Le Marché

“A lot of money changed hands on Fridays, but more than anything else the market was Lavié’s weekly social occasion: a sort of shopping center, bar, restaurant, pool hall, and ladies’ club packed under one cluster of grass roofs.” – George Packer, The Village of Waiting, 1982

Every sizeable village has a marché. The size of the village usually determines the size of the marché, as well as its frequency. Most dedicate two days for the marché (one is normally larger than the other), chosen to correlate with the surrounding villages. For example, Tandjoaré’s marché days are Wednesday and Saturday, attendance, however, on Saturdays is pitiful. I can visit Bombouka’s marché on Tuesdays and Fridays. It’s a larger town located directly on the Route Nationale where I can find bread and mail letters. Or I can bike 10 minutes west (return trip is 30 minutes uphill…) on Mondays and Thursdays to enjoy Bogou’s marché. Nano is another large village about an hour bike ride away whose days are Sunday and Thursday.

It’s not only the day of the week that you visit the marché that is important, but also the time. Some tend to be more bustling during the morning while others don’t really get going until 14-15:00. I have found the atmosphere to be a little too rowdy after 17:00, as there are likely to be people who have spent the entire day at the marché drinking tchakpa (“chauk-puh”–a fermented millet drink I will talk more about in a later post). If one wants to purchase any type of animal, they must go around 7:00. I went last Saturday at this time to look for a puppy and the area was crowded with men and boys selling chickens, guinea fowls, pigs and goats. I did find a boy selling two puppies, but they were too young to leave their mother so I passed on them.

Marchés usually consist of a collection of stalls built with trees and a thatched grass roof. Sometimes, in the larger villages and towns, there will be covered cement structures with numbers designating each spot. Every person who takes a permanent spot for the day must pay for the spot. I’m not positive on the price, but I think it’s a couple hundred francs–less than a dollar. Controlled by the local governing body, this process is overseen by one person who goes from stall to stall to collect the day’s fee. To avoid this, many women walk around the marché selling stuff that they carry on top of their heads.

The size of the village also alludes to the variety of things one can find at its marché. Tandjoaré, despite its political advantage of being the prefectural capital, is a small village (I’ve been told pop. 5,000) and thus has little variety. Over 50% of the vendors are selling tchakpa. Then there’s the food section, which in my village I can usually find pâte, koliko (fried strips of yam eaten with a tomato sauce, similar to French fries…), beignets (fried bean dough balls), and kalma (kind of like a bean tamale, dipped in a pepper sauce). Mini boutiques are scattered throughout selling the basics such as various condiments, pasta, cans of tomato paste and small bags of beans and rice. Women also sell produce, such as corn, onions, tomatoes, okra, etc… As per Togolese culture, one is given a cadeau (or gift) when purchasing these items. I base how many onions I buy on the idea that they will cadeau me one or two extra ones. Every marché also has a meat section. Au village, the men nail the leg of an animal to a post and carve off sections of meat as it’s ordered. Let’s just say that I try to avoid walking through this area… The meat section is generally the only place where you will see men selling stuff. Women control the majority of the marché.

The last main sector of the marché is dead yovo. What is this, you ask? Well, it’s the Togolese equivalent of a mall–where they buy all of their Western style clothes. Why is it called that? The idea is that no living white person would ever give up clothes as nice as the ones found there unless they were dead. My first experience buying dead yovo came last week in Lomé. A group of us went to a marché in the capital where all the clothes come after leaving the ships in the port. We hoped this meant that there would be a good selection. I ended up buying three shirts for 1,500cfa (approximately $3, bartered down from 3,000cfa), one of which is from H&M and I have the exact shirt and color hanging in my closet back home and had actually wished that I had brought it to Togo. The amount of clothes (and shoes and bags and belts and underwear) was overwhelming and I was ready to leave after an hour, but au village, dead yovo stands are smaller and much easier to navigate.

Side note: My fellow stage Savanners and I want to make bingo cards with various Togolese fashions in each square. Togolese fashion ranges from President Obama’s and Togo President Faure’s face plastered on a t-shirt to crocs to silk pajamas.

An interesting note: The further en brousse one gets (in the countryside), the more isolated a village is. This creates an internal economy, where the same money is exchanged on a daily basis. One woman today buys tomatoes from her friend and the next day the friend visits the women’s tchakpa stand a buys a calabash from her. Thus, the money becomes very worn and dirty–but then, Peace Corps volunteers enter these villages with their new, crisp banknotes and break the cycle!