Market Day

The social highlight in my area is the monthly market day in a village called Rukunyu, about 4km south of where I live. The event brings hoards of people from distances as far as 15km (when they walk), and even farther afield when they take a motorcycle or taxi.

You start to see people walking by as early as eight or nine in the morning, babies strapped to women's backs, men with walking sticks. In the afternoon they come back with their loot: sacks of potatoes on their heads or pulling a reluctant goat.

The market doesn't get going until one or two in the afternoon, when the soccer field is filled with mix of vendors and villagers. The village of Rukunyu itself is bustling, the small restaurants full of patrons and drunks spilling out into the street from the overcrowded bars.

One aisle in the market area is the vegetable bounty from the surrounding area, typically beans, onions, bananas, tomatoes, and cassava, all layed out in neat stacks and piles on blankets or brightly coloured fabric. I ran into the fee-collector for the market - to set up shop costs 50cents. One stack of tomatoes (about 5 or 6) costs a quarter.

A few cows and goats are tied up on the side of the field, watching the action from the periphery.

Beyond the food lays the expanse of clothes and fabric vendors, some vendors leaving their products in heaps on a tarp, others setting up wooden poles and hanging them. The nice stalls even have a tarp roof for shade.

All of the clothes are used and come from America, Europe, and Japan. The labels vary from the typical (Stafford and Van Heusen shirts are usually over-sized and are ill to fit, but sometimes you can get treasures from Ben Sherman, Tommy Bahama, and Lactose). Since a lot of the clothes have been discarded several times before coming to Africa, styles and time-periods vary. Button dress shirts go for about $2. Some even have price tags from their previous thrift store (Value Village - $4.99; Goodwill). What doesn't sell at these second-hand stores comes here: Third-Hand for the Third-World!

T-Shirts are fun, and cheaper - they typically go for 75cents, but there's room to negotiate. The most popular shirts are from charity events (I've seen Portland Race for the Cure), political campaigns (Vote Smith!), and community sports teams. The shirt I just bought is priceless: Fischer Family Reunion 1990, surrounded by the outline of Alabama.

Fabric dealers have walls of prints from Kenya, Tanzania, and Congo. The hardware guys are out, too, selling locks, bolts, rat traps, and local metalwares.

Anyone who's anyone comes to sell, buy, socialize, and just pass the time. It's the only event in the area and you're bound to see something, or someone, interesting.

A Fuel Crisis in Perspective

Uganda has been in a "fuel crisis" for the last two or three weeks. The country uses 3 millions litres of petroleum per day, all of it imported from Kenya by truck on one two-lane road from Nairobi. The port in Mombassa, through which all of the oil for Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and eastern Congo flows, had been shut down for repairs, and now the Kenyan government revoked the importing license for Kenya's main oil importer (the company has since paid its taxes and its license is being reinstated). The price of gas has increased 21% from about 2800 UGX to 3400 UGX per litre in the past two weeks.

Transportation prices have increased and, most importantly for a Peace Corps Volunteer, the local price of beer has also increased.

This demonstrates the volatility in prices here, and in most of the developing world. If one thing happens to the transportation network, the entire country is directly effected. One thing in the US that I didn't quite appreciate before was a constant supply of products and stable prices. I knew that a gallon of milk would cost me $3 at Safeway today, tomorrow, and next month. In Uganda, what's available now may not be available later tonight.

This concept directly plays into personal finances among local Ugandans and why there isn't a strong culture of savings here, and elsewhere in Africa, and impulse buying is so prevalent. For example, when I want to buy a beer, one of four situations can occur:

1. The store might be out of beer,
2. The beer might not be cold (because of power outtages, etc.),
3. The beer might cost more (because of transport increases and other reasons),
4. The beer will be cold, cost the same, and be available.

It's a 25% chance that tomorrow I'll pay the same price for the same product. So, as a good consumer who knows his products and has particular tastes, I'd bet in favour of my odds and get another cold one right now.