A Mzungu in a Tanzanian Market

Early one morning, even before coffee (!), I left the banana farm hostel in northern Tanzania and headed down a long, dusty road toward the highway. Each step was accompanied by hello!s, and good morning!s from the little kids who watched me pass by. With all the waving, those cute Tanzanian kids made walking down the street feel like a Miss Universe parade.

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(I guess their English teacher only taught them “Good morning!” because they’d say that in the afternoon and evening as well, haha, until we kept replying “Good evening!” in the evenings, and they caught on. 🙂 )

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Finally at the bottom of the road, already sweating and thoroughly caked in a thin layer of orange dust, I waited for the next dala dala, or local minibus, to appear. We were out of groceries, so I wanted to stock up at the big outdoor market that ran on Tuesdays and Saturdays in Tengeru (just before Usa River, if you want to go.) It was only a few villages further down the highway, so I knew I could take any dala dala that came rolling by.

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I didn’t get on the first few dala dalas that passed, though. I guess going in the morning wasn’t the brightest idea. The dala dalas were very local transportation, and everyone was trying to get to work at that time. It seemed they could fit 50 people in those things. And there was always room for one more.

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Soon I gave up and realized I had better just squish myself into whichever bus came next, because they were all as equally and miserably crowded, with people sitting on top of each other and hanging out the doorway. But funnily enough, I knew they’d take me on the bus anyway, because I was considered “small.” In Asia, I felt pretty big, but Africa was the opposite.

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I jumped off the dala dala, (where I had been kindly received and squished in), at a bustling market chock-full of local fruit and vegetables. If there’s one thing Tanzania has in ultra abundance, it’s produce.

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(On a side note, I met this American guy who was in Tanzania working on a project to create Tanzanian jobs. What was the project? Planting a million *more* fruit trees. I was stunned. Maybe I was missing something, but it seemed to me that millions of fruit trees was what Tanzania had already, and possibly even *too* much of. In Zanzibar, the government lined the roads with massive mango trees, the fruit of which anyone could eat for free. Locals said that was why Tanzanians rarely bought mangoes, and had so many mangoes that they often went to waste. Why not help Tanzanians grow strong in another sector? I’d be glad to understand this better, if anyone has some insight. ^^)

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I was the only gringo, or mzungu, the Swahili term for “white person,” at the market. Foreigners were obviously thought of as “people with money,” so plenty of sellers vied for my attention (which was pretty much a personal nightmare haha. but also something to get used to as a tourist.)

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The produce was gorgeous and everywhere. It was truly a massive market.

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Thankfully not much language was needed for buying things. I met a couple outgoing girls who were excited to show off what they could say and tried to help me communicate with sellers who knew no English. Some sellers would make their hand into a fist. I forget if a fist meant 50 or 100 shillings, but it was easy enough to figure out the prices with hand gestures. I bought tomatoes here, carrots there, and so on until my bags couldn’t hold anymore.

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There was an entire, huge section of the market dedicated to just bananas, both green and yellow. But not just the bunches of bananas, the entire branches were there. It was quite impressive to see, and the whole market would have made for some fantastic pictures and videos. But I was getting enough stares for being a foreign girl walking around by herself. I didn’t think photographing them would have been too polite, and there had been no way to do it inconspicuously anyway.

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My most exciting purchase was ginger. I have two food obsessions. One is mint, the other ginger. And Tanzanian ginger was some of the spiciest and best. I already knew what I’d do with it when I got back to the hostel.

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What surprised me, though, was that the hostel had another ginger-obsessed fan. And we were about to become ginger tea friends.

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Continued in: “Tanzanian Ginger and Other Weird Things in My Backpack“

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*Fun fact* Most food items in the supermarkets in Tanzania were outrageously expensive. A small block of cheese would have cost around US$24. But buying from local street markets was as affordable as you’d imagine… as long as you didn’t get drastic “foreigner” mark ups. (:

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