Saturday, January 16, 2010

Soko (Market)

Sue and I are still staying in the bega kwa bega apartment waiting for more permanent accommodations. I went to the market today to buy some produce so we can do more cooking at home. The market is about 10 min walk from where we are staying and is like a very large permanent farmer’s market. The fruit and vegetables are good quality and there are many vendors selling similar produce so they are happy to see customers. I bought 2 kilo tomatoes (1500 tsh), 1 kg potatoes (1000 tsh), 3 dozen eggs ( 6000 tsh), 3 green pepper (1500 tsh), 2 large avocados (600 tsh), 3 dozen small red onions (1000 tsh), 19 bananas (1900 tsh), and 1 kg raw peanuts (1500 tsh) which we will roast. We are getting 1330 Tanzanian shillings per dollar from our ATM card so most of these things are quite a bit cheaper than home. Many of the prices are listed and I seem to be given accurate prices. I don’t try to bargain when I feel I am already getting good value. There are so many vendors that they do not try to charge too much anyway because of the competition. You can smell some of the manure fertilizer they use in the market and we wash things like tomatoes and potatoes with dilute bleach before we use them. There are other farms in the area that cater to expats with delivery of boxes of a wider variety of vegetables.

Front of the Market. There are many small shops surrounding the large roofed area.



Lots of tomatoes and red onions which are grown in this area.


Plantains are the green ones and the bananas are tree ripened.


Public service sign on the market encouraging people to pick up litter in a pretty graphic way.

No comments:

Post a Comment