Choose Your Own Adventure: Weekly Market Madness!

You know the drill: Read the paragraph, then choose one of the options that follow. Try not to read the intervening paragraphs.

Line 1

It’s Thursday, which means the weekly market is happening in the neighboring village. You need supplies, better go!

-If you walk the 5km, go to line 3

-If you ride your bike, go to line 2

-If you’re tired and feeling wealthy, and take the minibus for 3000 GNF, go to line 4

Line 2

You ride your bike up through your village and do the rocky path that leads to the stream. It’s hard to believe that cars and motorcycles use this route on occasion. The path levels out and smoothens as it parallels the stream. You can really get moving on the boilerplate mud, planed smooth and hard by hundreds of feet and sporadic rain. Finally, you cross the stream on a well-made concrete footbridge. Don’t forget to say hello to the women washing laundry in the stream! You climb the other side of the valley, and arrive at the market; sweaty, but only 25 minutes after leaving your house. Stash your bike in the barbershop, you know Mamadou will keep an eye on it for you.

-Continue to line 4.

Line 3

You start off on the road (like all roads around here, it’s more of a path than a road) that leads up and then down behind the village to one of the many inexplicably-fed streams (it hasn’t rained in three weeks) that streak the countryside. As the path approaches the stream and begins to run alongside it, you first pass a group of girls carrying clean but wet laundry in buckets on their heads, then several clumps of sheep, each one a mother and two lambs at various stages of growth. You marvel that of all the possible deterrents, sheep are most fearful of, in order, waving hands, people walking, bicycles, and finally cars and motorcycles. The must not be wild animals, with their inverted flight responses. The path stays level as the stream descends, and the cool trees face away to flat, hot grassland. You pass a herd of cows occupying a very bumpy soccerfield, itself splayed horizontally across the path. One big cow is sitting right in the middle.

-If you pass on the left, go to line 5

-If you pass on the right, go to line 5

Line 4

You walk into the center of the village where the market is getting underway. There are many sounds: diesel engines, lost sheep, vendors hawking their wares on loop via combo megaphone-recorders. There are many sights: men and women in their Thursday best (boubous and complets of all conceivable colors, and even more patterns), teenagers dressed like MTV, orange peels everywhere, and smoke from all of the cooking fires. There are many smells: exhaust, rotting discarded produce, hot peanut oil where “cakes” are frying, the woodsmoke smell from beneath the spattering pots, the omnipresent mélange of goat-sheep-cow that reminds you that domesticated animals are still animals, and the oceanic wafts from the dried-fish sellers emptying their 20-kilo baskets onto tarps to better display the ancient catch. Where to start?

-If you see your friend Ibrahima, go to line 6

-If you realize it makes sense to get heavy, crush-resistant items first, go to line 8

-If the fried ‘cake’ smell is too tempting to resist, go to line 7 to search out some hot ones

-If you just want to browse the market first, go to line 9

Line 5

Whew! The cow just looked at you and blinked. That’s about as tense as it gets in Africa, outside of a bush taxi. Sheep and goats don’t pose a threat, but even skinny cows are pretty big. You continue out among the grasses, where the biggest animals are grasshoppers. The walk is long but the cool breeze makes it tolerable, even pleasant. Taking the main road means heat, lots of people, passing minibuses and motorcycles, and incessant curious and patient children. Finally, the path turns towards the creek again, where big rocks pushed into the mud before the bridge have turned the path into a dry-season jungle gym for the feet. Wave to the kids bathing/playing in the water and greet the women doing laundry. You ascend the other slope, and walk another six or seven minutes past building skeletons on the outskirts of town. Finally, you merge with the stream of people coming up the main road, and head into the market.

