4am: Let´s go to the Market!

So after drifting in and out of restless, half sick sleep all night, I was dismayed to finally look at my watch and realize it was 3:40am. I turned my alarm off, and stalled until 4, when I finally decided I wasn’t really sick and that I should get up. Wandering out my door, I ran into Rina, engripada (she has a cold) and wearing an oversized fleece jacket. In San Vicente, it’s actually cold in the morning.

I went to SanVi last week to help out with the fresh group of trainees because I’m a part of GAD, the Gender & Development committee. It’s fun stuff. So I stayed a couple of nights with my host fam from my training days (weird that it’s already been three months since I left there, time really does go pretty quick). I spent Friday at the training center, and then had a bet going with myself and the disbelieving Rina that I would actually get up at 4 in the morning. Why? To go to the market of course!

Rina and Tive do seasonal work. While I was living with them, it was sugar cane season, and they were constantly working in the molienda making molasses-like stuff. Now they’re harvesting the tomatoes, cucumbers and chiles they planted just as I was leaving. By about 4:20, I was already glad I was up. We were driving down the highway with a truck full of produce and people, and the sun had yet to rise. It was cool, calm, and almost pretty.

Then we got to the market area, about 45 minutes away.

Oranges. Chiles. Tomatoes. Live chickens. Socks. Potatoes. Yucca. Onions. Garlic. Jocotes. Zapote. Large slimy fish. Live turkeys. Coconuts. Corn. And people. Swarms of people, climbing over each other and the piles of produce, arguing over prices while men carrying 2 or 3 large sacks of produce over their backs squeezed through shouting “voy, voy voy!” (comin through, move or be trampled). It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen, if only for how people packed in around each other. I literally couldn’t move my feet for a while, there were so many sacks of produce and different vendors around me. And it seemed like every time someone would sell a sack of something and make a little room, a new vendor would swoop in with an even bigger sack or basket.

Vendors. I shouldn’t call them that. Most of them are farmers. Rina wanted to get $12 for her sacks of 300 chiles. She got 9 at most, and sold them at $2.50 for 100 instead of the $5 she was aiming for. One lady who bought chiles from us turned around and sat about 5 feet behind me, selling them in baggies for 4 for a quarter. So I guess the farmers never make out that great. After spending about 5 hours in the market, Rina came home with 40 some dollars from selling the week’s produce. Not much to feed her three kids and the nephew that now basically lives there as well.

It was a dizzying experience that I would never like to go through again, but I was glad to see that aspect of work. It never fails to give me a new appreciaion of how different people spend money, and the difference between people who really work for a living, and those who receive Remesas (cash) from family in the states (which is 1 in 3 families, according to a recent news article).

So, back in my site, I came home to a misbehaving dog. She likes to wander around in the street now, chewed through her leash to escape confinement while I was gone, and also got sick. My roommate, (sounds weird saying that, they don’t really use the term here) Aracely was very concerned that something would happen to my dog while I was gone and I would be really upset, so she kept sending me text message updates. I think she takes better care of that dog than I do, actually. She’s about 6 months old now. Anyone have tips on dog training??

So now I’m back in my site…and back to work. And it’s been thunder and lightening all night, but no rain. Wacky. Hope everyone is taking care…