Market

We usually do our marketing in the nearby town of Cabaret. Cabaret has an open street market filled with ladies selling all kinds of household wares; used clothing; staple food items; produce; meat & seafood. The market in Cabaret is held on Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Cabaret is a mass of craziness on market day. The main street is so jammed with motos, tap-taps, buses, trucks, donkeys, horses and people that it is be worse than 5:00 traffic in a big city in the US. Everyone for miles around is in town. If you live in rural Haiti there is no electricity or refrigeration, so you have to begin fresh every 2 or 3 days. There is also no money or jobs, so maybe you can scrape together enough to buy something to make one or two meals until the next time.

It takes some getting used to in order to be able to navigate the stalls, negotiate with the vendors, and come out sane and in one piece. It was a dreaded task for me for a long time. I'm familiar with the game, the ladies, and even familiar enough with the money and language, that now I almost enjoy those crazy days... or at least can play along.

Since we spend so much money feeding our multitudes, we try and buy from many different ladies to spread the money around as much as possible. They know me now and many try and help me out and treat me well since I am after all such a good customer. I appreciate that and have some regular places I buy from... like the nice lady above where I buy coconuts, onions, peppers & potatoes.

I have to be in a good mood to stop and visit with this one. She makes it clear she doesn't like me and often will not give me Haitian prices, but instead tries to charge me the inflated "blan" or white visitor price. I remind her that I'm not a visitor and I can buy from somebody who will treat me fairly... but I keep trying- jut for fun. She also hates her picture taken- so I sneak one pretty often - just because.

The produce and even fish, crabs, & shrimp are spread out on straw mats on the ground. I can't bring myself to buy any meat or seafood that is butchered on site and laid out in the heat & flies all day, but I do buy lots of eggs, citrus, bananas, mangoes, and fresh veggies like beans, eggplant, okra, & tomatoes.

This is not one of my regular stops, but she has some great looking vine-ripe tomatoes. I can usually get tomatoes year-round, both the round ones and the plum variety that Rusty prefers. Oddly enough many other fruit & veggies are seasonal- even though Haiti has even way less seasonal change than Florida. In Haiti the seasons are- hot, very hot, unbelievably hot, and sweltering.

This lady is making julienned or "french-style" green beans by hand with a butcher knife! I am always amazed that these women have any fingers left at all. They just slice away while talking to their friends and not even looking at what they're doing.

Now this is multi-tasking! I guess if it's a Saturday market day, you've gotta get your hair done for church somehow!

I get good prices on okra from this lady- and she has great, long, young pods like I like. Most of the okra is short and fat here. We love fresh okra & tomatoes. Other favorite veggies are fried okra, fried plantains, fried eggplant. It kinda reminds u of the fried veggie appetizer at Clark's Fish Camp. Yummmm-now if I can just figure out how to make those fried pickles!!

The day was too long for this little lady. No telling how early she got up, how far she had to come, carrying tons of stuff in to sell ( or maybe just a handful to earn enough to eat) walking or sitting on top of her produce on the back of a donkey.

The market is finished for the day and all that is left are the empty stalls and mounds and mounds of garbage. Old ladies, children and dogs will scavenge through these heaps looking for some small morsel to fill their empty belly or some discard that they might be able to sell for a few cents.

I think I've come to look on the market as a true picture of Haiti. You see and experience the best and the worst here... and that's just how Haiti is- the best & the worst.