By Naserian Ferguson.
Kimana market day happens every Tuesday. They sell everything from livestock to mangoes. But the cattle, sheep, and goat section was perhaps the most exciting. People came to buy and sell animals in a market only 35 kilometres from the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. You could hear the bells clinking from the necks of the animals, little goats from the back end of boda-bodas bleating furiously, and people chatting and bargaining. Mount Kilimanjaro, a single, majestic peak- snowy this time of year- towered over this town. After buying some walking/goat herding sticks and rungus- a club like weapon used to defend oneself from animals- we headed into the cattle pens. The ground was sandy-brown and dusty, scattered with piles of animal droppings, some of which we tried to avoid, and others which were inevitable- but this only added to the experience.
Maasai men- some covered in colored, checkered shukas- leaned with outstretched arms against their staffs, one foot crossed over the other, and in a very dignified pose watched over their cattle. Some cows were walking around, others had been herded into a small circle. There was an area where people were buying and preparing what looked like mugs of chai, in brightly colored plastic cups.
This chai area divided the cattle from the goats and sheep. The goat and sheep section was like a maze of animals, clustered together. We walked around, dodging and weaving in between groups of goats and sheep, occasionally patting their fluffy, albeit somewhat dirty, coats. After we passed through the last group of animals, it was time to look for cowbells. There were huge piles of them, stacked up in an overflowing mound. There were some large ones for big cows, and tiny ones for goats. “Do you have a big cow?” he asked us as we examined them, to show us the right size to pick. “No,” we said, not adding that we in fact did not have any cow, or even goats. These would just be for keepsake. The big ones were square shaped, with ornamental bumps jutting out from the rusty sides, and the smaller ones were cone shaped, and smoother. The bells dangled from a big, rolled-up tire strap, which was to tie around the animal. Each one let out a distinctive sound- the tiniest one had a delicate, clinking sound; the medium bell almost sounded like wind chimes; and the biggest had a deep, booming pitch. We stood as our parents sorted through them. At one point a girl came up to watch too. We smiled at each other but never spoke. Finally, she curiously reached out to touch my hair, and then walked away. Once we got the cowbells, we piled onto a couple of motos (or boda-bodas, as they’re called in Kenya) and rode off to pick out some tire shoes.
There were about three small stalls for tire shoes. Each one had a cloth or plastic mat spread out on the ground, on top of which were dozens of pairs of neatly lined up tire shoes. They were black, with the ends of nails poking out of the sides, holding the strips of tire together in place. We chose a stall, and the man in charge pointed me and my sister to the women’s side of the mat. I didn’t realize before that there was a difference, but now that I knew, I definitely preferred the women’s shoes. They had a more feminine, curved, oval shape, with the straps criss-crossed over the sole of the sandal. The men’s were straight and rectangular. The man, who must have had practice guessing shoe size, picked up two pairs of sandals and handed them to us without hesitation. They fit perfectly on the first try, no need to even compare with another. I handed my pair to him, and with a few quick taps from the back of a hammer, he straightened out the nails and laid them flat against the sandal. A small crowd had gathered at this point, some to buy shoes, and others for free entertainment: surely a family of muzungus buying tire shoes must be comedy indeed! We slipped the sandals into our market bag and headed down to the fruit and vegetable section.
The fruit and veggie part of the market was busier than the others, and was filled with people. The walk ways were narrow, and you would have to squeeze to the sides whenever people would pass by, especially those pushing wooden carts loaded with produce. Each stall had piles of produce towered up, or buckets of grains. One woman sold many different types of fruit. She had multiple kinds of mangoes, and whenever you would inhale, you got the delicious, aromatic scent. The mangoes were ripe, sweet, and had an almost coconut-like, creamy taste, which we could smell as we hovered over them, picking out which fruit to buy. She even had something called thorn melons, or African horned cucumber. We had never seen or even heard about them before; curious, we asked what they were. They are an oblong, oval
shaped fruit, with both light and dark green rippling across it in circles around the many spiky thorns. They are a very mild fruit, and are made up of seeds just like a cucumber, but slightly bigger. We wandered around the market for awhile, stopping sometimes to see what people were selling. There was one woman who was chopping up a tightly rolled bundle of sukuma wiki, a type of collard green, with a large blade. She sliced it up with an impeccable precision, and at a remarkably fast speed. The blade was whizzing back and forth at such a rate that the camera couldn’t even capture it clearly. The image was proof of her skill- while everything else was clear, the knife and leaves were made blurry from the speed.
On the way back to the school, we piled into the car, and enjoyed a passion fruit Fanta, a wonderfully sweet and refreshing end to the market day.
Glossary:
Boda-boda- a motorcycle
Muzungu- a term referring to foreigners or white people
Rungu- a Maasai club
Shuka- a traditional checkered cloth, primarily used for clothing
Sukuma wiki- similar to collard greens
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