The Market

This is my local market, which occurs twice weekly. The main market is downtown and runs every day, so I'm very lucky since most villages have at most a once-weekly market that doesn't have a lot of options in terms of fresh fruits and vegetables -- mostly onions and tomatoes.

Except for Lome, there aren't really any grocery stores in Togo. So you buy fruits and vegetables and grains at markets like this and then staples like oil and tomato paste at little stores called boutiques, which are sort of like 7-11s but without jacked-up convenience store prices. You can also get those staples at a lot of markets, and only there if you live in a small village that doesn't have any boutiques.

Because I'm in a big city, I have a lot of options in terms of produce, so I can get carrots, green peppers, avocados, lettuce, beets, potatoes (expensive here unlike in the US), mangoes (I'm risking Dan Quayle-dom here with the "e"), pineapples and cabbage. To Americans that probably doesn't sound like a lot of choices but when other volunteers in my region come to Sokode to use the bank (none of those in villages either), they get very excited about all of the options and note how spoiled I am to have these choices every day.

As you can probably guess, going to the market involves bargaining, which I'm not very good at. I know most of the prices so I usually don't get ripped off too much, and often let it go if they're charging me just a bit more than they should. I've given up on being a hard core-bargainer because the times I choose to get into a big discussion always end up being the times I am being given the right price but for some reason mistakenly think I'm being ripped off. Which then just makes me seem even weirder to Togolese than I already do....