Market Day

As predicted, Saturday morning was as drenched in sun as the evening before had been awash in rain. Shortly after dawn,the other student, La Señora, and I got up with the rest of the house and got ready to go to the local Farmer´s Market.

Maria was ready with a big basket, and happily, the word is "canasta" in Spanish. There must be some connection to the card game, but having never played it, I don´t know what it is. I love these words that have an English connection in my mind. Makes it much easier to remember.

(Yesterday´s word was sheets. You know, for the bed. Sabanas. Necitamos sabanas en sabado. (Sat.))

Annyyyywaayy, Maria´s two daughters were ready to go, too. Mother and daughters alike were dressed in pink, one of the girls had on glittery pink shoes. With their beautiful dark hair, brushed to a high gloss, they made a rich picture

The market was about a 20 block walk toward the center of town, and the Saturday traffic was wilder than usual. Much to my delight, the littlest girl decided that I was her street crossing partner, and we held hands all the way there.

The market is blocks and blocks long down the middle of the street. Hundreds of people are shopping for the week, loading up little carts, huge baskets and many, many bags.

Everything was for sale. Piles of produce, carrots as big as as a rolled up newspaper, squash, onions braided together in ropes, lettuce as green and perfect as an open blossom. Pyramids of apples were stacked up on counters, a jillion limes filled baskets and of course,bananas, bananas, bananas in huge bunches.

A lot of the fruits were unidentifiable and some so exotic looking that you couldn´t believe they were edible. What were those things whose skins looked like wood? And those hunks of cactus looking stuff? At Maria{s urging, La Señora and I bought a round fruit about the size of a small basketball. It was green and hard and didn{t look all that great. But the man took a mini machete , cut the top off and handed us two straws. The juice was cool and tasty in the hot sun.

And there was more and more. Booths of dried beans for sale, piled up in bowls or in baskets. Dried herbs hung from under umbrellas. Boards covered with different breads.

The girls begged their mother from some little bags of powder that looked like Ovaltine or Strawberry Quick. Im still not sure what these are, since they were confiscated when we got home and Maria found the girls dipping a wet finger in the bag and licking it off their hands.

I thought of my mother when I saw buckets full of huge Bird of Paradise, and red bromeliads for sale. I bought some flowers, a few for my room and a few for Maria.

A salesman, wearing a bag with a product logo on it, stopped us and tried to sell Maria some new toothbrushes. They looked like any we would buy in the grocery, packaged the same way. The gimmick was the different colored bristles that fade as the toothbrush wears out. After a careful examination, she was a no sale and handed them back to the salesman.

We stopped at another booth and she bought socks for the whole family.

Here in this part of Central America, it is a strange mix of the worlds and commerce. There are hundreds of little shops around town selling anything and everything.

Sometimes the shop looks like a tiny collection of garage sale items, other shops have Quicksilver surf brands.

In the airport, plasma screen tvs advertise designer goods, but the other day I passed a man in the street with a wheelbarrow full of fruit, sweating, a tshirt wrapped around his head , as he pushed the wheelbarrow down a roadfull of pot holes.

Pretty soon we had what we needed. The little girls helped carry our very full basket, and after a quick stop at a local pet store/vet to look at a huge boa constrictor in a cage, we caught a taxi home.

The pet store, as it turns out, was why the older girl wanted to come with us that morning. She had come to see the boa constrictor that resided there.

I´m happy I get to see all this, to be here now, when the world has started this strange blending of commerce, technology and history. At one time, the idea of being in Central America at a Saturday morning feria would have seemed as far away as Jupiter. Now, it´s just a happy day spent with friends. And an big ugly snake.