Market and Shopping

One of the big things I had to get used to here is how to shop. You certainly don’t go to your neighborhood Target, Walmart, Costco, or Best Buy to pick up whatever it is that you need.

Each city and town will have a main market-place where you can get most of the items that you need. For other big items, you may have to travel to Nouakchott, or another larger city. Different boutiques and/or vendors specialize in different products, and you can just make your way around buying what you need. All of the house wares are located in a part of the market together, while all the vegetable-women sell next to each other too. For meat (at least in my town), there’s a main hall with the butchers in the center and then surrounded by vegetable venders. Usually you will see men selling meat and house wares while women will sell the other items (not always).

Another big difference between here and in the United States is that you need to go shopping every day, and sometimes more than that. There is no refrigeration (at least for most people – myself included), so that means you have to buy what you need for your next meal, eat it all, and return to the market before the next meal. In the cold season you can generally get your food to last about 24 hours without a refrigerator, but in the hot season it may last only a few hours.

Another important aspect of shopping here in Mauritania is the bargaining process. When people see others who they expect to have lots of money (Westerners and tourists), or just may not know the correct price for items they will tell you that it is more expensive than it actually is. When this happens you need to bargain with the seller, sometimes even walk away if the price is not correct. With sellers like tailors and taxi bruisse the price can vary much more with quality and such so you need to be extra careful. After having been here a while, I feel that the sellers know us and they don’t try to take advantage of us because (for the most part) they know we won’t pay the tourist price. You still need to stay on your toes though, and watch out for inflated ‘western’ prices!



Here’s our grocery store. I didn’t mention it in the main section because we are a rare site that has one (due to our ex-pat population). It is very common to see both ex-pats and Mauritanians shopping here, and it’s one of the stops for just about every volunteer that comes to visit us! An interesting note about the grocery store is that prices are fixed.



This is out on the paved road (away from the main market), but it’s pretty common to see the meat hanging in the open like this for people to see before buying.










This is the actual meat market area. You don’t see a lot in the picture, but you can see some meat hanging in the upper right hand corner.







This is a lady’s stand I go to fairly regularly for vegetables. She’s got a
pretty good assortment.




This is just another view of her boutique.









This is the section of the market for house wares. It’s pretty dead right now in the picture because I didn’t want to be taking pictures when everyone was out.








This is what we like to call “bread row”. All the men who sell bread line up with their wheelbarrows full of bread in the morning, and sell until they have no more.