Buying food in Mbarara is a different experience than in Brookline. There is the central market, ‘supermarkets’ (which sell coffee, bread, cookies, oil, rice, pasta,etc.), the dairy (I think it was started by a Dutch man and it sells edam, mozzarella, parmesan-just available after they ran out in October and had to age a new batch-, and feta; it is worth the long, dusty walk), the pork butchers’ (Muslim butchers sell only beef and goat in the central market and the non-Muslim pork butchers are in a separate market; chickens are only sold live), and the wood or charcoal sellers.
The central market is joyful. The fruits (banana, papaya, mango, watermelon, jackfruit, pineapple) are abundant and inexpensive. The vegetables are all sold in groupings that cost 1000 shillings (45 cents)- so that’s usually 5 fresh, delicious tomatoes, a cluster of 5 onions, 4 green peppers, a large bowl of beans, a bunch of dodo (a plentiful green that sometimes grows as a weed), or a bowl of entula (a round vegetable related to eggplant). If you add it up, I could buy all of the above for $2.70. The longer I’m here, the more variety I find in the market; there’s a guy, for example, that gets a shipment of Chinese vegetables on Friday mornings. One of the tricks is getting it home. The huge papayas, pumpkins, bananas, and melons are heavy, the km walk from the central market to home is all uphill, and it is hot, which means a visit to the market most days I’m in Mbarara and a few trips on others. The photos are of my favorite vegetable seller (her display reminds me of the shrine to produce at Whole Foods) and the recently free-range chickens.
Yum!
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