I Love Shopping!

For people who know me well, the title of this post may come as a shock. (And for people who follow this blog, the fact that I'm posting at all may come as a shock...) But here in Cameroon, I really do love shopping, specifically for food at Yaounde's main food market, Marche Mfoundi. Julia generally buys all the household fruit, vegetables, meat, etc. there, and once I started going with her several months ago, I never looked back. We go to market about once every two weeks, and it's like the best farmers market you've ever seen, but BIGGER and way more entertaining. Let me describe a typical trip to the Marche, along with some pictures I took there yesterday.

Our first stop is almost always our carrot man, which means he usually ends up changing the large bills that I start with. (The ATM gives 10,000 CFA bills; most of our purchases are 500 CFA or less.) He is very good natured about it, and every once in a while I try to give him some 'small money' instead of the big bills.
Mr. Carrot selects our pile of carrots and puts it in a bag. Julia's pregnant belly protrudes into the picture from the right. In the background, you can get some sense of what a wonderland this place is...
Our next stop was our onion lady, from whom we usually buy our onions and garlic. She said I could take her picture as long as I give her a copy. Hmmm, we use many onions, so I should probably follow through. Here, she bags up our onions.
Onions grow in the far north of Cameroon, and are trucked down to Yaounde in giant sacks. It's onion season now, so they are very inexpensive. Each of the smaller piles (still good-sized onions) is only 100 CFA, or about 25 cents. Yesterday we bought 2 big piles (eight very large onions) for about a dollar fifty.
Then we stopped and bought some beans (we got the black beans near the back in the photo) so that Julia can make her delicious beans & rice with plantains. So cheap and so good!
Our tomato lady bags up our allotment, while a hopeful 'porteur' waits in the background. Part of the market experience is being constantly assailed by young men who want to carry your things for you, either by hand or in a wheelbarrow. There are also lots of young boys trying to sell you extra sacks for your purchases. For some reason, there are also aggressive roving salesmen pushing leeks and black/white peppercorns. Because I'm a whitey, we get about five times the normal attention. Julia is very good to put up with all this!
There are lots of spices and such for sale, most of which I have no idea what they are, let alone how to use them. Some of them smell absolutely amazing! Also, those things on the right that look like rocks...they're rocks. Certain minerals are used in preparing certain foods.
Now it's time for some fruit, non? Look at those fine watermelons and giant grapefruits!
This is our main fruit lady, Maro. She sells great papayas and the most amazing pineapples, which we buy every time we go. She was very amused that I wanted to take photos, and I got this great shot of her laughing.
But really, she is a serious businesswoman. Here she is with her merchandise.
See? We're pals.
Nearby, Julia checks out some impressive avocados.
I'm gonna buy one of these soon, because they're coming into season. In French, it's called a corossol. No idea what it's called in English, but I've never seen these before coming here! It's a fruit, and we once had some tasty jam made from it. I was triumphant to actually discover what the fruit looked like.
The ever-present hot pepper, used in most of the cuisine here. They are so beautiful, and a whole section of the market is devoted almost exclusively to them. They have such a lovely and exciting smell, perfuming all the air around.
Our last stop is usually this woman, for lettuce (so it won't get crushed beneath other purchases) and anything else we've missed along the way. Isn't this a gorgeous picture?
Here is OUR porteur, Emmanuel. He is usually hanging around near where Maro sells her fruits, and once we meet up with him, the other guys leave us alone. You can't see his friendly smile in this picture, because it's hidden by his hat. Take my word for it, he has a friendly smile.

So that's the Marche, really a great highlight of our time here for me. And what you see here is such a small portion of it...the guys holding live chickens upside down by the feet, the piles of mangoes and citrus, the dried fish, women slicing bunches of greens into fine shreds with sharp knives, the dried flowers that we use to make juice, the fragrant heaps of basil and parsley, and my own personal fantasy come true: immense sacks of ginger root! I'm looking forward to showing this amazing place to some visitors later this month, so they can see even more why I love shopping.