-Continue to line 4

Line 6

Ibrahima greets you, asks how the trip to the market was, how you slept, how your health is, and how it’s going, in that order. You reply with the standard responses: “Only peace” and “It’s going a little”. Then he asks if you’ve eaten. You tell him you ate a baguette with margarine, and an orange before setting out. He tells you that that’s alright, but bread is “light” and now that it’s 11:30 you should really eat some real food. You agree, and he leads you to an open wooden door at the back of a simple concrete house on the edge of the market. Inside, each of you find low benches and sit and wait. A woman of indiscernible age enters, carrying a couple dirty serving bowls. Ibrahima orders lacciri e kosan for anywhere between two and four people. You never know when a hungry friend might stop by. The woman returns five minutes later with two large bowls and two smaller buckets. According to the labels, the buckets contain mustard and chocolate spread. Or maybe wood glue? You don’t read German. The woman puts about ten scoops of stuff from the large bowl into the other, which was previously empty and clean enough. The stuff is yellow and fluffy, but also somehow damp and springy looking. Then she removes the lids of the two buckets, and offers Ibrahima a spoon. He samples each bucket. The first (mustard) is too sour; he indicates that the second (German) one is preferable. The yellow stuff is lacciri, corn couscous, and the contents of the buckets kosan, milk. But this couscous and milk is different from what you would build in the US from the same words. The couscous is incredibly fine, light, and dry, basically a steamed powder. The milk, existing in a land where refrigerators do not, is aged or fermented; a bit bubbly, a bit chunky, and very sour. But not off. It’s something like yoghurt or buttermilk, but less fatty and less salty. Ibrahima pours most of the contents of the chosen bucket over the couscous, and asks for sugar. The woman leaves, returning five minutes later with another spoon (freshly washed, and dried on her skirt), and a small plastic bag of sugar. Ibrahima carefully unties the intricate knot and carefully sprinkles perhaps two-thirds of the contents over the bowl. Finally, we eat. The bowl sits on the concrete floor between our two low benches. Each spoonful is individually mixed, so that sugar, milk, and couscous are perfectly proportioned in each bite in a technique that you have yet to master. No friends show, so it’s up to the both of you to finish it off, which takes a while. You chat about your lives: he says he’d like to get married, but he needs to ask the girl in front of her family so that she can publicly accept, and he has not yet had an opportunity. You wish him luck, and mention that you’d like to have your friends and family visit you here in Africa. He stops eating before you, and implores you to finish the bowl. You do, it’s delicious. He remarks that you probably have some purchases to make. You do.

-If you start by searching out sturdy, heavy goods, go to line 8

-If you browse the market before getting anything, go to line 9

Line 7

The smell of hot peanut oil is hard to resist! Your not-so-light breakfast seems to have been consumed during the journey here, it’s time to refuel. You walk purposefully through the market, seeing lots of platters of the crispy fried dough you seek, but you know that the tastiest “cakes” are those that are fresh out of the oil. So you move to the edges of the market, where cooking fires seem to be more tolerated. Your circumnavigation of the area yields three types of hot, oily goodness.

-If you buy regular flour “cakes” at 500 GNF apiece, go to line 10

-If you buy tiny quarter-sized balls at ten for 500 GNF, go to line 11

-If you buy small cornmeal “cakes” at 100 GNF each, go to line 12

Line 8

Given that you have to carry everything back yourself, and that it’s all going in your small school backpack or the 5-liter bucket you brought with you, it makes sense to buy the heavy, crush-resistant stuff first. Unfortunately, most of the items you want to buy fall into this category.

