Limbe Market

Following the expensive yet unimpressive trip to National Park two weeks ago, I’ve become quite resistant to the generally held opinion of ‘you should make use of your limited time here to visit places in Malawi’ – and that means touristic places like Liwonde National Park (which I did 2 weeks ago), Lake Malawi, Zomba plateau (which I also did on the way back from National Park), Mount Mulanje, etc.. It doesn’t really make a difference whether I took a picture of the elephants or not, if I do not feel excited when I snapped the picture. Game drive was fun, but you know, sitting in the four-wheel drive and watched the animals from a distance.. I feel it’s just the same like watching it from National Geography.

I was in fact quite itched to see Lake Chirwa, which is not so much a touristic place but a nice small lake nearby Blantyre (Blantyre is the city I’m currently residing). And I want to do it with Ceciiia and her daughter. Unfortunately Cecilia is in Mzuzu this weekend. So I came up with an ad-hoc plan to venture into another place which I also wanted to explore since I came: Limbe market – not a tourist attraction at all but a very popular market among the locals.
Berna (my housemate) and I were very lucky to get a lift from my landlady’s sister-in-law from Blantyre to Limbe, as she owns a printing shop in Limbe. We were sitting in her car with one of the car windows smashed. On the way to Limbe she told us about the robbery that happened to her family 2 weeks ago. 15 men broke into the house, held everybody up and robbed whatever they could. Thank god nobody got hurt but they are deeply traumatised. And that’s why they couldn’t stay in their own house anymore and moved to my landlady’s house instead. The disparity between rich and poor here is too wide. If you drive a car, you get envied looks. If you don’t drive a car, you get robbed after dark (that’s why I must go home before 5pm because I don’t have a car). Almost all rich families’ houses are tightly fenced and guarded – that is what my landlady calls ‘an invisible prison’. Poor people trapped in poverty. Rich people trapped in expensive houses. I feel really uncomfortable about this whole thing. Social class is very distinct and it’s almost impossible to live in between. Although there’re many rich (non-Indian) Malawians, whether you’re rich or not are judged by your skin colour. Perhaps if you’re fairer than the others, you must be rich. There’re many Indian Malawians here and they are usually running businesses (and hence richer). There’re no Malawians as a whole, but there are ‘the’ Malawians, ‘the’ Indians, and ‘the’ expatriates. If I were to decide not to work here this is the main reason why.

Well forget about unhappy robbery, today’s focus was on Limbe market. After 3 weeks living in Blantyre and constant visits to Blantyre market, Limbe market looked like just another Blantyre market, but double (or perhaps triple) the size. And we managed to see many things that aren’t available at Blantyre market. First thing we saw was the shoe market. Stalls after stalls of shoes. I wish I could show you the picture but it’s really unwise to flash your camera in the market. And you would know why later. Shoes were arranged on piles of bricks. I mean bricks were stacked up as a ‘stand’ for shoe display. And in front of each shoe stall there must be a pale of water – guess what, you get shoe wash at the same time! And indeed all shoes at the stalls looked so clean!!

I was hoping to get something Malawian as souvenirs – I have been having problem getting anything that is locally made.. as there just isn’t any!! Well apart from nsima I really can’t name any.. Berna and I were trying to get something from the ‘fabric department’ (which means piles of clothes everywhere for you to dig deep inside to get something good, if you’re lucky!). I was hoping to find some shirts or something that were locally made but of course I was disappointed again. There were plenty that were made in China or from Europe such as H&M shop (from the UK, and costs the same!). We only found one that sold ‘sarung’ (those clothes that women wrap around their waists like skirts) and we bought some.

The next thing that caught our eyes was the music shop (or stand/hut, whatever you call..). I’m anticipating myself to run out of watchable movies very soon judging from the speed I’m ‘consuming’ the movies I brought along. So I got a DVD that contains TEN Al Pacino’s movies – yes, ten, not very good quality but.. you know when you’re hungry you don’t choose food! And then we also learned about thing that is typically Malawian – you don’t always get things even though they are in the menu.. There’re many CDs on display that we were interested to buy. But guess what, some were not available, some did not play, some display CDs were really ‘just for display’ as they contained no discs inside! You know sometimes I really think people here should just work a bit harder – here we are, the customers who are ready to spend, but we just couldn’t!

We passed by many stalls that sold food but of course weren’t interested at all because all stalls sold only the same thing (and it’s the same everywhere you go) – chips, salad and fried chicken. Chips (or French fries, for American translation) is the commonest food. Many people take just chips for a meal. I find most people just take carbohydrate and have very less protein intake. If you walk into a bakery, it’s not surprising to find only buns and sliced bread that contain nothing. You have the wrong guess if you think customers buy these to make sandwich – they just eat those on its own (and perhaps with a bottle of fanta). Coming from Malaysia where the bread and ‘kuih’ come in different flavour and fillings, it’s really disappointing for me to keep on getting bakery that bakes with just flour and nothing else.

There was also a hardware market that I felt it was a huge scrap market.. you find lots of nails (rusty nails inclusive, and in fact most of them are rusty), iron chains (don’t know what for), some unknown metals I have no idea what to use for.. or even plastic bottles, glass bottles (used ones) – it looked like a huge recycling factory – I mean people are selling these things that we usually brought for recycling factories. In between these scrap market there were some interesting stalls that sold tree roots/barks. When asked what those were for, the sellers had a very difficult time explaining to us that’s something for ‘something between men and women’. Hmm traditional medicine for sexual health. Very interesting – Berna said I should do an interview there and then! LOL! I was a bit tempted to yes.. hahaha..

Another interesting thing we saw was how alcohol was sold in small packets of 20mls. It costs only 15kc for each small packet (equivalent to approx 5p). Very cost friendly way to indulge yourself. The final (and most important) section we went to was the fruits and vege section. Malawi is a paradise for vegetarians as there are a good variety of them. Fresh, cheap and tasty – unlike those you get from Sainsbury’s where tomatoes do not taste like tomatoes if you ever buy any Sainsbury’s basic (sometimes I’m really amazed at how consistent they are in toning down the taste of food in perfect proportion to the price you pay!). So for less than 500kc (£2 equivalent), I get everything I want for the week. In fact I’m very happy to become a vegetarian here as this satisfies perfectly my desire to eat lots of vegetables but never afford to do so in the UK.

The last bit of the market wasn’t pleasant and I’m glad this happened only at the end of our shopping – there was a guy who was prying on my bag and came very close to ‘sell his plastic bags’. I suspect he had a ‘partner’ who tried to distract me by touching me when I was buying some funny looking cake. I felt something was wrong immediately and quickly walked away. However these guys didn’t give up and followed us very closely. So close that I felt he was almost glued to my backpack. my reflective reaction was feeling ANGRY, and indeed furious! I shouted very loudly HEYYYYYY!! And turned around pointing him straight in his face ‘HEY YOU!!! STOP IT AND STAY AWAY FROM ME!!!’ I guess he was quite stunned at my reaction and he just disappeared from our sight. We lost interest in any further ‘exploration’ and made our way back. On the way back we just ignore all the ‘hi’, ‘how are you’ (usually I respond as I think they’re just being friendly) and so on. The zip of the front pocket of my bag was open. I’m very sure he was trying to steal (or even rob) something from me. Bad guy.

Anyway all in all Limbe market was a good day out, quite an experience luckily I didn’t lose anything. In fact it was not surprising that we attracted attention (from people who think we have so much money!) as obviously we were the only two foreigners in the market. I’m happy we made this visit but I don’t think so I will come back again.