The Thief in the Marketplace

In my opinion, in order to really get a feel for the culture of a place, one needs to visit the local market. In the United States our grocery stores are filled with neat lines of packaged food with soft music playing in the background. The shopping experience is a little different in Chad.

There are numerous markets littered across Moundou, but the one my family visits is about a 5 minute moto ride away. Every afternoon, an unorganized mass of people (mostly women) gathers in an open square (or triangle) with their mats, produce, and bargaining skills. The fish vendors tend to stay to one side, with the vegetables, spices, charcoal, and fruit to the other. Little paths in the dirt, and sometimes mud, remain for the buyers to navigate with their plastic bags and pocket change. Some sellers have a large mat fully covered with their particular goods, but others only have a plate with a few items on it; most likely picked from their own trees or gardens. Women sit on their mats and children walk around with platters. Traffic zooms by on either side, adding moto horns to the noise of bargaining, laughing, shouting, and the constant booming of music vendors who crank their poor sound systems in the direction of the market.

I have visited the market a few times with my host mother, and I definitely stood out. The first time I had the opportunity to watch the process was about three weeks ago. I tried to keep my feet out of puddles and my elbows out of other women’s bags, while platters of whole fish stared at me with glazed eyes. Every few seconds the fish ladies would throw some water on them to lift the screen of flies that crawled over everything. In unison, the flies would scatter, only to return again. I was thinking about the sanitation of gutting the fish next to these platters when I noticed that there were at least 4 children with platters following me. I don’t think they actually expected me to buy something, but I was something new to watch. So now I walk through the market like a mother duck with a little following.

Anyway, the last time I visited the market with my host mother I got to experience another aspect of the market place. I was standing behind my mother as a vendor gutted, without looking, the pile fish my mother had just purchased. As they dropped the fish straight into our plastic bag, a very scary looking man bumped into my mother. She responded with the typical Chadian, “Ai!” and clutched her purse. They exchanged a few tense words and he slipped away. It took my mother maybe 15 seconds to figure out that he had actually opened a zipper in her purse and snitched her phone. She got angry really quickly, as did the other fish ladies, and pushed our grocery bag into my arms. Then she took off into the throng of people, leaving me standing in the middle of the market with a large bag of fish.

This was a very surreal moment for me. There were enough people in the market that I couldn’t really see where she was going, other than a random glimpse of her purple headscarf that bounced through the crowd. It helped that half of the market place saw a fairly plump woman running through the square, so they jumped up to follow and watch the action. I didn’t know if I should follow, or if I should stay there so my mother could find me after she…whatever she was planning on doing. For a second I floated outside of my body and saw myself; a young, white girl with no French or Ngambi knowledge, holding a bag of fish that was slowly dripping onto her shoe. I was in Africa. How the heck did I get here? This feeling wasn’t fear, but more wonder than anything else. I couldn’t help laughing at the situation.

In a few minutes my mother returned, panting and sweating up a storm. She relayed the story to the questioning ladies across the market (all who shook their heads at that bad man) as we finished up our shopping. She told me that she had actually found the thief in a car on the other side of the square. No one else had stopped him because they were scared of him. I guess he is known as a pretty dangerous criminal in the area (I would like to reiterate how scary this guy looked – yikes). However, my mother must have had a pretty stern talking to him because before we left, to my surprise, she whipped out her phone. Then she did one of her wonderful laughs and said, “God was with us today!”

There are so many things I loved about this experience. I loved watching that woman book it across the market place in her Sunday clothes. I loved the group of women that gathered around her to offer their two cents about thieves. I loved watching a grown man (very scary man) be brought to justice by a woman: gender equality in Africa is not really up to my standards. And I loved that my host mother credited this moment to God. The faith of my family, and the church community in general, is incredible. Even from a thief in the market place.