-If you get grains first, go to line 13

-If you get potatoes first, go to line 14

-If you want onions, go to line 15

-If you want squash, go to line 16

Line 9

The market is divided into several identifiable sections, but the boundaries are blurry, like a TV dinner without the tray. Along the road, the trucks and taxis queue up, unloading city goods and people, loading country goods and people, and heading back to Labe when they are full. This is the place to by 50-kilo sacs of oranges or rice, whole stalks of bananas, and 20-liter jugs of palm or peanut oil. Just next to the road is where the condiment ladies are set up: onions by the kilo or in clusters of three, dried fish, garlic, tiny bags of macaroni, and shrimp bouillon cubes cover the low tables. Further on, towards the interior of the market, are the small-timers: groups of one to three people selling small quantities of garden produce. This is where to buy tomatoes, okra, eggplant, dried hot peppers, fish balls, and an abundance of other odd-looking homemade foodstuffs. Behind them are the sundries-sellers and clothesmongers. Whereas the foodsellers are mostly women, the this group is exclusively men. The displays, set up on low tables or tarps, are cramped with cheap Chinese products: flashlights, batteries, string, mirrors, tea, pens, cigarettes. The clothessellers’ stands are constantly surrounded by crowds of adolescents, gazing at the latest in knockoff Gucci tshirts and Versace-Louis Viutton hybrid jeans, or hurriedly sorting through piles of ten-year old tshirts from American universities, family reunions, and construction companies. The edges of the market are where cooked food is found, and where there is apparently more tolerance of open flames (and ample space). Fried “cakes”, fried fish heads, steamed grated cassava, spaghetti sandwiches, and sugar-brewed tea are all readily available. There are further subdivisions, and certain products are always in the same area [this is baffling—what sense is there in selling one’s peanut butter or corn kernels next to three others selling the same thing, at the same price?], but to make note of all the different zones would take all day. Nevertheless, you pass by clusters of salt sellers, flip-flop sellers, soap-sellers, bean sellers, and rice sellers. So many tempting products! And so many useless, revolting, or baffling ones! Where to start?

-To stock up on the heavy, durable staples that will get you through the week, go to line 8

-To check out those hot-food stalls, go to line 7

Line 10

The big 500 GNF-apiece “cakes” give you the best hot-n-steamy dough to crispy-oily exterior ratio. You buy two for 1000 GNF, and have eaten both before the oil soaks through the thin piece of paper upon which they were presented.

-Continue to line 8

Line 11

The tiny little doughballs are just too cute to resist. You hand the girl at the stall a 1000 GNF note, and she tears a piece of plastic bag to wrap them in. She starts to pick from the back of the platter, but you motion to still-shiny-from-the-oil ones on the top of the pile. She counts out twenty of the little crisps, and hands you the warm, oily package. “Hot sauce?” she asks.

-If you want something to help cut through all that grease, go to line 17

-If the battered plastic bowl and chunky, oily substance within look as good to you know as you imagine it would coming out, go to line 18

Line 12

Those not-too-big not-too-small “cakes” really caught your eye. Plus, it looks like they have some sort of cornmeal mixed into the batter! You give the woman a 1000 GNF note and ask for that-much worth. She hands you back a big leaf with ten hot little nuggets folded inside. “Hot Sauce?” she asks, gesturing to a small pot with protruding spoon on the table.

-If a bit of spice sounds nice, go to line 17

-If the oily mush of tomatoes and piments looks less than appealing, go to line 18

Line 13

The foundation of the food pyramid is built with cereals. Unfortunately, Lucky Charms are about as rare as a real pot of gold here. However, there is an abundance of rice, dried corn, and dry beans.

-Stock up on rice at line 19

-Choose corn at line 20

-Check out the beans at line 21
-Maybe you've got enough grains stocked at home to last another week. Go to line 35

Line 14

Potatoes! Delicious! There is only one variety available at the stalls, but several sizes. You find a woman who has a small bowl of three-bite-sized tubers. After a bit of fussing with an almost-broken scale, a kilo is measured out.

-Buy a kilo of taters for 5000 GNF, go to line 22

-Decide potatoes aren’t what you need right now, say thanks anyway, and go to line 8

Line 15

If you are coking, chances are good you’ll need onions. The ones available in the market are oblate golfballs with thin skins. Both red and yellow (white?) varieties can be found, but the reds are rare and pricey. You approach the same stall that you often visit, not far from one of the cornmeal “cakes” vendors. She has onions, sold either by the kilo or in little piles of three, as well as garlic, tomato in little 70 gram bags, and five types of three brands of MSG-and-salt cubes, collectively known as Maggi, after the leading brand. It’s sort of like being in certain southern states, ordering a Coke, and then being asked what kind. “Sprite,” one can respond with confidence. Since you avoid the meat here like the plague it probably carries, having some buillon cubes about isn’t a bad idea. You also buy a couple bags of tomato paste for 2000 GNF each, two heads of garlic for 5000 GNF (after a bit of negotiating) and two “Doli” brand Maggi cubes for 1000 GNF. How about those onions?

