Below: Mr Thursday senses what is in store for him.

Right: The local market where traders vie for your attention to sell their fruit and veg.




African Markets, Meat and Masais
Saturday/ Sunday 4th & 5th Feb 2006

Well my first weekend in Tanzania was quite the cultural experience. I was thrown into Tanzanian life with gusto.

On Friday night Gemma threw a BBQ for all the volunteers in the school yard – there’s now around 30 of us. During the day there were a number of goats tied to trees in the school yard, bleating pitifully. As it transpires, we were eating goat that night, though not the ones that were tied to the trees. Our goat had been killed the previous day, someone informed me, as though that would be a source of comfort! It wasn’t! The BBQ was fired up by some of the Escari (security guards) and Mr Thursday Goat was loaded on, to be cooked, while his Friday friends bleated from their respective trees only a few metres away.

Suffice to say, Mr Thursday goat was eaten and apparently tasted well with salad AND in soup! I couldn’t face it so I had some lovely salad instead. It was pretty cool having our BBQ in the balmy African evening with the mountains in the background, in the middle of the school! Because we started the BBQ pretty early, I was in bed by 10.30

On Saturday morning, I was woken early as we were heading into town to do the shopping for our group. I had imagined we would do this in a supermarket (being the Westerner) but we went to the market.

Having already been to the market earlier in the week, I wasn’t too taken aback by it all! During our previous visit, Paul the Irish vollie co-ordinator had decided to drive through the main street onto which the market spills out from a nearby undercover area. Driving along here is kind of like trying to drive through a whole heap of cows in a field. It was bedhlam! So on the side of the road are a load of women, sitting on the side of the road (on the edge of the market) selling all sorts of things. Some were selling as little as a around 20 apples or oranges, and some were selling all manner of fruit and veg. Then there were the men pulling along carts, selling their ware, like mirrors, toothbrushes and various other incongruous items. Occasionally you see a man on a bike pulling a fridge with ice-creams (had to try one of those). And in between these men, vying for space were cars coming from both directions! And this is on a street that’s around 10 foot in width! It’s not surprising that it took us around 45 minutes to get up this street which his around 50 metres long! We didn’t even make it to the other end – we had to reverse onto a side street and out that way.

So, having had this experience, I found walking through the market on Saturday morning a much less stressful way to navigate my way through. The purpose was to buy enough food (fruit, veg, bread, powdered milk, pasta etc.) for our group for the next week. I would have thought we would work out what we were cooking but it’s not as scientific as that. We just bought a heap of veg and fruit and various other stuff and it seems to work well since I have yet to be hungry.

The hard part about buying the stuff is (a) the language and (b) knowing how to haggle. I’m certainly not afraid of the haggling part but it’s almost impossible to do this or be taken seriously without the language. Mzungu (foreigners) are often ripped off because, well, they can be and let’s face it, we have more money so people here don’t feel too guilty about it! I’d probably do it were I in their position – in fact, I know I would. Soooo, not having any Swahili makes it harder to bargain. Karin, the German girl who took me shopping, has excellent Swahili so she was able to get good prices. It seems to me that the way to approach it is head on. So when they tell you a price, you ask them if that’s a mzungu or local price. Of course they’ll tell you it’s a local price but by then you’ve communicated that you know the game… and you can usually negotiate from there. Of course I still have the problem of only having a few words in my Swahili vocabulary. So, I can ask how much something is “Shingapi?” but I don’t know my numbers so erm, it’s kind of useless! I’m starting Swahili classes tomorrow morning so I expect to be fluent by Monday! Ahem!

On Sunday, we had a “vollie” outing to a nearby Masi Market. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t quite the same as the reality . I suppose when I think of the Masai, I think of the spears and possibly of them dancing, though how much of that is based on fact I don’t know. I suppose I always associate tribes with spears and dancing. Anyhow, not a spear or dance was to be seen at the market. We rocked up in our big bus to the edge of a flat, dry, sandy field. It was barren beyond belief! And in the field were perhaps a hundred stalls – ie blankets on the ground with the various items for sale such as fabric, old clothes, baskets, jewellery, shoes (made from tyres… yes really), fruit, vegetables, some goat (presumably Mr Sunday this time). I bought some lovely bright, local fabric with which I am having a skirt made. There are no clothes shops here to speak off, everyone has their clothes made by a tailor (transl. Local woman with a sewing machine). In fact, on a lot of streets, you will notice women sitting on the side of the road, sewing frantically on their antiquated machines. They do very good work. And yet ironically, it seems that with the children with ripped uniforms in the school, their mama’s never mend them (yes, as the Uniform Queen I notice such things!)

What I enjoyed most about the market was meeting the local people. They’re very friendly, even if you don’t want to buy anything – my new phrase was “Hapana, Asana” which means, No thank you. I even added Mama or Baba with a flourish at the end for old women or men, respectively. But who would have ever thought that saying “no thank you” would be such an effort but with a completely new language it really is. I’m just not used to that.

Three quarters the way back to the school, the bus broke down (I’m not sure why but they kept pouring water into the engine so maybe it was overheating….). Suffice to say, it wouldn’t go any further. So, in true Western style, we took taxis home which cost less than $5 between four of us for a 15 journey (first along the nice paved road and then along the dry, unpaved bumpy one closer to the school)!

Once again I was filthy by the time we returned. I just can’t seem to stay clean here, especially my feet. I’ve resigned myself to having dirty feet for the rest of the year! It's quite a liberating feeling really!