A visit to the central market

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  Arusha, Tanzania
Saturday, January 26, 2008

The last two days I've taken field trips to the central market to get a feel for it and to pick up some things for the house.  The first day, I went with Alice, one of my Canadian roommates.  She's been here for 9 months and has awesome Kiswahili skills so she was a good guide for my first trip. 

The market is about a mile from my office complex.  It's basically a bazaar- an outdoor partially-covered labyrinth of fruits and vegetables, dry goods, meats, and household necessities.  Tanzania has amazing weather most of the year and its summer now so fruits and vegetables are plentiful.  Locally grown pineapple, banana, papaya, tomatoes, passion fruit, avocado, and limes are widely available and then other veggie staples like cucumbers, greens, eggplant, carrots, coconut, onions and garlic are also plentiful, though I presume at least some of them are imported- something to check on... 

The market is crowded, with narrow walkways between the stalls.  It smells like a mix of rotting vegetable matter and dried fish- not an overwhelming odor, but certainly one that you notice, and one that sticks to your clothes so that hours afterwards you might move in a certain way and catch a whiff of compost.  Its a friendly, bustling place and it reminded me a great deal of the Bazaars in Kazakhstan- the most important difference for me is that here, there are no prices posted for anything making it impossible for the uninitiated to have the vaguest sense of what might be a fair price for things.   So it was good to go with someone who's been here for a while and has a better sense of what things should cost!

So the first day at the market our goal was clotheshangers.  We went past the fruits and veggies, past the baskets filled with lentils and rice and beans and tiny silver dried fish, and past the spice and nut sellers to the home-goods section of the market where Alice asked a stall-keeper about them.  He didn't sell them, but he led us to a nearby stall that had plastic hangers in bunches of 6.  So the bargaining began.  They first wanted 8000 Tanzanian Shillings (about 7.50 USD) for a set.  Alice laughed at this, and eventually talked them down to 2.500 (about $2.30)- which certainly felt more reasonable though I suspect a local person would have gotten them for less. 

We picked up some fruits and a couple other household items and headed home.  Later that afternoon I had two thrilling successes.  First, I found an ATM machine that would take my ING bank card.  Earlier that day I had been horrified to find that most ATMs here only take Visa/ Cirrus cards and that my fancy international online bank is neither!  But Alice recommended a Barclay's branch near my house and I was saved!!   Then, my pockets overflowing with shillings, I stopped by the fruit stand on the corner of our street and bought some bananas, tomatoes, and cucumbers- and even bargained down the price a little.

My first dinner in my new house was cucumber-tomato salad and dessert of fresh bananas - wonderful!

Tonight, there are some Peace Corps volunteers in town, and I think I'm going to meet them and go out to dinner.  Should be good times!  The photos are coming- just working out a few amusing technological snags...

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