To Market, To Market

Sara leads me under the canopy of tin roofs into the produce market. It's another world down here!

Our hosts in Nairobi, Karanja and Sara, shop for most of their produce at “the market,” and by that I don’t mean a grocery store. Yesterday I woke up early to experience the true Kenyan shopping experience at the outdoor produce market, the largest of which takes place every day in a section of Nairobi. Looking down at it from the freeway, it looks like one of Nairobi’s notorious slums, with a patchwork of corrugated metal roofs touching end to end across acres of land. Sara parked her car along the road and led me down a narrow dirt path and under that canopy, where the largest farmers market I’ve ever seen was bustling with early morning activity.

To call it a farmer’s market is a bit misleading because Sara explained that most of the vendors are middlemen. They purchase produce from farmers or even produce buyers from as far away as Uganda and Tanzania. Then the vendors sell them at their small stalls. There were stands of small red onions, bright red tomatoes, manoes and papayas, bananas and watermelon. A whole row was reserved for corn (they call it maize), with vendors sitting atop mountains of corn cobs. They will sell them whole, but they most often husk them, de-cobb them into bowls and sell them as bags of kernels. This is how Sara purchased them.

Maize vendors shucking corn.

Sara told me she buys in bulk (think Costco-sized bags) so she can bargain the price lower. And because there are no shopping carts, she brings her house-helper, Dominic, to carry the heavy bags to her car. When she doesn’t have a house-helper, she hires someone at the market to help her.

I enjoyed watching Sara in action, asking questions and talking price in her native Kakuyu language. Kenyan music played in the background, alternating with a street preacher who shouted his sermon into the microphone at a deafening level. (Sara said the preaching often goes on all day long…yikes!) I was the only white face in the crowd, but people treated me kindly and mostly left me alone. (The week before, we had visited the “Masai Market,” a place to buy native souvenirs, and it was not so pleasant, with vendors shouting at us silly things like ‘Almost free!’ and ‘I give you a good price!’ and getting testy with us if we looked but didn’t buy. This was much more relaxed.)

Sara shops for oranges. Fun fact: Kenyans call this fruit
oranges but the skin on their variety is more typically green.

I couldn’t believe Sara could find her way around the maze of stands, but somehow she picked up everything she needed in about an hour and we headed home with a very full car.

Later in the day, we went to the opening day of the new “Lion King” movie, thinking it was fitting to see it here in Kenya right before we leave for safari. We enjoyed some pizza for lunch, and the boys/men spent the evening at a traditional “goat roast” at the church. This is the favorite meat of all our Kenyan friends, and they wanted the guys to experience this custom. Thankfully, they didn’t ask Jeff to do the honor of slaughtering the goat!

A very fun and relaxed day as we finish our time in Nairobi.

 

We enjoyed seeing the new Lion King film
before we left for our safari.