Observations in the market

Last Friday I managed to get back to the Kurtkoy market on what ended up being a rather dreary and wet day. Very seldom do I need the full 1 1/4 hours allotted by the bus to do my shopping, and that day was not exception. The last half hour found me slowly sipping a glass of tea at the restaurant where I had ordered my take out for the evening (a cheese pide). With nothing else to distract me I found myself observing interactions in the market from the outside (or perhaps I should say from the inside?). During that time several things struck me. First, the major difference between the market in Turkey and the market I always went to in Guinea is that here, at least in the market I go to, the sellers are exclusively men. There are no women selling things. At all. I suspect this may be because the market does not quite function the same way. At least in Istanbul selling things in the market is a full time job. People buy goods to resell (it is not normal to sell their own produce)and it is a 7 day a week job. Every day these people set up their stall in a different weekly market. So on Friday they are in Kurtkoy, Saturday may find them in Pendik and the other days in some other area of the city. In Guinea the market was a much more personal thing. Men and women tended to sell the things that they had grown, made or harvested (although there were still people who sold dried goods which they had bought from somewhere else). And as life in Guinea was more about subsistence, the person who sold in the market was the person that was available. Sometimes the woman, sometimes the man, and sometimes the children.

The other thing that I noticed while starting through the window was that it is much more common to see women buying things here. That is not so different as anywhere, where the women are in charge of feeding a family. I was amused to watch several couples shopping together to notice that really all the man did was carry the bags. The women were even the ones who were dealing with the money (perhaps because it is the food budget?). The women here, though seem to look at going to the market as just a way to get food. There is not the same level of friendliness and visiting which took place in Guinea. I'm not sure if this is a Turkish-Guinean difference, or if it is just the difference between a weekly market and a daily one.

Having the time to stare out the window and just observe really made me realize how many different variations there can be to the fairly common world wide practice of going to the market.