pay the difference to whoever is there the next time we stop by. 

Robert! This is a fairly-typical looking duka, packed full of everyday needs with a little bit of randomness thrown in.

Entrance to a duka in the trading center where we bought our charcoal stove. Yes, we are the Pied Pipers of Uganda.

Kris and I greet the gatekeeper as we reenter the college grounds and lug our bags up the path to our house, eagerly anticipating the fresh marinara sauce we will make that night on our gas stovetop.

Our path home. Food may be limited in variety here but what they have is plentiful! Like falling-on-your-head plentiful. (This almost happened to me with an avocado once.)

If we want bread that isn’t sweet (unfortunately the only kind found in most places here) to go with that pasta, however, we need to plan ahead. When we need food and market day is too far away, or if we need something particularly “exotic,” we make the three-hour round trip into Mbarara, the closest town. We ask to be dropped off at the Post Office – the great thing about public transportation here is that it will stop anywhere you want – and walk to the daily market, a permanent setup in the heart of the town. At its entrance are two heavy metal gates, open during the day. Wheelbarrow men sit resting by the entrance, perched on top of their overturned wooden vehicles, waiting to be hired. As you enter, the light turns faintly blue from the overhanging tarps and a wave of sound rolls over you of people greeting, bargaining, shelling, butchering. The arrangement at the daily market is more permanent. There are long rows of wooden stalls with small doors built in below the counters that the vendors duck back and forth under, alternating between sitting in their tri-legged wooden stools and fetching items in the back for their customers. Areas have loose designations – a large section for vegetables and traditional products in the front, a long, narrow, aisle along the back for heaping bags of fruit, a wide shelter containing carcasses of cows and goats hanging from the ceiling with shiny brass scales in front of each, and a winding maze of smaller stalls with farming tools, foreign clothes, and vibrant kitenge fabric. In the main section, the produce is polished and piled in perfect formations. Towering heaps of tomatoes, Irish potatoes, and beans are balanced perfectly in their woven baskets and the selection threatens to overflow into the aisles. 

 We head to our favorite vendor for our regular vegetables - tomatoes, Irish peppers, carrots, onions, and green peppers. Deus has a small section in the middle of the aisle, his neighbors’ produce almost pinning him in as he relaxes in front of the counter listening to the radio. We are always greeted with a big smile, a warm welcome, and usually “bonus.” We then hit up the “exotic food” stall for things like cauliflower, zucchini, fresh cilantro, and, if we’re lucky, a head of lettuce. If there are any household items we need, we’ll head to the craft section and bargain for a new basket or woven rug before continuing our errands.

Haggling for another vegetable basket - after we are quizzed to make sure we know its use.

We then weave in and out of bodas, taxis, minibuses and private vehicles to cross the street to the tailors’ section. Multiple alleyways are filled with men and women working on push-pedal Singer sewing machines outside their shops. Every surface is strewn with beautiful, colorful kitenge. Tables for ironing are set up in the alleys as well; people carefully press the cleanest clothes I’ve ever seen with their charcoal irons, occasionally wetting the fabric with water from a cleaned-out plastic soda bottle with a hole in its cap. We get measured or pick up our new clothes from Nick, our favorite tailor, and sometimes get to enjoy watching women try on their glittering bridesmaid or giveaway dresses. Here, getting clothes custom-made is extremely cheap compared to the U.S., but tailors are having a harder time getting business because of the influx of clothes donated from abroad that are being sold at a much cheaper price. But being a tailor is still a good profession here, and I am constantly impressed by the incredible quality of clothes I see being made under an umbrella in the sweltering heat of an alleyway.

Our last stop is usually Nakumatt, an actual grocery store in Mbarara that is extremely popular with foreigners. We step into the air-conditioned entrance and wander around to pick up the items we can’t find anywhere else – real butter, baguettes, brown bread (which they call “salty bread” here), cheese, certain kinds of beer (yeah, OK, that’s just for me), and herbs and spices. Then it’s back to the Post Office to catch a matatu back to our trading center. Sitting six to a row, my big backpack on my lap, my right side smushed up against a strange man and my left arm cradling a baby being nursed by her mother, I wiggle my right hand free and snack on my street popcorn T-Rex style. Like so many things in Uganda, shopping is time-consuming, loud, noisy, hectic, and oftentimes frustrating, but it’s always an adventure and in the end, completing it is a triumph in and of itself.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, "Oh yes - I already have everything that I really need."

- Dalai Lama