-Buy a kilo for 7000 GNF, and go to line 23

-Decide that you’ll try a week without, 7000/kg is about as expensive as it gets for vegetables. Go to line 8

Line 16

The best deal in veggies at the market (at least during the current season) is squash. Cheap, delicious, durable, and easy to cook, it’s the perfect addition to almost any meal. You definitely want to put it at the bottom of your bag though, it would really do some damage to any tomatoes below. Unlike most other vegetables, there doesn’t seem to be a region of the market with a higher concentration of squash-sellers than any other. Having been keeping a sharp watch for the white-and-green striated gourds in piles of two to five, you interrogate a number of vendors regarding the price and ripeness of their fruit. One old woman wants 7000 GNF for her not-so-big and not-so-pretty squashes! You pass. The next squash vendor has a decent selection, and tells you prices start at 2500 for the smallest (maybe 1.5 kilo) squash.

-If you want to get the beautifully streaked and unblemished one she has for 3000 GNF, go to line 30

-If you’ll do without squash this week (or at least this instant), go to line 8

Line 17

“Yes, please!” you say. “Hot sauce is tasty!” you say. She smiles approvingly, and you extend your cake-filled hand to receive one, two (“More?”), three (“Are you sure?”) spoonfuls of the runny, chunky, slightly fishy topping. Each bite is fantastic: the first, a combination of hot, oily, crispy dough and gentle piment, to the second, mostly dough from the center, absorbing more than its share of sauce, to the last where you attempt to mop up the last of the sauce unsuccessfully with the crispy tail end of the “cake”. The “cakes” aren’t sweet, they are just moist yeasted dough dropped into hot oil, but you have been known to buy a few, ask for a real plastic bag instead of a shred of one, and take them home to eat dusted with cinnamon and sugar or dunked into hot creamy milk. Ahh…. But there is shopping to do! This is the one day a week that you can buy any selection of vegetables.

-To get back to the task at hand, go to line 8

-Ooh! Look at those tomatoes! Go to line 24

Line 18

“No, thanks” you say, and dive directly into the hot crispy-on-the-outside, steamy-on-the-inside snack. This reminds you of the time you had deep-fried Oreos at a fair in Boulder, Colorado, only an order of magnitude cheaper. But don’t get lost in thought. There is shopping to do, and daylight’s burnin’! Otherwise you’ll be eating bread-and-mayonnaise sandwiches for the next week.

-Continue with your mission at line 8

-Those okra look nice, how much are they? Find out at line 25

Line 19

Rice is the staple of the Guinean diet. Multiple people have told you that they “haven’t truly eaten until they’ve eaten rice” that day. For around five thousand GNF a kilo out here in the brousse, rice isn’t dirt cheap, but it’s easy and efficient to cook, and it takes sauces well. The lady who accosts you the loudest has two types for sale, a well-hulled long-grain variety, the sack displaying “9% broken grains” and “Imported from Pakistan”, 6000 GNF per kilo, and a second, uglier, less-well-hulled variety from Uruguay with 25% broken grains, 5000 GNF per kilo. There is no negotiating rice prices, unless you want to buy more than ten kilos.

-Get a couple kilos of the boring but clean Pakistani grain at line 26

-Get the more “authentic Africa rice-eating experience” rice, unhulled grains and tiny rocks included, and get your wallet fatter, at line 27

-Decide you’ll survive on beans and spaghetti this week. Go to line 13

Line 20

The Peul people of Middle Guinea eat their dried corn many ways: soaked and stewed, pounded to a pounded to a powder and hand-rolled into a fine couscous, called lacciri, and ground and boiled like grits or polenta. However, corn is only sold as whole, dried kernels, and everyone seems to have a small mound for sale. In order to make that polenta and tomato sauce meal you’ve been imagining, you’d need to ask your neighbors for help pounding the kernels into a cookable size. And before that you’d need to find some kernels that weren’t totally Swiss-cheesed by insects.

