Market Day
We recently discovered that the market about 30 minutes away in what we consider a neutral town (i.e. one where we don’t have to cover our heads and wear skirts) is slam full of Sparrow women. In our prior visits, everywhere we turned at the market we found out we could speak Sparrow to them and they loved it, so we have decided to go and visit the market as often as possible. The market is very African – full of donkeys, grass baskets, local produce, coffee, live animals for sale, and a whole slew of other cultural products. It is like stepping into a whole different world – a scary one at times. We quickly get singled out as the foreigners and are followed everywhere. If we stop too long, a crowd gathers around us almost to the point of smothering us. In the past, we have had some negative experiences but found out that if we go early enough in the day it is less crowded and we can walk without stepping on people and actually enjoy ourselves.
We went on Friday and just walked around and asked what different things were and tried to speak to people in the Sparrow language. We were in need of some coffee, so we thought this would be a good place to go ahead and make that purchase. Kim pointed out that the coffee and the salt were always sold together….which does make sense since they drink it together, but an interesting observation indeed. Only in our area would salt and coffee be sold together as a pair! You can buy the coffee as a whole fruit, only beans, or only the shells and you can buy it by the shot glass or by the tin can….no scales here.
Our favorite purchase of the day was a local dress. Our supervisor often makes comments about the “parachute” dresses worn by many of the locals. They look as if they are made of plastic and they are always some fluorescent color. Well, today we found an orange one! I just couldn’t resist and I spent 3 hard earned dollars on a neon orange parachute dress. We have already gotten lots of laughs out of it with our local friends. It was worth $3 just for the laughs! #gallery-825-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-825-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 100%; } #gallery-825-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-825-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */