In an African market, pennies are not peanuts
Posted: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 8:10 AM
Filed Under:
On Assignment
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
MWANZA, Tanzania – None of the shopkeepers had change for a dollar, and I marveled, not for the first time, at how the gap between rich and poor plays out in real life.
I wanted to buy a tiny bag of peanuts while waiting for a ferry to cross a pretty bay on Lake Victoria in Tanzania.
Nagona, the woman selling the peanuts, didn't have change; so she went from stall to stall, waving the 1,000 Tanzanian shilling note, which is actually worth about 88 cents. But nobody could break it. This vendor had 60 cents worth of money, that one had 80 cents, but nobody had the resources to break the 1,000 shilling note.
And all the while they smiled and laughed and joked with each other. I asked how business was and they said good. They sold peanuts, small cartons of milk, warm, sweet, fizzy drinks, dry biscuits labeled "energy bars" and, of course, cigarettes.
One cigarette at a time, that is.
 |
| NBC News |
| A passenger on the ferry we eventually caught to go across Lake Victoria in Tanzania. |
The waiting ferry passengers milled around, joking at the man who had a baby chicken inside a tiny cage made of twigs, which he had tied to his bicycle seat. The cage was so small the chick's neck was bent. When an old man's bicycle fell to the ground, scattering his load of pineapples and nuts, everybody laughed as if this was the funniest thing, and he joined in the gaiety, and then everybody helped him pick up his load.
One little boy was carrying boiled eggs in a tin container. You could dip the peeled eggs in some salt he carried. Two boys were checking an egg, tapping it, shaking it and listening, as if they were experts assessing the finest goods.
Two teenage girls approached me and my cameraman, Dave Copeland, smiling shyly and curtsying while holding pieces of paper and a pen, which they shared.
"It's for the orphan's education fund," said our translator. "They want 500 shillings or 1,000." Fifty cents or a dollar. Everybody smiled in appreciation, and a satisfied murmur went through the crowd as we handed over a thousand shillings each and wrote down our names and our contribution amount and then signed the paper. (In all my years covering stories in Africa, hailing back to when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, I have never seen any students who study harder than orphans.)
We waited an hour and a half for the ferry. It was hot and dust covered us each time another truck pulled up, its horn playing all kinds of zany tunes. Somebody's cell phone rang. The ring was a baby crying and everybody looked up in concern, and then laughed. Giant clumsy maribou storks hovered with beating wings and then settled on electric cables overhead, clacking.
In short, it was a typical scene in rural Africa.
 |
| NBC News |
| The picturesque scene crossing Lake Victoria in Tanzania. |
Again, not for the first time, I reflected on a comparable scene in my world. I imagined the shoppers in a busy department store. How many would stop and help if a lady dropped her shopping? Would everybody laugh (with her, not at her)? And would she laugh, too? And would they then all stop their business to help?
We have plenty of money to spend, even if it is not as much as we would like, and most vendors, if pushed, could break a hundred dollar bill. But some people would probably be more concerned about the caged chick with the bent neck than with the people around them.
As for the peanut vendor, she never did raise the change to break my dollar bill. The shopkeepers had said it was a good day, but not that good.
It seemed condescending to say keep the change, so I bought six packets of peanuts and ate them all.
