The sound of chickens clucking could be heard ringing loudlyas mi madre and I approached. The normally empty, clay red brick building in front of us was overflowing with people. The parking lot was void of cars. Instead the lot was occupied by poultry vendors showing their selection of live and dead birds to people passing by. The few that had eggs to sell too were the ones that people crowded around. The market expanded out into the street as well where men and women with fruit carts sell their pickings from earlier that day.
We waded our way through the sea of people outside and managed to push our way into the ocean inside. On either side of the main room (which on any other day is a sheltered 2 lane road) people were selling anything from jewelry to vegetables. We walked past an old women selling popcorn, what looked like cotton candy and meat on a stick right before we entered what mi madre appropriately called the vegetable room. Row after row of tables covered with vegetables lined the walls of the room. A boy wearing no shoes, a dirt stained shirt with some holes, and cut jean shorts came up to us offering bags of garlic for 5 mil guarani (about $1.50 USD) mi madre declined and we walked on.
We mosied from table to table looking at different things and sharing their name in English and Spanish. Eventually we settled on a table and started picking out vegetables. After purchasing we were approached by another boy selling garlic. He offers smaller bags for 2 mil, so mi madre returned to the women we just purchased from to exchange a bigger bill for smaller ones. The old dirt and son stained women smiles a grin with two teeth missing as she gave us the change.
We tried to navigate our way out as quickly as possible, but are still stopped by 2 more boys selling garlic and some other people selling seeds of some kinds. We made it out into the main room and back out to the street. The room on the other side had more bracelets and rugs my mother told me, but they weren't worth the prices. As we drove away from the market I learn that this isn't a normal event. The Indians (the native people) only have it twice a month, and they always have the freshest vegetables.
On our drive to our home we go a way I hadn't been before, near the homes of where many of the vendors from the market lived. It was a tent town. There were small naked children running around as elderly people lay motionless in their tents made of garbage bags and sticks. It's a sad sight, a rare view, for me, into the truly poor of the country that I had been living in for 2 months. Many of the kids running around the area didn't have any shoes. I had seen the poor people begging near my school before, and I had seen them performing juggling acts or other types of shows at stop lights for whatever change people would give them. I had never seen the places they actually lived though, never seen really what conditions those people called home.
Seeing something like that puts life into a new perspective for you. It really opens your eyes to what's important and what isn't. In high school I participated in charities to help the poor because I was raised to believe that it was the right thing to do. I never really understood who the people were that I was trying to help. I always felt good about the work I did, and thought that was reason enough to do it. Now I have seen people that are truly hungry, people that don't have any possessions to call their own besides the clothes on their back, and even some that hardly have any of that. The tent town may have only been a few blocks long, but it was something that won't, and shouldn't, be forgotten.
-Peace and Love
Sam
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