Brazza Shopping Adventures: Marché Total

Need a mini-brioche pan?

On a recent Saturday I won the shopping trifecta--open market, grocery store, and fabrics! Starting with the Marché Total, Stro and I followed Well-come around while he bought fruits and vegetables for a dinner party he was preparing later. The Marché Total is the huge outdoor central market in Brazzaville when you can buy big bunches of fresh sorrel, a new or used whisk and other batterie de cuisine, a wig, fabric, or a watermelon! In other words, you name it, it can probably be found there.

Clay sticks for pregnant women to eat

The section I saw was not pretty. Busy, yes. It was early in the morning, vendors were just setting up. Enough onions for the whole country seemed to be in the process of being unloaded in 50 kg bags and relocated via very rickety wheelbarrows or on the backs of porters. We tried to get out of their way on the narrow dirt paths between sellers spread on the ground with their goods. Garbage is dumped in the center of what must be a wide road when the market is empty so at times we were caught between the garbage pile and sellers. I wondered how often if ever the garbage was bull-dozed out. I was glad I wore my biggest shoes and socks.

Variegated sorrel--makes a fab sour green dish

Goods are sold by the pile or bunch. There are no scales. So if you want tomatoes, you buy a small pile of maybe 5 that have been arranged on a table or ground cloth. Same with cucumbers. You never buy one cuke. Early in the visit we came across a woman bundling spinach for sale. She had a 7 months old baby girl who looked just like her tied to her back. The baby was completely asleep. Her mother could stand, sit, twist and the baby would just rock in her tied-on cradle of cloth. Her bigger sister was nearby scratching some kind of writing on an old brick wall. Clearly, they were there for the day. When we bought spinach from her we asked if we might take a photo of her baby. She thought that was very funny but agreed. Thanks to the iPhone I could show her the photo right away.

Our new market friend

One of the offerings that struck me hard was sticks of clay. I stood and looked at these piles trying to figure out what it was. My first guess was fat incense sticks. I finally had to have Well-come explain. This is clay to eat, not use like Play-Dough. Women, especially pregnant women, crave it and eat it. The craving may be due to a nutritional deficiency (perhaps iron). In another lifetime I worked as a medical social worker with young pregnant women from rural North Carolina who ate clay. They had their own secret holes where the clay was sweet and they would not tell anyone where their holes were for fear of being poached. I hope those days are over in the US, but they are not over here.

The best sight was an individual vendor selling a plastic device for slicing, dicing, and doing other magic with fruits and vegetables. The day seemed oppressively hot to me but he sported a cap that would have made a Greenlander warm in winter, complete with earflaps down. He attracted quite a crowd but did not speak loudly to attract attention. If he had a spiel it was quiet. Reminded me of the days of those TV ads for wondrous convenience devices like Propeel's Vegematic, only without the yelling.

Onion bag recycled to hold potatoes

Although there are no recycling programs that Americans or Europeans would recognize as such in Congo, everything gets reused to the extent possible. Witness all the old liquor bottles in the market that were filled with peanuts for sale. Or the big mesh bags with "Spanish onions" on the label that held small potatoes. Plastic bags have been outlawed (Vermont: take a tip) and replaced by reusable bags made from recycled material. Various containers that once held food or cosmetics were for sale in the market, ready for purposing.

The people of the market were mostly women, many with babies and toddlers, some very elderly. To my eye they seemed to take little interest or pride in their goods. They were not aggressive. Everyone says "bonjour" when it is said to them. But there are few smiles. This was the most stark contrast to most of the markets I have seen around the world. From Montpelier to Istanbul, market sellers typically show great pride in what they have on offer. I remember an elderly Italian lady in the West Side Market in Cleveland back in the 1960s. She had to interview you before she let her tomatoes go home with you. She probably grew those tomatoes. But even in India where the vegetable sellers were not the farmers, they proudly built pyramids of green beans and eggplants to show their veggies to good advantage. I left the market wondering about this--was the pride missing or could I not see it?