Bizarre Bazaar

Every now and then, I just get hit with how “normal” my world here has become and forget how “different” it is from all of my previous life experience. Last Wednesday was one of those days. We decided to go shopping at our nearby bazaar street after school (remember that my Wednesday is Friday in the States). It’s about a 15 minute walk to get there, and the street is well, a bazaar by the local standards here, but definitely bizarre by standards in the US.

First of all, the roads are still pretty much dirt. Even where there is pavement (I know it’s there because I saw them put it down a few months ago) it is now covered in dirt. The traffic really isn’t too bad, though. I’d guess much better than NYC on most afternoons. You see little kids as young as three or four out alone carrying home water or helping at a store. You see young men dressed in semi-trendy western clothes trying to impress you by saying, “Hello. How are you?” to everyone who looks slightly American. You see older men who look exactly like you’d imagine the Taliban to look with long white beard. Their eyes let you know that they have seen thousands of stories. Of course I’m not supposed to make eye contact with the men, but sometimes it just happens. It’s hard for me as a girl from the south not to make eye contact and acknowledge my elders simply out of respect. When it comes to the women, some of the younger ones are dressed to the nines in new Indian fashions. Others are still in burka, and therefore, I couldn’t even guess their age. My favorite, though, is to see the flashy high heels under the burka.

The local meat markets have only the freshest meat (beef, chicken, and lamb) hanging on the along the roadside with the occasional goat head sitting on the ground over to the side. There are a couple of hardware stores, a few plastic stores, and a few general stores. Let me say that the word “store” here doesn’t mean a building the size of Walmart, Kroger, Dollar General, or even the size of normal convenience store. They usually have one aisle with products on either side. Most of the products are exactly the same from store to store, but we still know of a few items that only one of the stores carries, so we end up making a few stops.
The event that started me thinking about the entire shopping experience was when our history teacher pointed at specific brand of powdered milk named KLIM and said, “Look! KLIM, the powdered milk company that markets specifically to dyslexics.” I just died laughing. As I looked around and saw the other random assortment of crazy things that we can get (really all we need), I knew I had to try to share this experience with you. So what other things do you see in our general stores? Well, I’ll take you on a little tour. You always have fresh eggs, local sweets and cookies, maybe some Snickers bars or Twix (YEAH! But who knows how old they are), juices of various kinds, powered and boxed milk (all shelf stable of course), soft drinks, a few extremely over priced cereals, Pringles, canned corn, green beans, kidney beans, chick peas, and tomatoes, pizza sauce, cheese, biscuits, tea, spaghetti noodles, peanut butter, and coffee. I’m sure there’s more than that, but that’s what’s coming to mind right now and what we are normally shopping for.

It’s outside on the streets where you buy your produce, and I must say that we’ve got some great tangerines in season right now. Cauliflower is also in season, and some of the heads are massive. Of course we buy by the kilo here, so we have to do a little figuring in our head, but haven’t really had too many problems. I’ve included a few pictures that I’ve taken or others have taken. I hope you enjoy seeing this little piece of daily life from around the world.