The market!

Thank freaking goodness I got to go the that market. I woulda been so sad if I had been required to work instead. Luckily, Cat and I could find time to go this Wednesday. 

We stayed in the forest waiting for the chimps that day until about 12pm. Then, we made our way down to the center of town.

It was a literal dream come true. Everything I wanted and hoped for. 

Stall after stall of baked, dried, and manufactured goods. HUNDREDS of people from all over. Beautiful colors and patterns. Adorable children. Smells of food and cloth and dust-stirred air. It was great. I really enjoyed myself!!

Shopping List:

 Bread

 Eggs

 Peanuts

 Pineapple

 Souvenir 

The only thing we didn't purchase was the pineapple. 

We started out wondering aimlessly. The city was sectioned off into areas that sold clothes, food, home supplies, cloth, and electronics. We ventured around all of these areas quickly. Then we ran into one of our chimp guides! They get Market Day off, so we weren't surprised to see him. He said he would help us find the items in our list!

 We followed Vincent around and around looking for the best priced bread and uncooked eggs. We found these items and he helped us bargain. 

All while wandering, I could tell I was standing out like a red sore thumb. People stared. My favorite thing is when children run up to me to shake my hand. I allllways shake their hands. And I always wave when I see them waving from a distance. It's cute. And I know that I look weird here, so it's all just very interesting to observe. 

 I figured out where everyone gets those soccer jerseys from. There were about 4billion being sold at the market. And lots and lots of other nice clothes. All secondhand, but you really couldn't guess that just by looking at them. People here dress so nicely. And COOL. The guys here look cool. 

   Vincent had us meet a million of his family members. We kept running into them! He was so nice to run around with us. He even helped us figure out what we should buy as souvenirs!... Cloth!! You could buy a huge sheet of colorful cloth for $5-$7! So once Cat and I got our groceries, we started looking around for the perfect cloth. As for me, I wanted a colorful, representative piece of fabric that would show the personality of the town AND of myself. 

It was so hard picking out a fabric. SO DIFFICULT. Cuz there were 200trilkion different funky options. Some had birds, flowers, chickens, polygons, foods, and arts painted on them. Others had interesting objects on them... Like roller skates and electric fans.

 I found a nicely decorated blue cloth that I really liked... But I just couldn't make up my mind!!!!!!

 I left the blue fabric. We walked a little ways away from it until I found the fabric I needed. Here it is:

See the soccer ball!?

Just before we left Vincent, he invited us over to his house later that evening. YAY! I wanted to see where he lived! And I wanted another reason to come to town!!!! 

We left the market, took guard out in the woods for another two hours, then gave up. We know that on Market Day the chimps do a lot of crop raiding while the farmers are out shopping. They do this waaay far away across the forest from us. So we weren't expecting to see them. We left the woods and stared getting ready for supper.

Mmmm, rice and beans.

Then- sure enough- Vincent walked up to the house to get us! Cat and I made sure to where nice clean clothes for this occasion. Who knows who we were going to meet!

We walked into and across town. Vincent had his cellphone playing some cool music the whole way, which made a great soundtrack. I can't believe how many children there are here. SO MANY. Hundreds and hundreds of children all over. The world is their daycare. It was so awesome getting to walk around the town to see the sights.

Then, we pull up to Vincent's house. Here it is:

On the inside, we were led to the floor of the family bedroom. The house had all cement walls and a tin roof. The tile floor of the bedroom was bright green patterned and marvelous. I complemented it out loud. 

Vincent pulled out two dishes of food, a communal bowl, a single large cup of water, and three spoons. Oh no! We just ate dinner!! This dinner was rice and fish sauce. Cat and I ate several bites and apologized.

After dinner and chit-chat we started meeting the kids. Vincent has 5 of his own. But they had friends. We met them all! We talked and talked. I listened to the translations Cat was providing. Vincent pulled out a children's French workbook... Which doubled as a photo album! He had a single photo slid in between each of the 30 or so pages. We went through all the photos and he described who was in each one. This was a cool experience.

By the way, this was all happening on the floor in the pitch black dark. Well, minus the small lantern lit in the corner. It was so hard for me to see. But the kids didn't seem held back AT ALL by the darkness!! They ran and jumped and found things they were looking for. I was so confused. How big are their pupils!? 

Then, we walked home. Vincent guiding us, of course. I tried to play it cool and not use my headlamp... But I just knew I was gotta break an ankle. So I lit up the street for us. 

Passing through the village at night was cool. There were so many kids out playing still. Plus grown-ups doing grown-up things. We passed at least three bars playing loud music with neon signs hanging. I wanted to poke my head inside the doors so badly. Also, we passed a "video club." THIS kind of this is right up my alley. #Beyonce. A popular thing to do here is to watch music videos. I stopped to watch one from the street. It was of an ugly guy singing and moving around awkwardly. But he had drawn a crowd of people in Bossou! How interesting! What made that guy appealing!? 

Then, we made it home. Wow!