Market Day in Masaka

May 8, 2009
Market Day in Masaka

It Friday and it is market day in Masaka! Robyn and I are taking the younger boys, Moses, Little John and Rob to the market to get some t-shirts and shorts. We’ve just turned the corner onto the main street and the crowds appear before us. There are vendors on the median, and the sides of the road. Their tarps spread out before us with every kind of cheap Chinese ware you can imagine on them for sale. When we walk by into the main market place I hear the calls of mazungo, mazungo what are you buying from me. As we enter the market to head to the second hand cloths stalls all you can see are people, colors, sounds of chickens, and the barkers shouting their deals for the day. It is controlled chaos at its best!

We reach the first stall and Robyn and I start picking out shirts. Do you like this one?, we ask. No, no, no are the boys responses. They start sorting through the piles and don’t find anything either so we are all off to the next stall. John and I start weeding through the piles of shirts and ahh we’ve found a match, and another. I find out John likes strips on his shirts! We bargain with the lady and get the 3 shirts down to 2,500 shillings a piece. But Moses and Rob are another story; we can’t seem to find anything they like yet, so we are off. We push our way through the crowds down the slope to another stall. This lady we’ve bought from before and know she has good clothes. The boys take over the small wooden stall and start picking up shirts left and right, Auntie do you like this one or this one? Moses finally comes to me with 2 shirts, which are both great! He has such different taste then John in clothes, football jerseys and shirts with pictures on them. So off we go with a Sea World t-shirt and a Manchester United goalie jersey!

Market day doesn’t end there; we still need to get our fruits and veggies. We all head over to our usually veggie stand and buy 8 onions, 2 green peppers, 8 tomatoes, all for about 1,000 shillings a piece. The guy we buy from is great; he and his son run the stand and always greet us with a smile! Then it is over to the fruit lady to buy bananas, a big bunch for 1,500 or 2,000 shillings depending on the ladies mood.

We pick up a few more things for the boys, a belt for John and school socks for Moses and then we are headed back to the house. What a day at the Friday Market!! 🙂