Markets
On my first day in Ecuador, I was brought to a market. Norma, my home-stay host, whisked me away on her Saturday errands to the market on the north side of town. Sure, there was a large mall and supermarket within walking distance from her comfortable apartment. But the market was where real commerce—and produce—materialized.
I had prepared for this trip with three guidebooks, all which mentioned markets highly and frequently. But nothing can prepare you for entering your first South American market. Cézanne would have had a field day. After a winter of plastic tomatoes, here was a bounty of red, bulbous beauties piled high in countless produce stalls. Aisles and aisles of goods that could have been photographed for a cookbook—artfully arranged and very appetizing.
And with all that epicurean art, goes the art of negotiations. Like uncertain lovers—the fondling of food, the considering of currency. Within that one circumscribed space, rows of venders call at you to examine their mountain of goods. A child tugs on your arms to buy her bag of apples. The lunch counters fill with workers shoveling up fresh seafood soup (ceviche) or meat and rice.
The markets are a great way to see the various layers of society interact. The salespeople leave their farms (or more likely, someone else’s) early in the morning and stay at the market all day. Their children come too, often learning the vending trade early. Others push carts around or carry groceries to taxis.
A myriad of other informal jobs mushroom in the markets—shoe shine boys, girls selling gum, the men who clean piles of organic waste at the end of the day. It’s not always happy, but at least it’s not invisible.
A program I visited in south Quito fills an important
void—offering stimulating activities and homework help to kids whose parents
work in the market. Most of them don’t go to school, and CENIT (Center
For The Working Female Child) provides them with some mental and emotional enrichment.
There are also classes for women interested in learning a trade.
I spent a lot of time writing and reading about why global economic markets
were wrong. These were how markets can be right.
En route to the market in north Quito with Norma, my home-stay host....The fine art of negotiation.
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Venders surrounded by potatoes (Peru claims some 3,500 varieties of the tuber)....On the go down one aisle of produce.
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Check out that meat!...Most markets had an alter, though not all of them by an ad for Coke.
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Artfully presented fish....Cramming in the most products per cubic inch—a typical marketing strategy.
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Exiting the market....A wall of bags under an overpass in Quito, undoubtedly constructed daily.
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Scenes from Santa Clara, a vibrant market district in Quito.
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Walls of venders at the outdoor section of a south Quito market. The enclosed areas included furniture stacked in towers. Carmeta (my teacher) and I arrived on cleanup day, where the refuse pile was still high and the walkways were washed into a river a mud.
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This large market in south Quito is where CENIT volunteers work with children of the venders. My housemate Diana (from Germany) fell in love with the kids, and volunteered there daily. Many of the kids had practically adopted her as family.
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