A trip to the bazaar

Brace yourselves, I anticipate this to be a longer blog. But several have asked to see what our bazaar looks like. Rather than a slide show that limits the narration that I can add, it will just be a little longer.

These are my 2 shopping buddies. Some time Ethan rides on the back of the stroller, standing on one of the bars. I love my huge "basket" under the stroller. My biggest shop so far was 70 pounds of produce, including Elli. Needless to say, I paid the 25c to have someone load my stuff onto his cart and push it up the hill to my house.

This is the view of the bazaar coming from our house, the main gate from the front and from the back.

This is how we buy meat. Granted we don't buy the goat heads, but I thought you'd like to see them. I'm still intimidated by buying beef hanging on the hooks. It's not so much the pieces of meat as it is the butchers. Regardless of what I ask for, they won't give it to me. Every time I get a little more confident, taking the pieces of bone and fat off the scale. They just don't understand why I would want to buy meat without those things. We get frozen chicken legs and thighs from the States and our family eats those most often. We've even seen Tyson chicken pieces. Apparently we get all the pieces that remain after Americas demand for frozen, skinless chicken breast is met.

In the center of our bazaar is a "rotunda." This is where I buy my fresh produce, nuts and raisins, and spices by the grams. You can kind of see in the back of the pictures how the rotunda wraps around. The large basins are full of Elli's favorite . . . chaka. She even calls Ranch dressing chaka! :) The third picture is of the only person who sells the carrot salad our family loves. Her and her husband take turns at their stand and if they are sick, there is no carrot salad to be had. They speak no "Aobistani" and I know no Russian, so the vegetable seller to the side usually translates back and forth for us.

This is the gal who does my eyebrows. They don't wax here, they do "threading." I usually buy a snack (nan and some juice) for my kids and park the stroller to the side while she quickly does my eyebrows. It only costs 50 cents and last so much longer than waxing does. The passer-byers get a kick out of the foreigner getting her brows done. She actually sells nan and does brows on the side; thus the picture of us together holding nan. The picture with my kids doesn't even capture the treatment they get every trip to the bazaar. All our regular stops know all 3 of us by name. They love to give my kids pieces of fruit or bread whenever we stop. Ethan has gotten really good at answering questions that are typically asked.

Remember the marshmallow cream? This is the sweet man that sells it all year long. And these are the massive containers he sells it in!

Other random things available at the bazaar: the baby cribs, the re-directing pee-pee sticks and the pee catchers. They even have the baby cribs for baby dolls, the painted one in the center of this picture. This may be part of Elli's Christmas present to go along with her local baby doll we found in Dushanbe.

And if I didn't find it at another spot in the bazaar, there are rows of these little kiosks where I can buy canned corn, canned peas, kielbasa (pork-less) sausage, and mayonnaise; the essentials in every local salad. In one of these little stalls is where I discovered the now team wide favorite; puffed rice balls!

Well, there you have it. You have completed your bazaar tour. Now if only I could capture the smells and sounds you'd really feel like you've been here. I guess for that . . . you'll just have to come and see for yourself.