Road to Indonesia: Open Air Market

 Yesterday morning we went to the open air market, which happens every Saturday.  Rick's observation is that you could almost pick up any open air market and transport it to another country and they would look pretty similar, except of course that some of the produce would be different.There is alot of mud, and booths, and smells, and people wanting to sell you things.  Although we were much, much less harrassed here than just about any market we have ever been in.  Nice people. 

 I think I have seen alot of different kinds of fruits and vegetables, but there were plenty of new ones here.  We just ate a snake skin fruit. It is small, maybe the size of a plum, but the skin does very much look like a snake skin. the inside is milky color, but solid with a small pit.  It tastes mildly sweet, interesting. Also a pressed cakes of some white substance that they said was palm oil pressed.  They said you cook it down and it looks like snot, and is one of the staples for the country.  A long long row of fish. Some of them almost a yard long, some much smaller.  Whole fresh fish.   Another row of chicken.  (We skipped the fish and bought 3 chicken breasts for a couple of dollars, that she deboned with her hands.)  Besides the chicken I bought a flat of 30 eggs, which they packaged up firmly so we could carry them, and a papaya, and some corn on the cob, and a big bunch of some sort of greens, and a small bunch of celery leaves for flavoring (no celery), and tomatoes,  and three bars of soap.  You only have to soak what you are not going to cook, so I soaked the tomatoes in KMg, Potassium magnate (?).  

The missionaries who took us to the market go every Saturday.  They are with MAF (Missionary Aviation Fellowship), and have lived here for many years. There were 3 other ladies who went with us. I guess any Saturday you want to go, you just contact them, and they pick you up.  Nice people, a little younger than us, who like to play games, so I think we will visit them.  

We are up now and waiting to be picked up to go to church.  They have an English service!  Wow.  I will report later about that.  We have met such nice, nice people, who have been exceptionally helpful to us as new people.