Sunday, December 03, 2006

The Mirriah market

This morning, we drove to Mirriah; a small community situated about 20 km from east of Zinder. The journey took more than half an hour however, because the roads were so deteriorated and the Suzuki (which is not mine...) did not want to end up in every other hole...

Sunday is the market day of Mirriah (every city has its own market day, which enables to the businessmen to go from one market to another the whole week - in Zinder, the market day is on Thursdays) but although it was noon, it was surprisingly empty. People found the weather too cold; we however found it quite windy and some had trouble with all the sand that settled in our eyes...
Anette and Sofia tasted sugar cane for the first time. They said it was nice, but they did not need more than a little piece before being satisfied. Obviously sugar cane is very sweet, but it is also VERY rich in fibers, which is why you can walk around with it for a long time without finishing it off as you have to chew and spit all the time. Good mouth exercise!

Here, Renate and Sofia bought shoes, but I couldn't get the children (that flocked around us) to move away from the camera...

Every market is split into several deparments, and as we were seeing everything, we took a quick tour to the meat market.

The meat however was far from tempting, and I think both Anette and Sofia were happy that Hassane goes directly to the slaughter house to fetch the meat that we eat at home... Remember though that meat is a luxury item which few can afford. Most people in Niger are vegetarians, but not by choice but out of necessity.

Ah, in the end, we ended up finding quite a lot of little hand made things. Mirriah is a nice place to go to if you're looking for items made of stray, brick or calabash.

Clay turned into artwork - what more is there to say...?

Another of Anette's famous people's portraits!

In the end, we made it back to our car, but only because there were more things to discover...

Ishtar

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, if onl I could be down there enjoying the African sun with you!! It's soooo dark up here, and we don't even have snow yet, so there is nothing to ligt up my days...

Anonymous said...

Pardon my spelling!

Anonymous said...

Hej vännen!
Du som klagar på att du aldig får några kommentarer ska här få en av lilla mig. Som du vet så skulle jag egentligen packa upp lite saker men så hamnade jag här istället, igen... (vanligt förekommande att hitta på något annat istället för det som är tråkigt och måste göras, men som på Nigerskt vis så kan jag ju göra det en annan dag)
Egentligen borde jag inte skriva någon kommentar här eftersom det sista inlägget du skrivit om så var jag ju med och jag kan ju heller inte berömma de flesta av dina bilder eftersom det är jag som är fotografen, för hur skulle det se ut?
Nä jag vill istället önska dig en fortsatt trevlig vistelse i det stressfria landet...
Love you!

Esther Garvi said...

But Hanna, on this particular day, it was so dusty! Sofia has a hard time adapting to "winter" here... It feels so wrong when the wind blowing is so cool that you feel the need to go and get a sweatshirt or something... :-) The light however is wonderful! So dusty or not, I'm not complaining!