Market Day

After a breakfast of papaya, bread, tea and surprisingly yummy fish stewed with vegetables (fish at breakfast seems to be pretty common, a little strange, but flavorful and protein packed), it was a day with a private driver with World Vision, kind enough to help us buy some essentials that we won’t be able to get once we get to site. Yesterday, I got peanut butter, lentils, and curry at a grocery store. Today, we ventured to the world of open air markets for a bicycle and various home necessities.

After perusing several muddy stops, later made muddier by a light rain which caught us under a tin roof, unable to leave without mud streaks on shirts from runoff, we finally chose a blue “City Bike” in need of many adjustments (i.e. taking parts from other bikes to make mine whole). While the bike was being tuned, we set off to look for pots and pans at another market, identically situated among thatch roofed huts and veggie vendors, to look for pots and pans. For around 7 dollars, I bought 2 pots, 6 drinking glasses, and a beautiful if scratchy swath of fabric (tablecloth? bedcover?) from a South African Muslim woman in full cover except for eyes and hands. She played with her phone as we sorted through the house wares, which made me smile, but certainly no more than the other covered women I’ve seen wearing silver sandal high heels and carrying leather fashion purses.

Famished from a morning of perusing, bumpy truck rides and thinking in Portuguese, made infinitely easier and, in fact, possible at all, by our patient helpful driver, we stopped for a coconut “lanche”, or snack. As I watched for the millionth time as a young man used his machete to open the fruit so I could drink the water, and then crack it further open so I could eat the meat, I appreciated the familiarity of the food and recognized it as possibly the best of its kind I have ever had.

Everywhere we went today, there were women young and old toting babies on their back, lashed in by swaths of brilliant fabric. Every last one was fast asleep.