Market Day

Sunday is the big market day in our small town.  We went early, to see the sights and to buy some things for our house.  The weekly market is held in a large open area that looked to me to be about 4 acres in size.  Entering the area, we passed a small herd of patient tethered donkeys.  They carried the goods in, and will carry the unsold items back home when the day ends.   

At one end were the produce sellers, women dressed in colorful kangas and head wraps, who displayed their wares spread on tarps on the ground:  potatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, and more.  We greeted Vicky, a vender whom we had met the day before at the regular city market.  Sellers of beans and grains are in another area.  I bought what was probably about a kilo of red beans for the equivalent of about 65 cents.  The vender didn't have a scale, but scooped my purchase from a large pile with a can the size of a coffee can.  Later today we sat on our porch and sorted them, removing the sticks, rocks, and nasty shriveled beans.  What have remaining will make several meals for the two of us.   

Other vendors sold household goods, spices, clothing, shoes, and Masai "mashuka", or blankets.  This is a Masai area, and they are a stately and colorful people, very interesting to our Western eyes.  They wrap plaid blankets of red or blue around their shoulders and let them hang to below knee level.  They generally carry long walking sticks which double as cattle prods when they are out on the range, and often have foot-long knives hanging from their belts.  I have seen some of the men with earlobes pierced with holes the size of a nickel, wearing elaborate earrings.

But we are always aware that we are the strange-looking people here.  In the three days we have been in this town, we have only seen one other white person, glimpsed briefly at the market.  We are a source of interest and amusement to the populace.  They often smile and laugh when we speak Swahili to them--I haven't decided if it is in surprise and delight, or if it is because our accents and grammar are just dreadful.