Market day

Gitarama has an outdoor market twice a week (Wednesday and Saturday), and yesterday I went there with John’s wife Hope, who works at the boys’ home. She came to our house to get some money (all financial transactions here are done in cash) and we set out up the street toward the market. I asked her what we would be getting at the market and she gave a long list: potatoes, charcoal, vegetables, fruit, rice, school supplies. Unsure of how the two of us would carry all of this, I followed along. He stopped by the boys’ house to pick up some shopping bags, but I still didn’t think we’d be able to carry everything.

Nothing happens fast around here; it’s one of the things I like about this place. Our progress toward the market was slow, partly because of me. Little kids, including our neighbors who see Micaela and me several times a day, come dashing out of their houses to yell, “Muzungu, muzungu” as if this is the first time they’d ever seen a white person, even though they may have just seen us an hour ago. They speed toward us, stopping only when they slam into our legs and hold on tight. I don’t know their names, but I call the tiny girl who lives two doors away “Torpedo” because her impact can just about knock me over.

Then, after we got off of our small street and onto the bigger main street, Hope started seeing her friends, many of whom she greeted and talked with. They greeted me too, with the ubiquitous hand-touch greeting. It’s like a handshake, but you just touch the person’s hand rather than grasping and shaking it. Everyone here has been very friendly.

Not too many people have cars in Gitarama; more have motorcycles, but still not that many. People walk everywhere. Another thing I like about Rwanda, at least away from Kigali, is that the street is as much for people as it is for cars. In fact, cars are secondary as people gather in the street to talk, do business, greet their friends. As we walked further, I saw the market, with vendors setting up tables in the middle of the street. Along the side of the street were permanent stalls from which vendors sold shoes, cooking oil, shampoo, rice, radios and other electronics, clothes, towels, just about everything. Hope explained that we would buy potatoes first, so we proceeded to her favorite potato vendor.

Hope is a great shopper: she squeezed every cabbage; sorted through the pile of green beans to make sure no bad ones were hidden at the bottom; thumped the pineapples, pronouncing some too ripe and others just right; sniffed the flour so make sure it was fresh. At the potato vendor, she went through several piles, picking through them to get the best ones. Then the vendor started filling up a huge bag, which, when weighed, turned out to be 50 kilos. At this time I finally began to understand how the hauling would be done. After the bag was filled and the vendor stitched it shut, a tall guy in a blue coverall placed it on a wheelbarrow made from thick branches. A battered wheel supported the cargo. We left the potatoes there as we went to buy other things, and I now understood that the tall guy would load up the wheelbarrow and take our purchases home that way.

We bought other items in the same manner: Hope selected the vendor, sorted through the fruits or vegetables to get the best ones, paid, and we moved on to the next vendor, leaving our purchases behind to be picked up later with the wheelbarrow. It was a long process, and occasionally I wandered off to look at other things. I saw no other muzungus the whole time I was there, and as always, people were curious. Kids want to touch your hands and arms, often pointing back and forth between their dark skin and my light skin. Teenage boys greet you with a big smile and, “Hey muzungu!” and do the greeting where you touch the other person’s fist with your fist. One kid, who stood before me and stated, “muzungu” laughed when I said, “Yes, I know.” I told another one, “Oya muzungu, nitwa Ellen” (Not muzungu, my name is Ellen), and he told me his name. Those who noticed my watch were fascinated with it…it has two faces on it, one for time in U.S. and the other for Rwanda.

I can take a bit of this but after a while I get a little uncomfortable. I didn’t take my camera because a muzungu strolling through town draws quite a bit of attention. If you add sunglasses, the attention increases a little. Add a camera (especially a large one like mine—I wish I had a smaller camera for Africa) and you’ve got a swarm of people who want their picture taken and to look at it in the camera. So as much as I could in a crowd of thousands, I kept a low profile.

Thousands of people wandered through the market dressed in all manner of clothing from T-shirts that say Lincoln Elementary School or Nike to traditional African wrap dresses. Occasionally someone in a business suit would pass by, but most people wore their daily clothes. Too many children of all ages were there—I wished they were in school, but not all families can afford to send their kids to school. Primary school is free, but they have to have uniforms, shoes and school supplies. Also, some families need their kids to work to earn money or grow crops, so these are the kids I saw at the market.

Hope wove in and out among the huge tables covered with all kinds of fruits and vegetables that made up the main part of the market. She bought pineapples, passion fruit, mangoes, bananas, a purple fruit I don’t know the name of, oranges, and several others. I was surprised to learn that some of the food comes from far away; I had imagined that most of the fruits and vegetables would be grown locally. The food at the market came from everywhere: Burundi, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan (rice, curry).

Finally, Hope was finished with her shopping. The blue-coverall guy, who stayed with us most of the time we were at the market, left to get the wheelbarrow where we had left it with the potato vendor. He came back with the huge bag of potatoes and an even bigger bag of charcoal. To that, he added two large bags (almost waist high) full of fruit and vegetables, a huge bunch of bananas, and a shopping bag of green beans. Hope had also bought some peanut flour and cassava flour, and that went on the wheelbarrow too. She and I each carried a paper bag full of fruit. The wheelbarrow man left ahead of us, and most of the way back to the house he stayed ahead of us even though he was pushing what had to be at least 150 kilos of food. At one point, in the middle of town, he stopped to rest. He took off his baseball cap with the Deutsche Bundesbahn (German national railway) logo on it and sweat rolled down his face onto his coverall. He only paused for a minute or so, then picked up the wheelbarrow and continued on. To understand what a feat this is you have to remember that the road is not paved. It has deep ruts, big rocks, and is very uneven—high in the middle and sloping toward the sides. After we turned onto our street, had to push the wheelbarrow up a hill then down a steep driveway to the boys’ house. I called him Superman, and he laughed at that.