EDITOR’S NOTE: Rachel Osborn, a LaPorte native and a 2014 graduate of Michigan State University, left LaPorte in October 2014 to serve as a missionary in Chad, north central Africa, for six months. Rachel, a 2011 LPHS graduate, majored in Global and Area Studies–International Development at MSU. She is the daughter of Drummond and Sue Osborn of LaPorte. Rachel will be sending occasional columns to WNLP; here is her latest. You can also follow Rachel’s adventures at http://rachelinchad.wordpress.com.
Sunday is Market Day!
Although the market functions on every day of the week, Sundays are when it really comes to life. Local vendors are out in full force and villagers from nearby come to set up shop, tucking themselves into every corner of “downtown” Goz Beida.
The designated market area comprises a sprawling network of wooden frames roofed with tin, burlap, thatching, or nothing at all to create hundreds of individual stalls; other vendors set up tables or lay out mats in the shade of large trees, and some more “permanent” vendors have boutique space in one of several small buildings.
Everyone has a spot, and a shopper can count on each vendor to be in the same spot week after week, and sometimes day after day. The African, or the culturally savvy visitor, favors certain vendors for certain items, building a relationship based on gifts from the vendor (in the form of extra whatever-you’re-buying for no additional cost) in return for continued business from the customer.
This particular white woman, however, has yet to master that nuance of market culture. The market is expansive with many indirect, winding paths, and I usually forget which booths I visited the last time I needed a particular item, and I get lazy and just buy from whoever is close to or on the way to another item that I want. Also, because my business as a wealthy white person is in high demand, vendors constantly clamor for my attention as I pass — many rather politely — and I can’t buy from everyone today but maybe I’ll buy from you today and you tomorrow and you next week … . After being here for a month, though, I really am trying to work on my customer-loyalty skills.
So what do I buy when I venture into the wooden maze in search of sustenance? So far, only food items. Although clothing, soap and household supplies are certainly available, my stock from the United States continues to hold. I am in need of a mortar-and-pestle for my house, but have yet to catch the mortar-and-pestle ladies at the right time on the right day in order to secure the size that I prefer.
The market is the center of commercial activity for the town and thus includes any and every type of item used or produced by local residents.
The following list is only an excerpt of items that I’ve deemed relevant to myself: pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and guavas make up the “fresh fruits and vegetables” of the market. Potatoes and sweet potatoes, of course, are staples, as well as onions and garlic. Chicken eggs are sold individually from large cardboard cartons. Millet (a grain derived from grass) is a staple of the Chadian diet and is available plentifully, though I have yet to buy any myself. A small amount of “processed” food is available in the form of macaroni noodles, candy bars and tomato paste.
Peanuts and peanut butter (roasted or unroasted) are available in most corners of the market — globs of peanut butter are set out on trays, and I point to the globs that I want and the vendor puts them in a plastic bag for me. Many of the boutique-style vendors sell sealed packets of fortified peanut butter, marked “For Severely Malnourished Children.” There are two brands of this “ready-to-use therapeutic food”: PlumpyNut brand and USAID brand. At first I bought a packet of the USAID brand (“from the American people”!) because I thought it was ironic that the food aid provided by Americans for “starving Africans” was being bought and eaten by an American. Then I took a liking to it, experimented and determined that USAID brand is indeed better than PlumpyNut brand, and have since consistently supplemented my diet with fortified peanut butter “from the American people.”
Spices are sold in their whole form, and salt is sold in chunks, thus my desire for a mortar-and-pestle. I’ve managed so far by using a bowl and the end of a wooden rolling pin to grind my salt and cinnamon, but I’m looking forward to having the proper equipment for all of my pulverizing needs.
I have not yet been brave enough to buy and cook my own raw meat, but I once visited the meat section of the market with a Chadian friend. Piles of raw meat (goat, sheep, and some cow) sit out on rows of tables, collecting thousands of flies; and though this seems disgusting at first glance, I’ve realized that we already wash and cook the meat to sanitize it before eating, so what are a few more fly germs, pre-sanitation? The creepiest part of the meat market are the goat heads: eyes open, tongues lolling, severed spinal cords visible, they sit in a pile on a nearby table and watch as customers go about their business. They freaked me out a little, but I couldn’t look away. I have yet to see any parts of a goat’s head incorporated into any meals, so I have no idea as to their purpose. Fish is also available, laid out in halves to dry in the sun.
The most confusing part of the market is paying. Learning numbers in Arabic has been hard, simply because numbers are so automatic in English, and therefore stopping to think about what number I want to say and how I have to translate it (and put it together, if it’s multiple digits) significantly disrupts my thinking process. To make money matters even crazier, the Arabic values for money do not match the amounts written on the bills or coins. Due to historical illiteracy, Arabic traders deemed the smallest bit of Chadian currency to be equal to one, and then built up from there. The smallest bit of Chadian currency, in reality, is the 5 cfa coin. Therefore, the value of currency as written on the coin must be divided by five in order to determine the spoken Arabic value. So 500 cfa, which is roughly $1 (US), is called “miyya,” which means “one hundred.” A vendor, for example, might say that an egg costs “talaatiin,” which translates as thirty. To get the cfa value, I have to multiply by five, so thirty becomes one hundred fifty, so I pay 150 cfa.
Got it? Me neither.
I take comfort in the fact that working the math and language parts of my brain simultaneously must be doing something good to stave off future dementia.
Market Day also bring their beasts of burden. Two large, empty spaces across the road from the market transform into “donkey parking lots,” and hundreds of patient donkeys spend the day in the parking lot, tied by a rope around a leg, swishing flies and eating whatever plants are within their radius of motion. And yes, there are camels. Not hundreds — only one or two, or sometimes three, resting with folded legs at the edge of the donkey parking lot — but camels are camels, and even one retains the ability to capture my awe.
When I was in Peru, a friend/traveling companion kept having dreams about grocery shopping in an American-style grocery store. Fortunately, I have yet to really miss the conveniences of the Western store — the transition from college-style, meals-as-an-afterthought eating to buy-fresh, lots-of-preparation-required eating has been a joyful one for me. I’m learning to plan, to experiment, to tweak, to spend time thinking about what I need to buy and when I need to start cooking so that I can eat when I get hungry.
The market is just the beginning!