Market Girls

Just in the past 3 months I have stopped going to the market alone.  My friend Nancy, has no motorcycle or car.  My friend Lalah, has a motor cycle, but is feeding many people a week in her home…..so it is difficult to carry all the food back on a motor cycle.  Besides, it is so much fun going to the market with these girls.  We giggle and laugh on the way, usually sharing little snippets of our week or our different ways of life, or English words.  Once we get to the market we disperse, all getting the veggies and fruits needed for our families. Occasionally we bump into each other and help each other find different things.  The size of the market is probably as vast as a Walmart.  Stand after little stand, filled with some sort of vegetable, fruit, dry good, clothing, shoes, meat, fish that one could ever want.  You know the more I think about it…..the market is Indonesian’s version of Walmart.  Everything you need in one place at one stop.  It is just not air conditioned, has no sewer system, no garbage disposal plan, no security system,  and wheel barrows instead of grocery carts.  You can sample the fruit, if you don’t mind risking it not being washed.  It also does not smell like Walmart.  The floor is dirt and if it has just rained you have to sludge through the puddles or try hop around them.  We never bathe before going to the market.  Where usually I bathe before going to Walmart.  There is no refrigeration for the veggies and fruits and eggs.  No fine mist sprayers, to keep everything fresh.  Unless you count the rain?!

 

Not only have I enjoyed going with “the girls”, but now the people at the market know me.  I usually  buy from the same people.  They know that I will buy and pick up the things I buy later, when we pass with the wheelbarrow.  There is the Muslim egg man, the tofu and chicken lady, the wheel barrow guy….who comes and finds us within 10 minutes of us arriving at the market and gets all of our bags stacked up high and just right.  They all know that I am leaving to America and will not be back until August.  They all make me feel loved and wanted, that is not a typical feeling one gets when visiting the local Walmart (unless I see Penny in the bakery…smile).

 

 

One week, it didn’t work out that Nancy and Lalah could go with me.  I went all alone.  I missed them.  I missed their giggles and questions.  The teasing that we should buy neon green skirts. : )  I missed trying to tell them about how different it is to buy vegetables and fruit in America.  Their minds struggle to comprehend, no markets.  Or at least few and far in between and not daily.  They both told me that they will not go to the market while I am gone, but will just buy from smaller places closer to their homes.  They want me to hurry back.  As much as I want to go and visit America….I want to hurry back to my market girls.