-Take the plunge and go for corn, 3000 GNF a kilo, at line 28

-Decide to abstain this week. Maybe next week you’ll have the energy to do corn. Go to line 13

Line 21

Unfortunately, fresh bean season is mostly over. No more throw-‘em-in-hot-water-and-eat-in-30-minutes bean meals. Fortunately, dry beans keep much longer than fresh ones. In the market today, you see two obvious types: small white beans, and a white-black-brown blend of similar size. You ask prices; there is not total agreement but both white and blend beans seem to be available for between 10000 and 14000 per kilo. Lots of ladies have beans, but none seem that enthusiastic about selling them to you (at least at the prices you offer). A little ways away from most of the bean ladies is an older woman, with a small pile of beans of many colors in front of her. You ask the price in Pular, but a nearby gentleman jumps in to interpret anyway. She hears his words better than yours, and you understand enough Pular to know that he is genuinely helping out and that they aren’t conspiring. He tells you she says there are about two ‘measures’ here, at 15000 GNF per measure.

-Offer her 25000 GNF for the lot at line 29

-Beans take forever to cook, and gas is really expensive. Better to stick to rice and pasta at line 13

Line 22

A kilo of potatoes is a lot, but you’ll be able to go through it in no time. A potato curry, minestrone, and a salad or some fries and they’ll be gone.

-Keep looking for supplies at line 8

Line 23

A kilo of small onions is about 12-15. They are more work to peel but less to chop, and better suited to cooking-for-one than the large American onions you are used to. Plus, now that you finally had a cutting board made, mincing them will be a snap. Cutting onions into your hand is tricky!

-Keep shopping at line 8

Line 24

They are just what you look for each week: medium-sized, red but not soft, no spots or obvious insect damage. At 2000 GNF for four they aren’t the cheapest, but they look good and will probably last at least halfway through the week before molding.

-Buy tomatoes. Be happy. Go to line 31

-Hold off for now. Some weeks, one of the dried fish ladies next to the trucks has huge piles of cherry tomatoes for 1000 GNF, and they keep really well. Go check at line 34

Line 25

500 GNF per pile, as usual. These okra are just the shape you like: small and firm, which seems to indicate less fibrous and more tender interiors. Lots of ridges means more surface area for sauce conveyance! The sliminess can’t really be avoided….

-Buy two piles of okra for 1000 GNF. They keep well, and it’s the only green vegetable you can get. Go to line 32

-Okra is slimy and you eat it all the time. Maybe it’s time to take a break. Plus the lady a few stalls down has some great-looking eggplant. Go to line 33

Line 26

That nice clean rice will be easy to wash and prepare, and complement Indian-themed curry quite well. Definitely worth the extra cash.

-Keep browsing at line 13

Line 27

The ugly rice probably has a better flavor, right? And eating a few hulls gives fiber (not that you need the extra G.I. help). Plus the 2000 GNF you saved can buy a whole box of tea! Or an egg and some mints.

Hope for no rocks and continue to line 13

Line 28

Two kilos of corn for 6000 GNF! No wonder Guineans in the village eat a lot of this stuff. It took a half-hour or careful searching, but you finally found a seller with kernels that looked more like Edam than Swiss [Can you tell you miss cheese? Ed.]. Now comes the difficult part: how to ask your neighbors to help you grind/pound it in a wooden mortar, or how much to pay them to do the task for you? You are busy, but so are they. Labor is cheap here, but you don’t want to become known as the foreigner who pays people to cook for them.

-Keep thinking while you look for more ingredients at line 13

Line 29

Via the help of your new translator, your offer is conveyed to her. She seems sort of surprised, and you can’t tell if in a good way or a bad one. Nevertheless, she accepts, and picks up the corners of the fabric upon which the beans are spread to tip them into your waiting bucket.

-There’s still some space in the bucket, what else do you need? Go to line 13

Line 30

This hefty squash will easily last all week; just cut off the chunk you need for the day’s meal, and keep the exposed surface tightly covered with a plastic bag.

-If you keep buying stuff, you might have to carry this squash home in your free hand to leave space for smaller items in the backpack. Go to line 8

-On the other side of this aisle you see some intriguing eggplants. Check them out at line 33.

Line 31

Tomatoes can go in anything: soup, stew, curry, even fried rice. Drop cherry tomatoes right into the pot at the end of cooking, just enough to warm the insides but not enough to make them burst, and then pop them in your mouth. Just make sure that they are at the very top of your pack if you’re biking, or the top of your bucket if you’re walking.

