Shopping trip to the "New" market

When I was here last, about 9 months ago, the new market (across from Elim motors) was a jumble of bamboo and thatch stalls next to piles of unfinished cement block walls. (Everyone calls it that, don't know why) There was dirt or mud or lake for floor depending on weather. In fact the rear section had convenient planks to keep you above the lake.

Given the speed of building around here, I expected the same this time.

To my surprise, the old new market was gone. Bulldozed flat to a vacant lot of red earth. And the brand new new market next door was in full swing. I guess to keep the previous feeling, (do they have preservationists here?), the aisles were just as narrow as before. The dried fish and meat had been moved to the front so it requires navigating that to get to the fruits and vegetables (phew!). There are corrugated metal roofs and cement floors . Besides the new walls and floor, the whole thing had multiplied. Instead of ten stalls selling tomatoes there looked like twenty. Very hard to find stuff too. Compared to two long aisles through the entire market where you could easily see what was in the other aisle on one pass through, there seems to be about 10 aisles so you can't see and had to go up and down to see things, dodging the odd chicken and the guy with a 100lb sack of gari et. al.

Fun to watch my wife try to bargain over a pineapple with what looked to be about a six year old girl, neither side was giving a inch. Turns out there were a lot more better pineapples a row over. A lot of these guys want to sell a full basket of stuff for a price, that's usually too much for us. Buying onions, my wife was trying to convince the guy to sell less than a basket, in fact he kept adding more figuring we were complaining about not having enough. Plenty onions for a while now.

Papaya and pineapple spectacular as usual. Didn't see any watermelons. Tomatoes excellent.