For all of our staple food needs – eggs, bread, peanut butter, coffee – we generally do our shopping at a little grocery store called Chipiku that is a quick 10 minute walk across Chipembere Highway from the Polytechnic, but when it’s time to stock up on produce, we get to make a run to the Blantyre Market. I freely admit that the bustling, loud, crowded, smelly (good and bad but mostly good smelly) and sprawling market is one of my favorite things about Blantyre.
From the street, the market doesn’t look like much, just some stalls hugging the road, but once you pass the first layer of very vocal vendors, there is a soccer field-sized parking lot full of people manning their mats mounded with produce. As soon as you enter the lot, a swarm of eager little boys will try and get you to buy their jumbas (plastic grocery bags) and people start calling you over to their stations. It is here that I can personally attest to football-sized avocados, and puts-sugar-to-shame-sweet sweet potatoes. But pro-tip: if you can make it through this section without getting too weighed down in produce, even greater treasures can be found inside.
The covered area of the produce market is a hive-like conglomeration of mixed and matched tables where the vendors tend to diversify their wares a little more. It’s here that you can find a single booth with dozens of different types of spices or an abundance of grain varieties. And if you’re savvy, you can purchase a couple of different items from one vendor to increase your bargaining power. The most exotic purchases I’ve made from here are dried hibiscus leaves for tea, passion fruit, and a fiery hot Malawian strain of chiles.
But even better than any thing you can buy at the market, I really love the – for lack of a better phrase – people watching. I love the snapshot into daily life and Malawian culture that it provides. For example, one striking aspect of market culture is how cooperative the vendors are with one another. From an outsider’s perspective, it seems like vendors do not begrudge each other in the slightest when one makes a significant sale over another. They even go out of their way to locate items for other vendors. This level of camaraderie is remarkable to me.
The sights, the smells, the sounds, and the people all make the Blantyre market a truly unforgettable experience, and one I plan to frequent as often as I can while I’m here.
I tried to take a sneaky video outside where they sell fish. The sights and sounds are captured pretty well, but the overwhelming smell of fresh fish is something I won’t need a video to remember!