-If you’ve got enough to keep you sated for the week, go to line 31

-If you still need to grab a few things, go to line 8

Line 32

Yeah, okra is slimy, and up there with squash for difficulty of post-chop knife-cleaning, but its green and has a cool shape. Cook it slow, cook it fast, it doesn’t have a distinctive flavor either way. It keeps pretty well too; seems rather mold-resistant.

-Check out the pretty eggplant down the row at line 33

-See if your friend Abdoul Ghadiry is at his stall at line 37

Line 33

These eggplant are something special: purple and green striations, shiny and firm, and the size shape of monster chicken eggs.

-Check for the telltale hole in the skin that means one or more little larvae are living gluttonously inside. Find none, and buy a pile for 2000 GNF. Go to line 39

-Every eggplant seems to either have marks on the skin, or that little hole that means you’ll find more movement inside than expected when you slice them open. Let them be, and continue to line 40

Line 34

You were right! There is still one pile left on the corner of her tarp. Probably 20-30 little tiny cherry tomatoes, in all states of ripeness.

-Grab ‘em all for 1000 GNF. Never mind that some are smashed, and some obviously moldering. Go to line 31

-You don’t have a hard-walled container, or even a sturdy plastic bag, to put them in. Plus, when you get home you’d have to wash and dry them right away to retard decay, and you’ve got two physics lessons to prepare for tomorrow. Maybe your friend Abdoul Ghadiry is at his stand. Leave the tomatoes and go find out at line 37

Line 35

Your backpack and bucket are heavy and it’s getting pretty hot. Check your list, did you get everything?

-Yup. Go to line 41

-Nope. Go to line 8

Line 36

It’s still too early in the day for the taxis to start shuttling people back to your village, so walking is the only choice.

-Get on the road! Grab all your stuff and head to line 42

-Grab a bag of bissap juice for energy before the hour-long walk home under the midday sun. Go to line 43

Line 37

Sundries-seller Abdoul Ghadiry used to work for the US Embassy in Liberia, and speaks decent English. Now he sells lighters, generic medicine, and little local cookies in bags of eight. You don’t know why he switched countries and jobs. There have been a lot of potentially-career-change-causing national and international events recent West African history. You wish Abdoul Ghadiry the best, and

-Buy one bag of cookies for 1000 GNF and go to line 40

-Buy two bags of cookies for 2000 GNF. Go to line 35

-Buy one bag of cookies and one of the small buckets he has for sale. It’s dirty, but it seals well and you can wash it when you get home. Go to line 35

Line 38

You head back to the barbershop to retrieve your bike. There are at least ten longhaired youth (long hair being relative) milling about or sitting inside, waiting to have their heads shaved (the only haircut given) for 2000 GNF. You thank the barber for keeping an eye on your bike, and offer him a 1000 GNF note. He refuses. You take your bike outside, search for a couple half-inch by eight-feet strips of inner tube in the bottom of your pack, and get to work strapping your bucket onto the rack of your bike. By the time it’s securely fastened, at least ten young boys have gathered in a silent semicircle around you, patiently observing.

-Time to get on your way! There is an English lesson to give, and dishes to do. Go to line 44

-All that strapping down and being watched made you sweaty and thirsty! Grab some bissap juice at line 43

Line 39

Hopefully your rather rapid insect-mark scan will hold up in a few days when you cut these eggplants open! Stir-fried or deep fried, they’ll be tasty. If only you had some cheese…..

-Put them in the top part of your backpack and head for home. Go to line 35

-You’ve been at the market a while, but it seems like you’re forgetting something…. Go to line 8

Line 40

As you walk towards the edge of the market, you pass the peanut butter ladies. Huge wide basins filled with creamy, grilled peanut goodness surround you. You keep meaning to buy some, but always forget to bring a suitable container (these ladies sell peanut butter, not jars). Did you remember this week?

-Yes! Go to line 45

-Shoot, no! Go to line 50

Line 41

Time to head back home, you’ve probably still got lots to do. And even if you don’t, it’s nicer to sit around there than here.

-If you are going home by foot, go to line 36

-If you are going home by bike, go to line 38

-If you took a minibus, go to line 36

Line 42

A full backpack and a full bucket, plus a bag in your off hand. A lot of stuff, but you’ll eat well this week.

