Market day.

13:49, March 20, 2010. My house, Tete, Mozambique.

You know, I think the fact that I have a motorcycle, while incredibly helpful to my work, is really limiting with regard to my experience of African life. I’m very busy (to what extent that’s a product of my Western upbringing is debatable), so I usually take the quickest route from event to event, and that typically means choosing the motorized option (interestingly, “motorcycle” in Portuguese is “motorizada”, or, literally, “motorized”). All that to say, after visiting Alexis a couple of weeks ago and seeing the awesome relationships she’s formed with people simply by walking from place to place, I have decided to go by foot whenever practical.

Today this meant walking to the market in my neighborhood, which is about twenty minutes away on foot, and which remained unknown to me until last week. I greeted everyone as I walked down the dusty roads, enjoying the smiles that I invariably received from each person, and upon rounding one corner was yelled at by an old lady looking up from her cooking pot. She exclaimed “Hey, come over here, I want to give you the proper Mozambican salutation!”, and ran to me with arms open wide. I veered toward her, and we exchanged the familiar fake-kiss-on-both-cheeks-while-embracing ritual, with me having to stoop down greatly to do so. We talked for a few minutes, and I started laughing in the middle of the conversation – she was so full of life and energy, and invited me to pass by her house sometime to hang out and talk. Teresa is her name, and I’ll definitely plan on doing that sometime.

I kept walking, and about three minutes later was greeted by two men in halting English. Now, many Mozambicans know a couple of phrases in my language (“How are you? I am fine. I love you!”), so I usually try to humor them by answering back in whatever tongue they choose to address me in. These ones, however, got really excited when I started speaking English, we stopped to talk more, and I found out that they are unemployed Zimbabwean businessmen who live in the area. I greeted them in Shona, their own language, and they both broke out in huge smiles and shook my hands again (the Mozambican equivalent of pounding it). They asked for my telephone number, and we’re going to get together sometime to hang out. Gibson and T…something were their names. Ha.

I finally arrived at my destination, the market bearing the same name as the area: “Bairo Azul”, or “Blue neighborhood”. The name apparently stuck after the UN distributed thousands of tarps during the civil war, and almost every building in the zone had blue roofs for years. The market itself is situated under a significant grove of baobab trees, and consists of hundreds of little stalls and buildings selling pretty much everything you could find in the city.

My objective was to find the produce section of the market, and it took me a few minutes of weaving through people and stalls to do so. Along the way I passed a man selling capulanas, or the brightly colored pieces of material that women wrap around themselves as skirts, and mentioned to him that I’m thinking about buying one someday and having a tailor make me a shirt (this is another thing they’re used for…there exists a certain style of capulana shirt that somehow passes off as formal wear, though it’s short sleeve and without buttons, and I’m all about getting away with comfortable, colorful wear whenever possible). He said that he knew some tailors nearby, and I told him that I’d return in a few moments.

I finally arrived at a stall of a woman selling beans (like, dried beans…think butter beans, pinto beans, and things like that), and asked her about the price. She told me that a can (like, literally an old tin can) of certain varieties is 20 meticais, and others are 30 meticais. I asked for a couple of can’s worth, and she scooped heaping amounts into plastic sacks for me, even throwing in a few extra handfuls for good measure.

My next stop was to a stall that sold avocados and other assorted vegetables, run by some young girls. They were really giggly, we joked around for a few minutes, and I ended up buying three good-sized  avocados (which I’ve been eating a ton of lately) and a large head of cabbage for 34 meticais (a little over a dollar US).

I noticed a lady selling pumpkins a little bit further down the row, and, having had thought about how much I miss pumpkin bread just this morning, decided to ask about the price. They were only ten mets, so, after she showed me how to pick the best one (by weight, apparently?), I purchased that and some onions (which were supposed to be ten mets per three onions, but she threw an extra one into the sack).

This pretty much wrapped up everything on my list, so I made my way back to the capulana guy and ended up deciding to buy a somewhat-masculine-looking one from him (for 90 mets). He led me to a stall where no less than eight people were whirring away on the old school, foot pedal sewing machines, and I asked how much it would cost to make one of the traditional shirts for me out of the material. I was shocked at the answer: 40 mets, or about $1.30…and it would be ready the next day! They took the measurements right there, and though I have no idea how it’s going to turn out, I couldn’t believe that a hand-tailored shirt, made from scratch, including material, without any sweatshop labor weirdness, is going to cost me a little over four dollars. Also, one funny thing about the situation was the discussion about when I could pick the shirt up – one of the tailors was drunk (he was asleep on his machine when I arrived), and after he insisted that I could arrive at 7am tomorrow morning the master tailor told me plainly, “Don’t listen to him, he’s very drunk.” Ha!

My walk back wasn’t quite as eventful as the one there, as I was pretty hot and hurried along, but in general the excursion was one of the highlights of my week. This is Africa – for seven bucks and an hour of my time I ended up with a backpack full of produce, a custom-made shirt, several new friends, and got to be on the receiving end of unmerited generosity and love. Gosh, so good.