This is what I learned today:
3.5 hours in the Saturday market = migraine + nice tan + dehydration + very dirty feet
A mobile clinic group arrives this afternoon and so I went to help Janine buy food at the market this morning. It was market day which means the market is nuts and on top of that I didn’t realize we were going to buy food for the entire week. We ended up with more stuff than either of us could carry; too much even to take motorcycles back. We left all our stuff (including my bag of vegetables) with a lady who sells fruit and I came back to the hospital to try to find a car to go back and pick up the stuff while Janine went to the meat market (located in another part of town). Unfortunately all the cars had gone to Port-au-Prince to pick up the group at the airport and the one car that should have been around had to go pick up the ambulance that broke down on the side of the road. I had absolutely no food at home and was really looking forward to cooking lunch. I didn’t have the energy to walk all the way back to the market in the sun to get my bag. So, instead I just rehydrated and fell asleep on the couch while waiting for a driver to come back.
It all worked out in the end. The driver returned and went with me back to the market. I had a slight moment of panic when we got there because I thought I forgot where we left everything. You know me and directions! But I was able to find the fruit lady on the first try. Phew. Ender, a notoriously bad driver, insisted on driving the truck through the market (extremely crowded and tightly packed with people selling their goods on the ground) and straight up to the fruit lady’s little stall. Along the way he nicked the stall of someone selling electronics and broke a piece of wood off the side of the booth. Fortunately we made it to the fruit lady without any human casualties.
I’m now well stocked with fruits and vegetables! Here is what I bought:
