Market Hopping

Not having any plans in mind, I stroll toward Maramba Market after breakfast. The market is a large collection of stalls about a twenty-minute walk from town.

The main street in Livingstone

Passing an open gate through a fence topped by razor wires, I step into the sprawling compound. It is a hodge-podge of stalls and huts with people selling everything under the sun. I walk past the section selling vegetables, through the stalls selling cheap Chinese goods, and stall after stall selling identical clothes, again imported from China. The din of the blacksmith hammering on their ware competes with the squawking of live chicken at the poultry section nearby. Being a Tuesday, there are more sellers than there are shoppers. Lacking any stalls with souvenirs or any curio, this is definitely a market for the locals.

Maramba Market

This guy sells some kind of paint

Just bought a crate of eggs and still has her hands free

As I check out a stand with secondhand shoes, I start chatting with the stall owner. He tells me that he gets his supplies from Tanzania. By the looks of them, the shoes look suspiciously like those I used to see being donated by students in Washington, DC. Is this the destination for donated shoes and clothes from Western countries – being sold in local markets in Third-World countries?

I continue to wander around the maze of a market for another hour, but finding nothing I need or want, and turn around the go back into town.

In the afternoon, I walk to the curio market in downtown for a look. The market consists of a row of about sixty stalls selling souvenirs, art, and carvings by local artists. I quickly walk through it, buying only a few pieces of small jewelry and a stone soap dish. They make beautiful artwork and carvings out of Zambezi stone, Zambian teak and ebony that are very reasonably priced for what they are but worth a fortune by local standards. It is too bad that they are too bulky and out of my price range for now.

Along the way, I stop to chat with a couple of artists. Lennox and Soko are from one of the villages near Livingstone. They earn a living by selling their work directly to tourists. It’s a slow day for business, so they sit down to shoot the breeze with me. We talk about the US and Australia, I ask them about the customs in their village, they ask me about life in the West. After they close shop, we head to a local pub to continue the conversation over a couple of beers. The conversation continues into a dinner of nshima. We say goodbye at the gate to my hostel and I promise to send them the photos I took of them earlier in the day.

Soko posing with his drum

After a shower, I sit in the “chill out” space above the common area in the hostel and look out into the distance. The Southern Cross hangs low in the sky. Down in the bar, Hendrix rocks through the stereo. My time in Livingstone is up. Tomorrow is a long bus ride back to Lusaka.