Rainy Season Stories Part 3: Market With Virginia

Background:

I come into San usually every 10-16 days to buy groceries, check my email, and catch up with other volunteers. San has a market everyday of the week, but the main market day is Monday. On Mondays people come from all over the area to both buy and sell goods. For my usual, basic needs, I can go to market on any day to get what I need. I only need to go to the Monday market if I want something special. In fact, for the most part the PCVs try to avoid the Monday market. It’s just so crazy, with tons of people shouting at you to come look at their display, tons more people pushing all around you to mingle and shop, and tons of animals for transport and sale. Not worth the stress and hassle on a regular basis, although I do enjoy the atmosphere and the wider selection every now and then.

The Story:

Backup to late August. I came into San for shopping and a few PC meetings, and I ended up getting stuck there much longer than I’d intended due to illness. Monday rolls around and it’s lunch time – I’m hungry. My friend Virginia and I want to go out for street food, which is a pretty typical lunch in San. Unfortunately, we’re still in the middle of Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from eating or drinking during daylight hours. Which means street food is a lot harder to find during the day, and we have to go beyond our usual places to find food. Luckily the San area happens to have a lot of Christians, so it wasn’t going to be impossible to find food, just harder.

It had rained all night and most of the morning and in general was a dreary day. Dreary is good for market though; it can get really exhausting to shop around outside under the hot sun in 100°+ weather. So V and I set out to look for food and stop at the hardware store so I could buy some paint brushes. We made it just fine to the main street through the center of town, but then we had to veer off onto side roads. Side roads. Unpaved. It had rained a lot. And now thousands of people were tramping around all over. It was SOOOO muddy!!! We realized this quite quickly, as we picked our way around giant puddles. We must’ve looked so goofy walking, picking our feet straight up off the ground, high knees, then gingerly placing our feet down again.

Soon our sandals started to get stuck in the mud. They got stuck so much that I had to resort to bending down and lifting them up and out of the mud. Unfortunately I did this with my right hand, leaving it covered in mud, and only my taboo left hand free for exchange. Malians do not give and receive with the left hand. Remember? Since there’s no toilet paper here, the left hand is used for cleaning one’s self. I mean, the left hand isn’t completely taboo. But certain things, like eating and exchanging money, are just not done with the left hand. Now I’m sure the people I was dealing with understood why I was using my left hand – my right hand was clearly a muddy mess – but I was sooo awkward about it and I felt like such a dumb toubab! During one awkward transaction, I dropped my wallet in the mud. As V and I walked down the street, I continued to get stuck. People were pushing past me everywhere. I got so frustrated. It started to drizzle again. I wasn’t feeling well. I started yelling out random curses and “I hate Mali!” (in English) as I walked.

My tipping point came when both of my sandals got stuck at once in a particularly deep pit of mud. Forget this. I stepped out of my sandals, reached down, and plucked them both out of the mud, then continued down the street barefoot. And I kid you not, the entire street started laughing at V and me. The whole street! Not a mean laugh, more of a wow-you-look-silly-but-I-totally-understand! laugh. There was nothing else to do but laugh along with them. Eventually V’s sandals broke and she carried hers, too. People would look at us and laugh and say, “Why are you carrying your shoes, toubab?” We’d laugh and say we couldn’t walk in them! And so, barefoot, we picked our way the rest of the way out of the side streets and back onto the main street where my hardware store is. Thank goodness I’m a frequent customer there. The guys who run it know me and Chrissy and are always really nice to us. V and I approached laughing, muddy, wet, and generally a giant mess, and one of the guys immediately started laughing at us and brought out a bench for us to sit on, then found a selidaga (plastic teapot) and some water so we could wash off our hands and feet. Honestly, we must’ve looked like mud monsters.

The trip home was much less eventful. We were able to stick to paved roads and unpaved roads that were less frequented. We eventually did make it safely. I do have a souvenir – I was never able to quite get all of the mud out of my favorite pair of Malian pants – battle scar!