Yes the market, one of Mwanza's most interesting places to say the lest. Now there are many kinds of markets, there are fish markets, food markets and yes even the famous "black market" in which you can uptain illegel goods (I don't go there for many reasons, 1. scary, 2. to find it you need to have like scars all over you) okay maybe not scars but you have to be braver then I. Anyways I'm here to talk about the other 2 markets in which I spend a fair deal of time wheeling and dealing for good food prices for the Orphanage. Some interesting always happens down in the Market, mainly because I don't know much Kiswahili, but I do have a sidekick who comes and helps with that problem named Joe. Joe's awesome, nice guy, good friend, and speaks both english and Kiswahili! We normally go to the market at least once a week, and my luck is when Joe goes to pick some stuff up, people come up and start talking to me, one guy came up and started doing the crane kick move from the karate kid, it was really funny cause I think he was trying to scare me but he was about as steady as a drunk on St. Patricks day.
Now I could write tons on my encounters with the many many strange people who have come up to me in the market but we'll talk about the market itself in this blog. The food market is overflowing with people, and I mean overflowing, its like that sense in the Matrix where Neo is walking down the street and everyone keeps pushing into Him. Anyways you can find just about anything in the food market, pototos, peanuts, little fish called Dagaa, carrots, pots and pans, chairs, knifes, bananas etc...seriously just about any food product that you can think of and products for cooking that food.
The part about the market I love is that there are some many people selling the same stuff so close you can really bargin, if you don't want to pay 1000 shillini for beans you just turn around to the guy behind you and buy from him for 900, or 800 shillini. The only problem with being a Mazungo as they call all white people is that in the market your everybodies Rafiki (friend) (if only they knew I'm broke) so when I first started going down there and wanted to buy something I would hide and send my friend Joe first (Joe is a local), he would bargin down to a good price then I would show up :), the person normally would try and raise the price once seeing me but if they had agreed on a price it was a done deal.
Now that I've been here a few months (about half a year) the people know that I'm not a tourist anymore and that I know the prices the locals pay so, I can go and bargin by myself now. The one major problem I have with the Market (besides the pickpockets) is the smell, its all the rotton food and waste of everything all at once the only thing worse then smelling it, is getting use to the smell :P.
Now theres also the Fish Market which is a whole nother story, very very strong smell of dead fish, but I'm from NS so I'm very use to this smell and it doesn't bother me as much as it would most, nor does the sight of fish guts flying all over the place or the odd fish head rolling over my feet, when it comes to buying the fish its something stright out of a disney movie, people stand in a circle around the fish and point at the ones they want and shout out how much they are willing to pay for it. If two people point at the same bundle of fish it becomes a bidding war and gets REALLY loud. Anyways thats the Market Places, if I ever go to the black market I'll post on it, even if it means the FBI would come after me! So until next time God bless!
