To market, to market...

Last Saturday, Marianne, a SIL translator, took me to the big market. I wanted to purchase some Congolese cloth to bring back to the states, and needed someone who spoke French/Swahili to transact business for me.



Cassava root for sale 



Peeled cassava, the primary staple

The market is open every day, but Saturday is the biggest day for shopping.  Everything for sale in Bunia is available at the market.  We walked past stall after stall, probably six or seven rows deep and at least a kilometre long, of used 



Women all in a row, selling wares

300 francs (40 cents) a bunch. Interested?

parts, nails, kitchen wares, scrap materials, unknown brands of shampoo and soap, meat and fish, sacks of cassava flour, fruit, tomato paste (which is a big seller here) and the like. Oh, and fiery orange-red palm oil, big vats of it.  

 

In a place where there are few choices for every day consumer goods (one type of toilet paper, one brand of tea, and no manufactured food stuffs like cookies, salad dressing, or peanut butter), there were dozens  of cloth stalls, literally hundreds of patterns of cloth to choose from. It was a bit overwhelming. Everything is standard measure –pieces of fabric, each 45 inches wide by 6 yards. (And sold in yardage and inches, not meters and cm.) None of it is manufactured in Congo; most comes from India, some from Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa. Colors were bold and bright, and more patterns than I could count.  A few seemed a bit odd to me, like those with giant umbrellas or cartoon like drawings of high heel shoes.  Many bore religious themes, some had the likeness of Kabila (the President), but most were simply designs, many and varied, with geometric like designs and flower like symbols. It was hard to decide. And not expensive by American standards, most pieces going for about $13-15 each.  (But a lot of money for most Congolese in Bunia, where few have regular jobs and have to get by on a few dollars a day.) I was steered away from those that were cheaper, as Marianne said the color would likely fade more quickly.  Then if you like, off to a tailor to have a dress made. (Very few women wear anything other than traditional Congolese dress.) If you want ready-made clothes, you buy them in street stalls – mostly second hand clothing or odd lots from the west. No trying on, no sizing, just lots of an odd assortment of clothes (including bras!) on display for the purchase. Most men wear western dress – tee shirts, or dress shirts, and western pants.  Not too many blue jeans, though. In my time here, I have seen less than a dozen women in pants and no one wears shorts except children.  I was told that in colonial times, the Belgian did not allow the Congolese to wear pants, they had to wear shorts, and that is probably why no one wears them now. 



 Ted had given me a quick tour of the market before he left for the states, so I had meandered through many of the food stalls on my earlier visit. I confess that I prefer Shoprite.  The food may be fresher – farm to market-  but just looking at the meat covered in flies (with the seller using a rag to fan them away) and the smell of the dried fish, and the open sacks of ground flour sitting on the dirt alley ways and vats of palm oil in large dented tin tubs… I decided that I simply will not  think about the market when Kwini puts dinner in front of me, sort of like not wanting to know what the kitchen looks like when eating at a restaurant… Lots of smells, lots of sounds, and many things I did not recognize.  I was allowed to take a picture of this woman, selling what Ted called the Congolese equivalent of 7-11’s grab and go sandwich. It is a stick of ground and cooked manioc, wrapped in a leaf, which you peel and eat. Ted said it is passable if still warm, but not generally something for Western consumption.  I chose not to buy and see for myself.

Parenthetically, there are no grocery stores in Bunia.  A few basic foodstuffs can be purchased at the douka, and there are literally dozens and dozens of them, all selling virtually the same things. All the food doukas are enclosed stalls on the street measuring about 8 feet by 6 feet, and sell things like juice, bottled water, coffee, tea, mayonnaise, powered milk (the one food item where there is actually a large selection, relatively speaking), tomato paste, soap, toilet paper and matches. Not too much else. Oh yes – they all sell air time minutes. And when you go in to buy, they take the item off the shelf, and before giving it to you, take a rag and dust it off!  Not that the inventory is old stock; the streets are very dusty, and the dust covers everything with a fine coat.

After leaving the market, we walked along, and Marianne spotted the house of a Congolese woman she knows. So we stopped in to see her, which is very Congolese. Rachelle is widowed, having lost her husband last November (effects of high blood pressure, or something like that). She is responsible for rearing 10 children, several not her own, they being kin of some sort. (I have noticed that this is common. You do not say no to kin, and many send their children from the villages to kin in the city, where educational opportunities are better. You simply take them in, and rear them among an extended family structure.) She is an accountant and works for the electric company, although she has not been paid for over seven months now. (Also not that uncommon, and you live by borrowing, with everyone more or less in debt to everyone else, so you lend when you have and borrow when you need – this is very African, I am told.) Yet she was a generous hostess, offering us coffee and bread. I felt bad eating the bread, as I felt like I was taking from her children.  Yet, you would never know there was any sacrifice at all on her part, and she thanked us over and over for stopping in to visit and invited us to come back anytime.  Her four daughters all came into the living room to greet us, and I was glad for my lesson in Swahili greeting my first Sunday in Congo, for all four of them walked by us and bent their shoulder low so we could grab it with our hand.

I asked if Rachelle knew the real story behind the power outage. I figure maybe she would know if anyone would, given that she works for the power company. But no, she did not know, nor did she have any idea of when power might be restored. So I figure if someone who works for the power company doesn’t have any idea, there is no point even asking around anymore. I was told later that the word around town is ‘don’t bother asking and don’t hold your breath’.   So I am assuming I will leave Bunia before it comes back. Thankfully the airport has generators, or I wouldn’t be able to leave. There are always things to be thankful for!

Update: Well, no electricity, but it has rained quite a bit, for which I am thankful.  Water worries are receding.  Two earthquakes though.  Neither was anything even approaching danger or concern, but since an earthquake, however small, is a new experience for me, a bit scary. I was generally unfazed by the first one Tuesday afternoon, but the one Wednesday night was stronger and lasted longer, and came after dark in the middle of a huge thunderstorm with lots of lightening, which made the whole experience that much more unsettling. The missionary couple down the road called me after to see if I was okay, and I was grateful for their call.  It let me know that while I am here in this house by myself, I am not  alone.

And I am continuing to pick up a few more Swahili words.  I am even starting to surprise myself!