Notes on my market adventure:
- Outside of the Africell office building is a large, green cone with a silver star on top
- The Kairaba Shopping Center (the grocery/furniture store) has decorated the banisters with glittery garlands and expanded their selection of clown and Easter-bunny shaped candles to include nutcrackers. Actually, I think they've always sold nutcracker-shaped candles. You can also buy Christmas cards, ornaments, and Santa hats with white, yarn braids attached.
- I bought a stale, chocolate-glazed donut from the Shopping Center and it nearly threw me into a panic. Here's why: I have the horrible habit of thinking everything that happens must have some reason or meaning behind it, and I could not figure out why fate decided to send me a stale donut. Is it a reprimand for purchasing and consuming too many sugary foods this past week? Or is it an omen, foretelling a terrible, horrible, Alexander-type day? Seriously, did a fabulous day ever begin with a stale donut?
- I work hard to shake off my bad feelings as I buy some stamps at the post office (I need to stock up because the post office here sells 18D, 15D and 25D stamps but the one nearer to my site only sells 5D and 6D ones, which forces me to squeeze 3 oversized stamps into one tiny corner of the envelope or postcard) and when I reach the market I need to concentrate so fully on dodging taxis, wheelbarrows, fellow shoppers, overflowing baskets of vegetables, plastic mats full of fresh fish, small children, motorcycles, shouting shopkeepers, etc. that I forget all about the day's ominous beginning.
- Using the mosque and the Maggi seasoning building as my main landmarks, I bravely explore the main roads and side streets WITHOUT GETTING LOST. Seriously. Not once.
- I bought fabric! I had not bought fabric since training (not counting the Tobaski asobi I had no decision-making power in) and my compelets are starting to look a bit ragged. One fabric is peach and black with a pattern of an old-fashioned bathtubs. Another is beige, orange and blue with a pattern of Scandinavian-looking birds. But my absolute FAVORITE, the fabric I wanted to buy months ago (but had forgotten to bring enough money to market), is patterned with shiny pink and purple guinea hens.
- A little boy runs after me, trying to sell me diapers. I tell him I don't have a baby. He says I can buy them for my neighbor. I tell him my neighbor doesn't have a baby, either. He looks disappointed.
- I stop by the restaurant that I once bought honey-flavored ice cream from, but today they only have vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, so I buy an orange Fanta instead. The lady pours it into a glass and directs me to sit at the bar. So I sit on the swivel stool and stare at my gross, sweaty face in the mirror and try to gulp down my soda without gulping.
- I make it to the present moment, sitting at the computer. In addition to writing this post, I am also looking at the New York Times slideshow of Swedish desserts because I didn't want to read "Terror Fears put Mumbai on Alert," "Militants Launch Attacks in Pakistan," or "Darfur Rebels Clash with Sudanese Army Troops."
No comments:
Post a Comment