-Go home via the river path at line 46

-Head back via the main road, it’s faster. Go to line 47

Line 43

A 6-ounce hand-tied plastic baggie of juice is just what you need to give you the energy for the journey back home.

-Get purple bissap for 500 GNF. Hibiscus-flower tea with lots of sugar, yum! Go to line 41

-Get yellow bissap for 500 GNF. Ginger-water with lots of sugar. It’s spicy! Go to line 41

Line 44

Your bucket is strapped down, bissap consumed, and helmet buckled. How will you get home?

-Take the hot and fast main road at line 49

-Take the cooler, more meandering river route at line 48

Line 45

This week you finally remembered to bring a decent-sized container, it should hold about a kilo of peanut butter.

-Buy a kilo of fresh peanut butter for 13000 GNF and go to line 35

Line 46

You continue back home along the less-traveled river path and see a crowd near a large fenced-in area on the outskirts of town.

-Go check it out at line 51

-It’s almost two o’clock and you’re tired. Continue on at line 52

Line 47

You set out down the hill upon which the village is located, towards the well-built concrete bridge near the stream. The steady flow of people you observed making their way from your village to the market has abated, but there are plenty of latecomers. The road is bumpy; the strong rains that mostly ended a month ago have washed away anything smaller than a lime. The constant bumping the road combined with the weight of all the food from the market puts a huge strain on the thin plastic handle of your bucket, and suddenly the strap breaks and the bucket falls to the ground!

-Go to line 54

Line 48

You head north out of the market, the combination of a full backpack, bike helmet, and midday sun causing substantial perspiration. You notice a knot of people gathered around a large fenced-in field at the edge of town.

-Go check it out! Go to line 51

-Continue on your way. Sometimes it’s good to avoid crowds. Go to line 53

Line 49

With your bike well-burdened, you coast easily down the hill on the main road back to your village. Latecomers to the market and children playing in the road step out of the way more than necessary to let you pass. Are they afraid of you, or your bike? After crossing the bridge and passing through the cluster of huts in the cool valley floor, the road rises slowly and traverses a large grassy slope. Until now the road had been relatively smooth, but now it turns to bumpy, rutted, pack mud strewn with baseball-sized loose rock. You know it will be like this for the two and a half miles, until you reach your village. The bouncing and jostling of the bike is dampened in front by the suspension, but back bounces around a lot. You traverse a particularly bumpy section, the chain ringing against its stays, and hear a snap. There is a sudden lightness behind you, and you hear a dull plastic thud.

-Go to line 55

Line 50

You don’t want to carry peanut butter home in a plastic bag of unknown history, so maybe it’s best to leave it for next week. Besides, the ladies who sell candy, cigarettes, and little bags of peanuts in the middle of your village sometimes have balls of crushed peanuts. They aren’t a perfect substitute for vrai pâte d’arachide (you can’t spread it), but they work for peanut sauce.

-If you’ve got everything you need for the week, go to line 41

-If you still need one or two things, go to line 8

Line 51

You decide to check out the crowd. There are a couple of trucks parked outside of what appears to be a sort of corral, sheep sleep in the precious shade behind their large tires. Inside the corral, are about an equal number of men and beasts: cows, goats, sheep. It is a big space, and some have parked their motorcycles inside as well. This must be the meat market. You don’t linger or ask any questions. Maybe next week you can spend more time.

-Head for home on your bike at line 53.

-If you’re traveling on foot, go to line 52

Line 52

You make your way down the hill from the market, and traverse the slope over to the footbridge across the creek. You wave hello to some midday bathers, cross the stream, and continue through the grassy swath on the other side, startling a family of goats. The mother has a sort of wooden collar, with two long protruding wings that prevent her from passing through the narrow slots in the fences around family concessions that serve as gates. After crossing the grass, the path is cut by a small stream, and then continues into the trees.

-Jump across the stream and continue on, go to line 57

-Take a break by the stream. That big boulder looks like a good place to sit. Go to line 56

Line 53

Biking down the hill from the market, you bump along the narrow foot path leading to the little bridge. Once across, the going is smooth, the wind blows lightly, and you are quite content. You are busy dreaming about the meal you’ll prepare with your ripest and most perishable recent purchases when you get home when you almost run into a young man walking the other direction, towards the market.

