Market Day

There is a line in the DreamWorks’ animated film Madagascar where the king of the lemurs, King Julian, looks at the New York Zoo animals and welcomes them, “Hello giant freaks!” As entertaining as this is for children, that single line could summarize my entire experience in the marketplace of Tana.

I think I have already told you how tall I am in comparison to the average Malagasy person. But to reiterate, the average male height is 5’1” and the average female height is 4’11”. To put that is perspective, I’m 5’10.5” making me an average 9 inches above the typical man in Madagascar. Needless to say, I am a white giant freak walking through market day. The other day, every woman I met barely make it to my chest and every man I met was lucky to reach my chin. Giant freak, indeed.

What a time market day is. This special day occurs every Thursday. Mind you, there are always street venders around, especially in places designated as permanent markets. There are a few famous marketplaces we’ve visited. But market day is a whole different scenario. Whether it’s culturally established or legally so doesn’t quite matter. All that matters is that market day is the day where everyone goes out and sets up a stand. The stadium near our apartment is covered in makeshift tents, market stands, and over types of temporary shelters set up just for the day.

Walking through market day is like walking through a sea of Malagasy people. My head sticks out far above everyone else’s, with the exception of a few tall Malagasy, of which there are plenty. Nonetheless, my complexion mixed with the fact that I’m shoulder-to-shoulder (or shoulder-to-face in my instance) makes navigating market day a little difficult.

Market stands are practically on top of one another and there is barely any room for two people to walk past each other in the thick of it. Anyone who has anything to sell goes out on market day, and Megan and I have turned it into a sort of scavenger hunt while looking for cheap clothing and other things we need for the apartment. The photos below were taken on the least busy market day we’ve seen. I’m not comfortable enough to take out my phone during a normal market day.

That leads me to the vendors themselves. Most of them are not pushy. In fact, they’re fairly passive. They leave out their stock for you to see, which is easy enough to scan as you walk by. And if you’re interested, they’ll show it to you and maybe another product or two. Sometimes they just yell a price at you. Overall they’re generally helpful. If you want to buy it, you ask how much, they give you a price, you counteroffer if you want, they counteroffer, then you, then them, etc. The process goes on until, as we say in economics, we reach a market clearing equilibrium price, or you just walk away dissatisfied with the price of the vendor’s merchandize and no one is offended or takes it personally, usually.

Market day is the epitome of a free market where nothing has a set price and everything is fair game when it comes to haggling. There is perfect competition which means products have similar prices across the board. Anyone asking more is trying to rip you off. It is a true experiment demonstrating that the value of something is determined through the subjective opinion of the seller and buyer who must come to an agreement on what one is willing to pay and is willing to be paid for a particular good or service. However, sometimes there is miscommunication, like how I accidently bought 4kg (8.8lbs) of mangos the other day. I walked away with 7 rather large mangos. I originally intended to buy a maximum of 3.

Now most stands have a theme. What I mean by this is that each vendor typically sells one type of product. The most common stalls are hats, shoes, bags, and clothes. A shoe vendor will have a tent filled with shoes. Shoes on the wall. Shoes on tables. Shoes hanging from string like some kind of decoration. Shoes everywhere. The same goes with bags, hats, and clothing, all of which are hanging from every inch of space available. Everything is out to be seen in the hopes that at least one product catches the eye of a potential buyer. It makes market day rather adventurous.

For instance, the other week I decided I needed a new grey hat. So I walked around the crowded market on the lookout for a hat stand. Sure enough I found plenty and eventually spotted one with the types of hats I was looking for. I looked at few, asked a price, made a counteroffer in vain, and accepted the original price of 10,000MGA, which is about $2.50.

This process leads me to an interesting point, well interesting for economists at least, such that the Malagasy vendors are very aware of a process we call price discrimination. Now please do not think price discrimination is always bad. In fact, companies do it in the United States and around the world all the time for good reasons. In the layman terms, price discrimination is when you charge someone who has more money a higher price for the same product or service than someone with less money. It’s rather equitable actually. For practical purposes, this means I will pay more as a vazaha (white foreigner) for pretty much anything that does not already have a given price. That hat I bought for 10,000MGA, perhaps a Malagasy would have gotten it for 8,000MGA. Price discrimination is more common in taxis than anywhere else. Most market products remain constant between vazaha and Malagasy customers.

I don’t mind it really. It does mean that I’ll pay more for taxis, of which there will be a whole other blog about, and that some people with try to rip me off, which has happened a few times; yet, the price difference is a few dollars to me and quite a great sum to them. It honestly didn’t bother me financially, just on a moral standpoint.

Most of the products at the market stands are second-hand from the United States. Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other charity organizations ship their extra or unused products to places all over Africa. This means that I see a lot of familiar sights. New England Patriots gear, Minecraft shirts, YMCA shirts, a lot of college swag, Nike rip-offs, summer camp apparel, volunteer swag, you name it. When I was speaking with our driver once, he told me that he preferred the US second-hand clothing over the clothing they get directly from China. “They are higher quality,” he said. “The Chinese stuff falls apart too quickly.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that half of our clothing comes from China anyways.

For most vendors, this is their livelihood. They take pride in their merchandize. There is a vendor who specializes in scissors, another in hair irons, a another for meats killed that day, another for fish, another for plastic buckets and kitchen utensil, another in fruits and veggies, another for children’s toys, another in women’s undergarments, another in prom dresses, another for stamps, another for jeans, another for phones, another for suit jackets, another for belts, another for books, and another in electrical plugs. There is a vendor for anything and everything, and they know their products pretty well. We even saw a heart for sale the other day. I’m hoping it was a zebu heart and not that of a human… So far I’ve bought three hats ($7.50 total), a nice single strap bag ($8), a fancy beard trimmer ($12), and plenty of fruits and veggies all from the street. I bought those 7 mangos for about $5 and a whole pineapple the other day for about $1.25. Megan and I even got a head of broccoli for about 50 cents.

And so market day is a rather bazaar experience. Get the pun? I am a giant, white walking freak clumsily meandering through the tight walkways of spontaneously ordered streets and market stands. It’s a free-market economist’s dream in many ways. Austrian economists would have a field day with it, too. And the Malagasy love it when a giant freak comes to buy their things. I wonder what I’ll find next.

As always, know that you are in my prayers each morning. All I ask is that you do the same for me.

May God be praised.