Winter Vendors

The fruit and vegetable venders still sell their food on carts outside in January. Lucky for me, because their prices are amazing, and they’re conveniently located right on my street. This makes the extra time standing outside with my gloves off, handling food and money, a worthy endeavor.

Most of the fruit is hard enough to withstand the cold. The apples, oranges, and soursop are out on the stands as in any other month. Some of the more delicate fruit, like papya, are kept in boxes, with just one on “display” on the cart. I tried to buy this, and it took some serious miming for me to understand this winter procedure. (Miming, and being brought to the box of papays at the back of the cart, stowed under a pile of jackets.)

While I was paying a man backed up his card and ran into my parked bicycle, knocking it to the street. Then he got out, looked at his trunk, and looked at me as if to say, “Look what your bike did!” Ok, I could not tell at all if he meant that, or if he was sorry that he hit my bike, but he was obviously upset, and his car did have a small scratch. I picked my bike up, put my hands down up and waved them as if to say, “no problem” and continued shopping. He grumbled, kept looking at me for a while, and then eventually got in his car and drove away. … my bad?

If I didn’t know where the vegetable stands were in good weather, I’d be in rough shape trying to find them now. All of the vegetables are kept wrapped up in heavy blankets. This made my interaction with the vendor considerably more difficult than in warm weather. What was once a procedure of: hold this up, give to her, look on scale for price: became me looking and poking under tightly wrapped blankets, trying to find the vegetables of my choice.

It was the first time in this situation that I really wished I could communicate with words. I really wanted an eggplant. When she held up a white raddish, I wanted to say, “That same shape but purple.” Of course, what I said was, “pu yeo” which means roughly “don’t want” or “no need”, and kept searching. I wasn’t able to find it without ripping up everything, so I left with the groceries that I could dig up.

On a whim, I decided to get some eggs. I’m used to eggs not being in the refrigerator now, (something I’ll have to remember to forget when I’m back in America) but I am not quite used to them not being sold in egg crates. At the big, real grocery stores, they will package 30 eggs with cardboard in something like a carton, but not quite the box of security I’m used to. At the deli in my complex they sell 6 eggs on a plastic tray wrapped in saran wrap. From the vendor I walked away with four eggs in a small plastic bag.

I’m not known for my careful biking, but there is nothing to make you slow for speed bumps like four nearly loose eggs in your misshapen bike basket. For a minute I was reminded of the “baby-think-it-over” program in school, where you were given an egg to protect as if it were a child. I imagined the disappointment on Ms. V’s face if she could see me now.