In L’Asile, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays are market
days. You go to the market to buy most of your needs, such as clothing, shoes,
soap, food and lots of other things. There are daily street food sellers, but
if you want produce, rice, beans, noodles and other foods to take home and
prepare yourself, you get them at the market.
Our family goes to the market on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The
market is set up on several streets leading down to the river. It is very
crowded, especially on the biggest market day, Thursday. You are walking among
an abundance of people, almost the whole town comes to the market!
You often have to push your way through not only people but
motorcycles and donkeys too! In Haiti it is not rude to push or weave through
the crowd of people to get to your destination. Lots of people come to the
market just to talk with others.
When you make it to the person that you are going to
purchase from, you usually have to bargain with them to get a good price. If
you are new to Haiti, sellers will raise the price if they think that you will
pay more because you do not know the regular price. So you have to know the
usual price of goods sold regularly.
Knowing Haitian Creole is also a big need during the market.
It would be hard to buy from someone whom you don’t know what they are saying!
Or it would be very hard to negotiate prices if you don’t know what the seller
is saying. We are always very exhausted after going through the market.
6 comments:
Thanks for sharing with us Coryn! Have you tried many new ways to prepare food?
New new - all in good time as the saying goes
Great depiction, Coryn! I can see you all at the market haggling :)
Good job Coco! Looks like you have some fun! From, your friend, Sadie
Thanks for posting this great description of the local market, Coryn!!! Sounds like such a much more lively and interesting way to get groceries than driving to the Piggly Wiggly! :)
—Uncle Omar
We have a cook now, but before we would have to cook on a stove lighted by propane, because the closest oven is at the church, a 15 minute walk away. There is not much refridgeration, so we have powdered milk with our cereal. It is never cold and doesn’t taste as good as regular milk, but it is better than nothing! We’ve been having lots of oatmeal for breakfast,or Cornflakes. Sometimes pancakes, too. Here they cook chicken in sauce pour, or just fry it. Lots of bean sauce and rice. There is also my favorite new food yet, akra, which is as close as you can get here to a mozzarella stick. It is a type of root that gets mixed up and fried. We haven’t been cooking many new foods, but we have tried many new ones!
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