Jessamyjoy's travel blogs:
- Senegal 2007
- Two months translating, interpreting and... 2005
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Le Grand Marché
Entry 11 of 33 | show all | print this entry |
Every second I learn or experience something new. One thing I hope to learn is posture! Every African from the moment they stand has such a proud, straight back and high-held head. No wonder the women manage to carry such heavy things on their perfectly balanced heads. I've seen two foot high stacks of firewood, 15 bunches of bananas, baskets full of cloth, fruit-round, mind you-stacked in pyramids around 2 foot diameter trays. And never a flinch. As I look around the streets I feel like a slob with my shoulders slumped and a little belly pouch.
Pearly teeth gleam from coffee-bean colored faces, women with every hair in place or wrapped in vibrant head clothes, a hijab dotting the crowd every now and again. Some women show their arms, but never a hint of leg or midriff. Everywhere you go, "Bonjour! Ça va? How's it going? Ça va le travail? Work? Ça va la famille ? Family ? Ça va this, ça va that ? " Smiles and welcomes, handshakes. Babies stare wide-eyed from tied tightly to their mothers' or older sisters' backs, some reach out a curious hand. I am only conscious of being the only (and very) white face when a child points me out. Otherwise I forget and smile and laugh as I walk, waving at the babies as they marvel.
Today was my first day in the "grand marché". Bridget told me she was surprised to find out that this market was "it" but I was anything but surprised. Had there been more I would have been dumbfounded. They don't appreciate photos being taken because they feel like people make money from selling their pictures to magazines, so I'll do my best with words to drop you into this amazing array of sights, sounds and smells.
The main street is dusty and crowded. Yellow-shirted zemijahn (moto-taxi) drivers zip with incredible agility between speeding cars, stray goats, children selling candy and matches and the graceful women who glide between the crowd avoiding every jolt with their carefully stacked loads. Beggars raise empty bowls but don't insist. Shopkeepers shout out, advertising their great products and prices from every 6-foot wide by 4-foot deep stall, packed from floor to 9-foot ceiling with packages of beauty products, rolls of intricately designed cloth, flip-flops in plastic bags, knock-off purses and watches, electronics, anything and everything you could ever imagine wanting. We leave the main street and disappear into what seems an alley-way, lined every inch with tables piled with more mens dress shoes, western-style t-shirts with English no one can read, fragrant bars of hand-made soap, cases of shining gold jewelry and cheap plastic toys.
We is Bridget, the soon-to-depart-STA (Short Term Assistant like me) who is my twin, another tiny European woman and Esther, our official Béninoise guide and friend.
The "alley" opens into the most wonderful display of unimaginable foods, inexplicably organized in rows large enough to squeak past another person. I don't even know how large the market is, but it's the largest I've ever seen and when I turn in circles to take it in I could turn and turn for hours, eyes wide at each new grain, spice, fruit and intent face. Thinking back I realize all the food vendors are women who fill the space they take up, whatever it is, with confidence, bravado and good-natured pushing. Their full, hot bodies leaning forward to offer another of what you already have or something you haven't yet tried.
The grain sellers are my favorite. They sit in the midst of several 2-foot diameter bowls or baskets, each piled in the highest possible precarious cone of white rice, clumpy tapioca, beans, flours. Women sift through, taste a pinch, sprinkle the rest and begin to bargain or walk carelessly on. A baby sits between several large baskets, face covered with sticky rice, smiling and waving at me in contentment. Some spices are in baskets-whole cloves, garlic, tiny dried chartreuse and maroon peppers, others are perfectly enclosed in clear plastic and tied tightly. These little hand-sized plastic packs are piled high around every corner-blue soap shreds, red tomato past, black tea twinings, rice. If it fits in these small, serving sized bundles, the women are there tying them up absent-mindedly as they continue their friendly banter. The list of things I recognize goes on and on, pineapples, cucumbers, potatoes, tiny lumpy tomatoes, the familiar baguettes of French influence in brimming baskets, freshly picked carrots, eggs passing on the balancing tray of an adolescent girl's head, fly-covered meat with black eye-balls starting from the blood-covered table seems oddly normal, red rounds of cheese stacked neatly like everything else. Then begins the list of things I don't recognize, grains of tans and yellows, spiky green misshapen fruit, spices in warning shades of red and orange, face after care-worn face. Some with a traditional scarring I know nothing about tracing perpendicular lines down their faces. The only men I see sit in stalls of clothing or household items and try to convince me to buy. I tell them I have no money, I'm looking, which is only partly true since I borrowed money just to have enough to eat tomorrow. They tell me it's the market-for buying, not looking!
Oh but I could spend all day looking. There are many sellers of everything you could want, some friendlier than others, most probably doubling the starting price as soon as they see westerners coming, but everyone gives a warm, "Bonjour," and takes no for no.
People here keep asking if it's the first time I've been in a third world country. It's not. And oddly it doesn't feel like the first time I've been in Africa either. Something travelers often mention is the smell...I keep waiting for it. It occurs to me that people might be surprised to know that aside from their proud stance, another thing I notice about Africans is that they are very clean. Unless directly working on a car or other dirty job, you never see anyone with the slightest stain on their perfectly pressed clothing. Children are no dirtier than every American child, maybe even cleaner. People live in dirt or cement floored huts with walls made from stacks of sticks or other thatching...but they sweep incessantly and as you wander the stores and markets there's no speck of dust, hardly anything dropped on the floor and everything has its exact place. Yes, garbage litters every street and blows when the sudden wind picks up and buildings are leaning this way and that, crumbling, made of uneven cement blocks or packed mud, smattered in ancient crumbling paint, but that's the place. The people seem to have been dropped in this untidy place and have just carried happily on. As I wander I smell the faintest smell of sweat but I can't distinguish between mine and everyone else's and unlike the sweaty metro of Paris it doesn't smell like rotting flesh but healthy and fresh, part of living in the barely tolerable heat.
The smells of the market are more pleasant to me than those of Safeway or Albertson's any day. The spices burn the air and the soaps refresh it, the occasional smashed fruit advertises its survivors, I hesitate to breathe past the meat and cheese...but nothing. The open air, light breeze and bustle of so many different smells gives the whole place a mysterious aura of...fullness. It's too much to take in for an hour-long trip. I long to take photos that won't get any further than my writing to show the magnificent display.
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