Culture: Market Day

Going to a village market in Mali is always an experience.  One of the first and biggest hurdles to overcome is bargaining (but there’s a whole other post on that if you’re interested).  In a large city, market can be quite overwhelming, but because our village is so small, we get to see it as a fun social activity. Aside from shopping for food, fabric, and other odds and ends, we make the rounds and greet our favorite vendors, like Amadou, Awa, or Jenaba. And if we miss a week, everybody knows and makes sure to ask us where we were – just like any small town anywhere in the world. :) See more description and pictures below:

As you can see, a market consists of a series of thatched stands where sellers come in from surrounding villages and set up their merchandise 1 day per week, similar to a flee market or farmers market in the US.  (Above) We often start off our shopping with fruits and vegetables for the week since this is the 1 day that we have access to all these things. And yes, that’s a watermelon that Joye is holding. Gotta love Cold Season!

Another fun part of Malian markets is shopping for fabric, which you will later take to the tailor to be made into an outfit. Aside from all the beautiful colors, fabrics also differ in quality and therefore price. So you always need to know what you are bargaining for in order not to get ripped off. One advantage to living in a small village is that at this point, we’re on a first name basis with most vendors so they always offer us good prices :)

Buying Meat: Recently, after discovering that our villagers thought we were vegetarians because we didn't buy goat meat at the market, we decided we should make a more active effort to promote protein consumption in Kongodugu. It really is funny how much people are paying attention even when we think we’re doing simple everyday things. However, last week, the butcher  killed a cow, so we decided to go ahead and make a beef stew for dinner.  Now Malians eat almost every part of the animal, so (above left) Jim first examined the intestines, liver, heart, etc before asking for a 1/2 kilo of more…eh… normal meat—oh and no bones please! “What? No bones?” said the butcher. He then proceeded to grab his machete, cut a leg from the hanging carcass (shown right). Placing the leg on the table, he hacked off the leg muscle with a machete. Bone and muscle pieces flying everywhere. Jim and I had both wiped pieces of cow off our faces and clothes by the time our meat was ready. Of course, the Malians standing around were not phased in anyway other than simple confusion as to what we found so funny. Fun Fact: If you look to Jim’s left, on the ground lays the head of the cow, brains and nerves all exposed. Yum. I think it must be an advertising technique.

So at the end of the day, they tied our meat to a small string, did not place it in any kind of bag, and handed it over. So walked home holding this raw cow meat in front of us, trying not to drip any more on our clothes. Above middle, Jim holds up our dinner for photo documentation. Finally, since there is no meat grinder in village, Joye cut up the fresh, somewhat bloody, meat into bite size pieces for a beef, onion, and tomato stew (which, though the meat is pretty tough here, was still delicious).  So sure, if we had grown up on a farm in the United States, some of this would not be so foreign to us, but we thought most Americans would find this interesting, especially since shopping is such a huge part of the Christmas season. Hope you enjoyed reading!

 

~Joye