This
morning, while out shopping for some stuff, we passed by the Market in
La Marsa. It’s an indoor market where you can buy fruits,
vegetables, meat, chicken, honey, herbs, and a bunch of other
stuff.
vegetables, meat, chicken, honey, herbs, and a bunch of other stuff.
You can even find some pets sometimes like squirrels, hamsters, birds…etc.
I loved how all the different fruits, with their rich and beautiful colours looked together side by side. It was like a carnival of colours painting an amazing portrait.
Everything looked so fresh, juicy and very delicious.
Something else I really loved is this old man who came to the market dressed in his full traditional Tunisian wear (Jebba, Chechiyya and all).
They pulled up a chair for him in the middle of the market and there he sat just telling the different guys from the different shops what he needed as they went and got it for him.
img src=”http://photos25.flickr.com/35630270_3e77bb46bd_m.jpg” alt=”Old Man in Market” align=”right” border=”0″ height=”240″ hspace=”5″ width=”180″>It’s so nice to see how this old man actually still has fun going to the market, how he wears his best clothes when he goes there, how
the people there treat him with all respect and friendliness.
This was how Tunisia was everywhere in the days of our parents and grand parents.
Now it’s just a sweet memory that we love seeing every now and then through an old person who doesn’t want to let go of the beauty of those days.
These days we’re all stressed, we’re all running out of time, we all can’t afford to go to the market and deal with people in a friendly way, we just need to get in and out of some mall where there is the least personal interaction possible.
I remember the days when I was a kid and I used to go to the market in Bizerta with my grandfather. It wasn’t just about getting fish, meat, vegetables, fruits or anything else for the house, It was a lot more than that, It was also about the social side of it, a market is a place where you’d see and meet people and friends and connect with them.
Plus, you never find the kind of stuff there is in a market in any mall or shopping center. It’s just not the same quality.
I personally am going to try to get down to a market from now on whenever I need anything.
I want markets to exist forever in Tunisia, and that they don’t get replaced by malls. I hope future generations get to enjoy markets just like we and the generations before us did.