Market

One of the objectives for a PCV is to integrate into your community. For many reasons, but it's important to try and belong in your community. One of the ways of doing that is establishing relationships with the people you meet frequently in town. It's sort of a daunting task to begin, since we live in a such a large community, who do you befriend first? And when we go to market, how do we know which lady to buy from first, who will give us the best deal?

So JB and I have tried to go everyday to the little market to buy one or two things. This way people start to know us and us them. So far I think it's working quite nicely. We already have an onion seller, a bread boy, a coke lady, soap lady, and a garlic guy. We try to say hello to each one everyday. Yesterday we didn't go into the market because we just didn't need anything, so that today when we went some of our market ladies commented on how we were gone for a day. It may not seem like a lot or a big accomplishment, but it truly. The ladies are starting to know us, call out to us hellos (by our actual names!), and wonder where we are if we don't show up. It was a pretty nice feeling today. Also the coke lady now lets us take home coke bottles since she knows we'll bring them back! It's the small victories that count. :)