Marketplace (take 1)

Steph and I needed to get some groceries to make dinner last week so we ventured over to the local market in Biryogo (the town where we are staying). BTW if you haven’t already you should look at the GoogleMaps page to see where we are staying and look at our picture page to see some pics from our house.

Any way Steph led the way since she had already been there with Mireille earlier in the week (I was taking a nap). The market is set down the hill deep within the neighborhood across the street from our house. The people in our immediate neighborhood are starting to recognize us but these people in this part of the community have not yet seen us, so it was quite a sight.

Everyone was walking around us and you could here the people all saying Muzungu Muzungu (white person). The kids are so funny. This has been a trend that we see all over Kigali, the kids will muster up the courage to speak to us, sometimes saying something in English like “Hi” or “How are you?” or something in French such as “Bonjour” but they wait till we are almost past them before they say something. We have adjusted to hearing Muzungu all the time and now when the kids shout it out we will wave at them and the smiles that you get are SOO cute. Sometimes the little ones will keep calling out to us 3,4,5 or more times as we are walking away and eventually we just have to ignore it or else we will never get anything done if we are stopping to wave all the time.

Anyway back to the market, so we were going there without any agenda, we just wanted to check out what they had and see what we could buy to make a good dinner. I was approached by a guy who looked like Don Cheadle asking me for money. He spoke very good English, or at least the few phrases of asking for money.

We almost left the market because we couldn’t decide on anything to buy when we saw potatoes. So we walked over to the woman who was selling the potatoes (sitting on the floor with a pile of potatoes) and tried to ask how much. Steph learned how to say “how much” in Kinyarwanda from Mireille. (I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before but the people in our neighborhood do not speak anything but Kinyarwanda. Maybe a phrase or two in English but no comprehension past that and possibly Bonjour in French.) Ok back to the asking how much. So Steph picks up three potatoes and says “Angayah” and everyone looks at her like she has 3 heads. So she says it again “Angayah” and still no response. So she asks in French “combien?” still no response. (The reason the woman was not responding to "Angayah?" was because it is actually "Angahe" pronounced ahnGahHay.)

Finally I say to Steph, just pull out like 100 RWF (the local currency, about a quarter USD) and show it to her, and she will give us as many potatoes as that is worth. So Steph shows them the 100 and the woman proceeds to take the potatoes out of Steph’s hands and puts them on a scale. Then she adds another one, and another one, and another one. The lady doubled what we were willing to pay for the potatoes. It is one of the things that has shocked Steph and I the most about being here. Generally, the people here are not trying to screw us over. We have heard about it happening in other places and even parts of Rwanda where there will be a local price for something and a “muzungu” price, but we haven’t really had that happen to us. When we take the local mini-buses we pay the same amount as the locals, the cab drivers have been charging us the normal fare, and even at the Market where this woman easily could have taken the 100 RWF for the three potatoes she didn’t.

It’s a nice feeling knowing that although we are stared at, called Muzungu, and stand out to no end, the people here still have respect for us and are not out to screw us over.