Off to the Markets!

As a libertarian of sorts at heart, I love markets in the developing world. Read in a Dick Vitale voice: This is capitalism, baby! If you are in the market of a city of 40,000 or more and can’t find something you want, then you want something totally unnecessary, or just don’t know how to ask for it in the local lingo. It covers all the spots for errands in one place: Grocery store, pharmacy, restaurant, drug dealer, hardware store, gas station, electronics store, and shopping mall all in one. If one was so inclined, one could even get a shower, massage (with or without happy ending), and a solid mani-pedi.

Furthermore, it cuts out unnecessaries like high ceilings, good lighting, and insurance that end up in the prices you pay at a US or Western-style department store or grocer. Many travelers and backpackers, acculturated in the system of big brand stores, go to the equivalents of Wal-Mart or Kroger thinking they are saving money, but in all actuality the same goods are typically a fraction of the price in markets; I have personally bought a pineapple for 20 cents at a market that was better than the 2 dollar one at the fancy, American-style grocery store. There’re no lobbyists working to keep a stall-owner in Ecuador afloat and ahead of competition, just good products at low prices.

Another nifty feature of markets is that prices are negotiable and volatile; while sunglasses are cheaper on cloudy days, umbrella stock plummets on sunny days; the losing team’s jersey can drop 50% in value overnight, while a Manchester United jersey always takes in top dollar. Buying in bulk becomes an advantage for the buyer— perhaps that sweet Elmo shirt with ungrammatical English is 8 bucks, but add in a Power Ranger backpack, three Barbies, and 6 months’ worth of birth control pills (which I saw all at the same stall) and watch the prices plummet. It seems like those principles they teach you in economics that only come true at macro-level operations in the developed world happen at the point of sale level in a market, which I like.

Philosophy, ideals, and theory aside, markets are just plain fun. The smell is sometimes repulsive, especially to an American nose accustomed to everything being hermetically sealed or scented with grassy meadows, but awakening nonetheless. A walk down an aisle can be an olfactory gauntlet; an aggregate of kilos of cheese, stacks of dead and sometimes rotting fish, every local spice available, new clothes, plus the various body odors of all the hard working folks trying to make a living in a sweaty equatorial climate. The sights can be jarring and inspiring; men older than retirement-age lugging hundreds of pounds on their back, children playing the role of savvy business person while they should be at school, armadillos gutted on a tray and being sold by the pound, and produce sections with seemingly every possible color of the spectrum.  People screaming and bartering and losing and gaining and leaving happy and stomping off for an area the size of multiple city blocks is just plain exhilarating to me.

Even if you don’t buy anything, no travel experience to a city in the developing world is complete until you’ve visited the main market. You learn about the food the surrounding land produces, the styles of clothing people like (even if it is jeans and shirts with way too many tacky vestigial zippers and pockets), and what the people of a place truly want and need, because the market mechanism IS in working order.