A Day At The Market

I went to the market this afternoon. Well, let me back up a bit. I went for coffee this morning and as soon as an obvious tourist (any white person) walks into the "tourist" part of Arusha, you begin to collect an entourage of potential "guides". So instead of trying to fend them all off for myself, I decided to "hire" one of them to do it for me. It seemed easier than trying to learn to say "Will you all leave me the F**K alone!" in Swahili. So I hired a nice fellow who spoke very good english and arranged for him to meet me at 3:00 for a tour of the local market. The market was pretty cool, and I'm pretty glad that I had a guide because I doubt if I would have ventured as into the market as I did if I hadn't had someone with me who could say "Chill out, he's only taking pictures of your Bananas" in Swahili. Even that didn't always work, one guy was seriously upset about me taking a picture of his cabbages. I don't even like cabbage!

Here is the Market, they sell an amazing variety of vegetables and fruit. Some local and some trucked in from other parts of Tanzania and even a bit from southern Kenya:


They sell a LOT of Bananas here:


Some are for cooking and some are for eating. The ones that these guys are peeling are for making Banana Beer:


Also a lot of Avocados here:




I liked these Onions and Tomatoes:


Some Peas Please?:


These little dried fish come from Laky Tanganyika:


These little fish come from a lake near Mount Kilimanjaro, they didn't smell nearly as appealing as they look:


I'm not sure if these are coconuts or shrunken heads:


They sell lots of dry goods in the market too:



In case you're interested, Magugu is Rice in Swahili and it costs about a dollar a kilo:


This is a portable chicken coop. You pick out your chicken, then they cut it's head off and clean it for you on the spot. Fortunately, nobody was hungry for chicken while I was passing by:


The downside of hiring a guide for the afternoon is that he now wants long term employment with medical, dental and a 401K plan.