market value?

undoubtedy, one of the most interesting, cultural experiences you could have upon getting to ecuador is going to the market. even if you are staying in a hotel withou a kitchen and have no need for groceries of any kind, your time in ecuador will have been incomplete without having checked out the market. just walking through the aisles is an experience for your senses. there are bound to be fruits and vegetables you have never seen before. the fruits are stacked ten feet in the air, on top of each other, sectioned off so that from afar, you see a squre of red, green, orange, purple, etc. and the whole thing represents some sort of psychadelic experience - not even to mention the smells! plus, the markets are usually manned by indigenous ladies who have at some point in their long history decided to wear each and every color in the rainbow each and every day. you can find the ladies sleeping nearby the food or else swatting flies away.

 

as a visitor to the market you may pick up one of the fruits that you may have never before seen - for example, the babacao. this is a fruit that looks somewhat like a papaya, but is white and chalky on the inside and in order to make drinkable juice out of it, heaps and buckets of sugar needs to be added. not my favorite. still, interesting. when you pick up the fruit, you will without fail rouse the interest of the sellers and within five seconds, she will come to you or scream at you from where she sleeps, something astute like, 'what are you looking for'. just looking brings a frown so you move on to the next stall and get a 5 or 6 second glimpse at another exotic fruit before the lady there begins to ask you what you are looking for and if youre lucky, providing a laundry list of the things tha tyou may be looking for. but, as a visitor, it is all part of the experience. you may wind up buying somethin glike a babacao just to cut it open and smell it and if you are charged $.50 it is no thing to you and you will go back to your home country and say to your friends that hte ecuadorian markets are very cheap and very colorful.

 

as a shopper, things get a bit more dicey. knowing that you make $.67 each month and that you are actually getting paid more than most ecuadorians makes you a bit more sensitive to the fact that it is quite impossible that a head of broccoli costs $.40. so, a number of tactics need to be employedto combat this friendly ripping-off of foreigners. one such tactic is to hide somewhere near to the stall from which you want to buy, wait until a local buys something, and note the price. then, when it is your turn to buy, dont be swayed by the vendors talk of your product being bigger, newer, fresher or otherwise needing to be more expensive. this tactic is often thwarted by nearby endors asking you what you are looking for if you are lurking. this draws atention to you and the vendor you wantd to buy from will often wind up overcharging the prson they are selling to, thussparking an argument between the two and causing time to waste. you will usually wind up going toanother stall.

 

at this other stall, you will try to buy a bag of naranjillas. naranjillas are related to oranges. they are green on the inside and orange onthe outside and until yesterday i had taken for granted the fact that if you buy naranjillas, you will only be able to use about half of them because the rest will be bruised beyond use. kind of likeif you buy raspberries, some are guaranteed to be moldy. usually the price you will be charged for things in a bag is either $.50 or $1 depending on the size of the bag. the price is so universally quoted that it seems true and not a rip-off. still, $1 for something seems like quite a lot. think about it: a dollar for a bag of 4 avocados basically means that each avocado is worth 1/4 the price of avocados as thy are sold in the most expensive city in the richest country in the world (new york). ok, but then if you take into consideration that the salary i am making is approximately 10 times less than what would be made in said city, then that scales the price of each avocado to $2.50 each - and this in a place where avocados grow on trees. no. cant be. yet, as a foreigner, $.25 per avocado is the cheapest price you can get. and these are usually the small, bruised ones.

back to naranjillas: this local fruit (not sold even as close as peru) will cost $1 per bag. in a bag, there will usually be about 13. 7 usable. but, they are organic, so fine. not organic in the whole food kind of way, where organic means price x 10. but, organic in the sense that you are buying from the grower and they are making 100% profit.

 

anna and i have taken to paying a weekly visit to supermaxi. this is a supermarket the type you might expect to find in the suburbs. massive and sells everything. here you can buy canned goods, boxed good - all things that are not produce. there is a produce section. however, used to thinking of the market as a good deal and nice experience, the produce section has usually been ignored. until yesterday when i saw that supermaxi carried a bright orange fruit, about the size of my palm, with a thick orange skin. as i moved closer, i realized that these were naranjillas. i was able to pickeach one out and fondle it before putting it into a bag, and inthe end, i bought 10 of them for $1. however, these were ten usable naranjillas that looked as though if you were to throw them against a wall, the wall, not the fruit would break. quite genetically modified of course, but quite pretty and sturdy. having juiced one of them this morning, i can tell you that the markets organic version has nothing on the supermaxi version. sure, there probably are good naranjillas at the market, but of course these would not be sold to foreigners. and, if they were, it would be at a ridiculous price that you would have to spend about half an hour bargaining down to a reasonable price that would still be a rip off.

 

so the wheeling and dealings of the market vendors is costing them business. i would like to go to the markets to buy my produce because i find them to be interesting and i like the idea of buying from the growers, however, i do not like the idea of having to argue for every little food item i need and then still not getting a great deal. supermaxi, you see, has prices listed for all of their items.

and then, there was this exchange yesterday:

me: (looking at potatoes)

vendor: what are you looking for?

me; do you have sweet potatoes? (keep in mind that there are over 300 types of potatoes available in this region - i know that yams are not technically potatoes, but still...)

vendor: ?

me: they are potatoes, but they are orange on the inside.

vendor: you want an orange?

me: no, a sweet potato.

vendor:?

me: they are like potatoes, but they are orange on the inside.

vendor: oh, you want a papaya!

me: thank you, but no. (i walk away, aware that i will not be allowed to look any longer.

other vendor within earshot: what are you looking for?

me: just looking