Luma

The Saturday market is a big event in a roadside town like ours. You wear your nice clothes and hope to run into friends. It's a colorful, noisy scene with "gilly-gilly" microbuses, delivery trucks and the occasional taxi pushing through the streets that mark the outer edges.

You can find a lot at the luma, from matchbooks to Maggi bouillon cubes, sandals to soap, cloth to charcoal, teapots to twine. Vendors offer their wares on mats on the ground under beach umbrellas, on tables, on the walls of wooden stands with tarp roofs, and a few sell in rented, cement stalls like small stores.

It's really a farmers market; produce vendors here in the village sell what's in season. Right now you can find: tomatoes, bitter tomatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, eggplant, potatoes, yams, cassava, green peppers, hot peppers, bananas, and mangos. Other food vendors sell imported wheat flour, rice and sugar or dried fish while others sell seeds for planting or the peanuts, millet or coos. There is also a section with girls hawking prepared foods like freshly baked baguettes or hot sauce and ladies working overs vats of hot oil for deep fried donut holes.

I can't wait to explore again next week!