Regina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
Among the characteristics that define me as a bad housewife is not
knowing how to purchase fresh produce, which, I assure you it is a vital
skill because the farmers markets not only sell products that would not
pass a health or quality control inspection, but in the majority of
cases these controls are only on paper, and you have to be experienced
to get good products.
But since he had to go get my medications at the pharmacy and the
pharmacy faces the farmers market, my husband, with many explanations,
tasked me to buy beans, cucumbers and a bunch of green bananas.
It had been months since I'd been to a farmers market and my first
impression was that they were dismantling it. Of eight stands, only two
were open and they were offering undersized purple onions at six pesos,
(cheap compared to the four pesos for a pound of cucumbers or the green
beans at six). On the floor in there plastic where they display the
merchandise, there was a stalk of bananas that no one would buy. So what
happened here, I asked one of the stall keepers. The rains was his
laconic reply.
Just a hundred yards away at the door of the bakery, were two
construction trucks with tomatoes, peppers, cabbage and beans. All
clean, fresh and packaged. Two entrepreneurs to whom the rain was not an
obstacle. These days it has rained, but it rained as it can rain at any
tropical country. We haven't faced a cyclone and the rains haven't been
torrential. Nothing logical can explain the lack of merchandise at the
farmers markets and the variety available on the trucks. Ok, yes, but
the explanation defies logic.
October 28 2011
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