-Stop and have a chat at line 58

-Excuse yourself, say hello, and continue on to line 59

Line 54

The bucket clatters to the ground, but the lid stays on! Inspection of the bucket shows that the strap of the handle itself didn’t break, but rather the flared end just popped out of its small hole under the strain of a week’s worth of goods. The contents of the bucket fair less well—you can’t repair broken tomatoes or bruised eggplant. Oh well. You put the bucket strap back in its hole, but carry the bucket with your arm, supporting the bottom. It’s kind of a pain to walk the remaining mile and a half this way, especially since it’s mostly uphill and getting consistently hotter, but you make it.

-Go to line 60

Line 55

With a thud the bucket that was attached to the rack of your bike tumbles to the ground, the contents springing out. It seems that the taut rubber straps you secured it with have been well worn by use (as an inner tube and again as a cord) and ardent sunlight. That one hard bump under tension was one bump too many, and the weakest section gave out. Thankfully, you put your freshly-purchased grain inside a plastic bag and tied it well, otherwise you’d have just created an excellent chicken-feeding ground. You pick up the bucket, all the vegetables you can find, and the pen you had at the bottom. Just remember to wash everything well! It seems like you have one more eggplant or okra, but it must have bounced far enough from the road that it’s not worth searching for. Some goat or sheep will find it get a treat. You tie the two broken ends of the strap back together, reattach the bucket, and continue on your way. You try to extra careful of big bumps as you climb the last mile of road to your village

-Go to line 60

Line 56

You set down your stuff and sit down next to the stream. After a minute or so, flies find you, as do the small lizards that stalk them. The lizards move in bursts, darting a foot or two, looking about, doing a few lizard-pushups, and then, maybe, snapping up an unlucky insect. You spot five different lizards, each a slightly different size, but all doing pretty much the same thing. Your plastic plimsols keep your feet sweaty, so you remove them to get some air. After about 15 minutes, and as many insects are caught, your feet are still hot but at least dry, and you decide to continue on.

-Grab your bag and bucket and continue to line 57

Line 57

From the stream, the path back to your village runs past several family compounds, each with a concrete-walled and aluminum-roofed sleeping structure and one or two straw and mud cooking huts. A clearing of dried mud shows signs of considerable, recent bovine presence, but you don’t see or hear a single cow. You continue, with difficulty, up the last bumpy hill to your village.

-Go to line 60

Line 58

“A jaraama” you say, but he responds in French, so you continue in that tongue. He asks you how the market was, and how the day is going, and how your health is doing. You inquire the same of him, changing the tense of the market question. He looks familiar. He mentions that he would love for you to English, in addition to physics and chemistry. That’s where you’ve seen him! One of the 42 students in your tenth grade class. You say must be going, and remind him that there is a chemistry test on Monday. He thanks you and continues towards the market, unpausing the music that had been playing from his cellphone. The lyrics are in English.

-Continue on your way at line 57

Line 59

You accelerate as fast as the hard, smooth surface of the path permits, whizzing through patches of butterflies that just get out of the way in time, and causing chaos as you ride across highways of ants traversing the route. Soon you get to a little stream, which has washed away all of the dirt of the path, leaving bumpy solid ground and forcing you to slow down and pick your way through.

-Take a break at the stream! There’s shade and the water sounds nicer than the cicadas you’ve been listening to. Go to line 56

-Keep going—you want to get home and take a cold shower (as always) and eat. Go to line 60

Line 60

You made it! You unlatch the gate to the compound you live in, as goats and chickens flee and children greet you. Your host family says hello and asks how the market was. “It’s good” you tell them. You walk the last hundred feet to your small house and go inside. In the cool shade of the interior, you set everything down, unpack your bag and bucket, and spread everything out on the table. That’s enough shopping for one week.

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Follow-up for the reader/participant:

Did you get trapped in the market? Were you looking for something but kept seeing the same things over and over, not finding what you wanted? Or, did you fly through the market without getting much of anything, only to be headed home and realize your bag was awfully light?

It’s hard to do the market right, especially the first time. Better luck next week.