Fiji Redux: Sigatoka Market

21 Oct: Sindhu mama mans my family's stall at Sigatoka market six days a week. For nearly 50 years, however, Nani (shown serving a customer above) was a market fixture and face of the produce, spices, kava & sundries for sale from her husband Atma Ram Sharma's farm. So when Sindhu attended a day-long pooja the Tuesday before Diwali, it was Nani who returned to her former role. I joined her.

Tour buses deliver tourists to Sigatoka every day but Sunday (in Fiji, nothing happens on Sunday besides excessive consumption of kava & Fiji Bitter). Many of the pale-skinned tourists drift into the market, where they're herded by alert Indian women to collections of inauthentic Fijian crafts that rarely impress. Their revenue rests on tapping into the guilt of tourists who aren't interested in the paltry trinkets but who feel obliged to give the inquisitive stranger beside them something for their trouble. These easy marks are the only white faces at Sigatoka market.

My appearance as a salesperson at my family's stall did more than turn a few heads -- it mustered murmers from adjacent aisles, created conspiratorial laughter among passersby and produced many an indignant "Is this yours?" from customers considering piles of freshly picked bagan or kerela or coriander. I would assuage their fear by pointing at Nani and saying, "No, it's hers." A sale would inevitably follow.
Nani (seated far right) and I wait for a taxi to appear on dusty Valley Road for a ride into town.
The produce I had to repeatedly disown before selling.
Chillies, sold by the pile.