Daddy's going to buy you...

Retail: it is the one aspect of the economy that is working here.  Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive it is not (I used to work there by the way), but there is never a shortage of people selling things here in Quelimane.  Herewith are a few examples:

Most downtown sidewalks are half used by vendors--they simply lay their wares out.  It is amazing how many high and stiletto heels are worn here--although  Debbie hardly ever wears her seven-inchers here because of the ruts, ridges and holes in the road.

This looks like a messy pile of charcoal, but it is actually seven distinct messy little piles of charcoal, each for sale in front of someone's mud hut.  So much of retail is done exactly like this--small amounts of otherwise bulk items broken down and sold to people who can only afford to buy charcoal sufficient for one day.

This is our central market where piles of fruit are for sale by hundreds of individual vendors, but where more mobile sellers also roam.

Flip flops are a big seller here--that is the shoe of choice.

There is a story here.  One of the big problems with the average Mozambican who is trying to make a few Meticais by opening a stall and selling things, is that they consume their inventory (see the woman eating her oranges).  So often, people will beg or borrow money to buy inventory and start to sell, then use all of the proceeds from their sales to fund their life--forgetting that they needed to save some of those proceeds to restock their inventory.  So at the end of the month, their shop or stand closes and they have nothing to show for the capital they started out with. 

Dried fish make the central market particularly pungent.

There are probably stores that sell new clothes, but I don't recall having seen one in Quelimane.  Most clothes are bought and sold like this or from large piles direct from donated bundles.

Debbie emerges here from our grocery store.  We can buy Kellogs Corn Flakes here and low-fat milk and western canned goods and most everything we really need to make our kitchen work.  But it is expensive--slightly more so than shopping in Fairbanks, Alaska--which is a pretty expensive place to buy food.

Side-of-the-highway vendors selling sweet potatoes from their own little garden acreages--called machambas.

This is not a retail picture but rather  last night's going away dinner (waffles, hash-browns, eggs and fresh squeezed orange juice) for Elders Barlow and Delgado (and welcome dinner for Elders Tanner and Steel). 

A good thing about our well-behaved missionaries is that when we feed them, they usually help clean up.  Sister Osborn suggests that I could learn a thing or two from these young men.

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