Medina

26 Septembre, 2009

After a casual morning of egg sandwiches and café noir from the rickety stand down the street, we left the bureau in small groups for Medina to pick up some essentials. Medina is Guinea’s Mall of America. Even the streets leading up to the market are a claustrophobia of vendors, cars, and people. From the start you’re confronted with vegetable produce and used t-shirts, and the energy just keeps growing.

“Essentials” comprise anything that can’t be bought outside of Conakry. Many of the items in Medina can be found in stores outside the market, but these are generally upscale fixed-price Leb stores that are organized much more like an American 7-Eleven with aisles spaced for an anorexic. Medina is different. It’s a pricetagless labyrinth of Chinese imports, fake name brands, and standing water. A battleground.

Our preparation for Medina was to basically listen as more experienced volunteers berated the place. “I’ve ruined two pairs of pants just dealing with the mud! I had to pay a petite to just show me how to get out of there!” Yadda yadda. Yik, Mark, and I were luckily chaperoned by John, who enjoyed the haggle and had the patience to deal with our lack of negotiating skills. He is also blessed with a keener sense of direction than the rest of us combined.
Noticing a couple people walking toward the market in heavy rubber galoshes, John remarked, “I’ve been meaning to get some of those.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see in a sec”

Not five minutes later the pavement ended and the road narrowed. Main street became a pond of red water, a foot deep in spots, loaded with trash and moving legs. Medina’s sewage system—if it exists—was not dealing with the rainy season’s flash flooding today. The sun definitely was working to help but not fast enough. At least the dust was down. A laborer struggled with his two-wheel cart in tow, overloaded with bags of potatoes, sank into a divot. He’d put all his weight back, and then drive forward, shoulders creasing, trying to use momentum to his advantage . It took two minutes and a team of neighbors, but the wheels were soon free to wobble forward under the weight of several hundred kilos, now with a queue of carts and taxis behind them.

We hopped onto a strategically-placed tire, then to half a door, on our way to the electric supplies. John swiftly caught his bearings and detoured down the relatively-quiet “pharmaceutical aisle” (think: a row of forty vendors, each with a pile of small, sometimes unmarked boxes and bottles). First on the list were a multimeter and various other items I’d be using for physics demonstrations. He knew a couple guys who had hooked up Marg with supplies she’d soon be using for a teacher’s conference. What often happens is you ask someone for a specific item, and the vendor responds, “Yeah! I can get that for you!” Next thing you know he’s gone, tracking down the guy who actually does sell the item. This transaction most certainly involves a mark-up. In the case of the single-beam flashlight (shone through a prism in composition of white light demos), it also involved twenty minutes of waiting, sitting and staring at hardware stand hammers, flecks of sunlight dropping through the low steel roof.

We slowly picked away at our lists: six forks for five mille (about a buck), two mille for good masking tape, batteries, shawarma for lunch, a big rice bag to carry it all. I began getting the hang of “discuter” (“Dis-cue-TAY”):

“70 mille!?” A volunteer told me he came here last year and got the same thing for 30!”

“Not in my store. You’re the first volunteer I’ve met. This is some high-quality kitchenware. Look: non-stick! Your food won’t…stick!” He reaches up to a smaller pan hanging from the low ceiling, exposing a fist-sized hole in the underarm of his blue-pink polo. “The 20-cm pan is sold for 35 mille. If you want this one you ca…”

“I’m sorry, but I need a larger pan and can’t afford what you’re asking. As volunteer teachers here we’re paid a Guinean salary {this is a lie}, and that’s not the price a Guinean would pay for it. I know I can get it for half of what you’re asking elsewhere. ”

Vendor leans back incredulously, eyebrows hitting the ceiling as he discusses, in Pulaar, the preposterousness of my claim with his neighbor.

Americans huddle at same time, re-evaluating the price where we hope to land. Five minutes pass.

“Vous-êtes Peul? D’où exactement venez-vous?”

“Je viens de Ditinn”

“Ah bon?! Je vais habiter juste à coté! À Bodié. Je suis passé par Ditinn il y à un mois quand j’ai visité mon village. C’est beau, vraiment. La chute est magnificent.”

“La plus belle de toute le pais! Ah, Bodié. Que seras-tu à Bodié?”

“Je vais enseigner la physique au college.”

“Ça c’est admirable…Listen, my brother: If I go any lower than fifty five on this I’ll be losing money {also a lie}.”

“Alright, that’s fair…What can you do for me if we each buy one?”

A couple transaction like this are fun. Two hours? Exhausting. Energy drained, I settled for twice the price I’d normally pay for a spaghetti strainer. I didn’t care. I was done with the arguing, with the elbows in my back, with the cheap sunglasses constantly thrust into my face. My last purchase was a Guinea soccer jersey, made while I was waiting for John to purchase a South Africa jersey across the way. I wasn’t even planning to buy it. “Name your price! Name your price!” the vendor shouted as he saw me hustling to catch up with the other Americans. He nearly tripped over his boubou trying to get back into shouting range.