Shopping in Ukraine - Part 2: Saturday at the Bazaar

"Miss, why are you taking photos? What for?"
"Oh, sorry, I'm just writing a blog about my life in Ukraine. I want to write about the bazaar".
"You need to ask the shop owners if you can do that".

This conversation (albeit in Ukrainian) took place within about a minute of me deciding to hop in to the bazaar and start working on content for this blog. I had been struck by a display of bright, lacy bras. It was something about the way these intimate items, often sold with an air of forbiddenness in the US, or at least in a designated "women's department", were just casually hanging up like any other products, next to a bunch of Crocs and winter boots. I liked the way the bright colors and the lace contrasted with the grey Soviet-era architecture in the background. I asked the shopkeeper if she wanted me to delete the photo I had just taken, but she said I could keep it.  

When I take pictures in public places, I try to be conscientious about not capturing people in an identifiable way. Unless they know I am photographing them, I try to wait until they are out of the frame, distant, or have their face turned away. I get some funny looks when I'm taking pictures like the ones in my last blog, of shopping malls and food kiosks and the like, but today was the first time somebody challenged me about it. I decided to follow the woman's suggestion, and proceeded to ask people's permission to photograph their shops and products in the bazaar. Honestly, that's probably the best way to go about this kind of thing anyhow. The response was most often a terse "no", although a couple people skeptically agreed. Documenting day-to-day life is hard, because life involves people (and while we're on the topic, here are some interesting thoughts from BBC Travel and ChickyBus on the ethics of human subjects in travel photography).

The bazaar reminded me that suspicion runs deep in Ukraine. Anything out of the ordinary is pretty quickly squashed here (or at least given a condemning glare), especially in public areas. I know this, and yet was still caught off guard today. In the markets and bazaars I've visited in Peru, Mexico, and even in Iran (a place not particularly friendly to Americans with cameras), people didn't bat an eye as I photographed little bags of local chocolate or colorful arrangements of spices. But in Ukraine, things are different, and this is perhaps even more interesting given that so many Ukrainians love to take and to be in pictures. Nearly every event here has a photo backdrop set up, and even those events without such a backdrop are reliably followed by painstaking group photo sessions. Ukrainians take selfies more often than any other people I know, frequently lining up and waiting their turn at popular areas like fountains or Christmas light displays to have their photo taken or snap a selfie. There's even a coffee shop near my apartment named "Selfie Coffee".

I was too lazy to put on pants and walk the one block to Selfie Coffee, so here's a picture I nabbed from Foursquare 

But going to the bazaar is a bit like going back in time (and of course, a stranger taking pictures in the bazaar is different than locals taking selfies in the mall). The demographics in the bazaar are definitely not the same as the demographics in a mall like Lubava or a coffee shop like Selfie, and the culture is different as well. I can photograph in Silpo all I want, but the bazaar operates under different social norms - norms that I surmise may to some degree be held over from the Soviet Union.

The truth is, I don't go to the bazaar often. It intimidates me - all the crammed outdoor paths bursting with everything from bras to dog food, the shop sellers making their pitches to me in Russian and Surzhyk if I linger or glance their way, the handwritten signs that are sometimes hard to read. But even though I got off to a bit of a rough start today, I'm glad I went. And while the initial standoffishness was disappointing at first, once I put my iPhone away and decided to focus on a bit of shopping, people warmed up a good bit.

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The central bazaar in my city is divided into an indoor and an outdoor section. Outside, you can find hats, gloves, shoes, clothes, backpacks, and any number of things. Some shops are simply set up on the pathways, while others are in aisles covered by a tent-like roof.

Sneak peek for the next shopping blog - can you spy the second-hand shop in the background?

On the sidewalks adjacent to the bazaar, individuals can be seen simply selling their wares on the sidewalk. They do this outside of grocery stores, too. These vendors are often elderly women, although today I also saw a man selling giant silvery fish out of blue plastic shopping bags. I didn't get a photo, as there were too many people eagerly stooping down to inspect and pick out a fresh fish for themselves. He seemed to have a lot of customers.

Ladies selling produce and little hand-brooms outside of the bazaar

The indoor portion of the bazaar is housed in a giant, round building. It is where the food is sold, and has a certain magic to it. A ring of counters forms a central circle where women in shawls and headscarves chat and laugh with each other as they slice fresh white cheese and encourage passers-by to take a sample. Plastic bottles of milk and whey line the countertops, shining silver scales hanging above them for vendors to weigh out products for customers. As I was looking around and taking this all in, a couple of ladies beckoned me over, inviting me to buy milk. When I explained I needed sour cream, they gestured to a mixing bowl on the counter. "Try it!". I looked skeptically at the plastic spoon sitting in the open bowl of sour cream, thinking "that's a health hazard if I ever saw one". But they eventually won me over, and carefully explained the logistics of exactly how I would sample the sour cream: I had to make a fist, such that the back up my hand was flat and facing upward. They used the spoon to drop a dollop of sour cream on my hand, and then, well, I stood there in the middle of the market and licked sour cream off the back of my hand. I walked away with 200 grams of the stuff in a plastic bag.

The other option was to use a plastic cup like you see at water coolers

The next circle is formed by a ring of butchers, cleaving and slicing and arranging more cuts of meat than I knew existed, all shades of red and pink and the deep purply color of organs. Luckily for me, some of these folks agreed to let me take pictures.

One of my favorite "discoveries" at the bazaar was the spice seller, since the selection of spices at the grocery stores isn't very good. The sign at his booth proclaims "SPICES FROM UZBEKISTAN", right next to a booth similarly proclaiming "DRIED FRUITS FROM KYRGYZSTAN".

I stared greedily at the spices, of course because they are wonderful to photograph, and quickly a tall, lean man with several gold teeth came and inquired what I was looking for. I tried to communicate that I was just looking and wanted him to tell me what the spices were, since they weren't labeled and I don't know the names in Ukrainian or Russian. He pointed to some elaborate mixes, explaining that one was for meat, another for shashlyk (like kabob), another for chicken, etc. When I explained I'm vegetarian and asked what spices might be good with vegetables, he simply grabbed a little plastic container and began scooping various spices into it.

"Is spicy okay for you?"
"Yep!"

And hence a red powder ended up in my little container.

"What's this purple stuff?"
He told me what it was and added it to my little container of spices. I have since forgotten what the heck it is.

He handed me the container of spices that I hadn't exactly asked for and instructed me to mix it when I got home. Hence, I now have 40 hryvnias' worth of unidentified but beautiful spices. I know that one of them is saffron, and one of them is something purple.

I rounded out my shopping with some mushrooms and some manadarins; the fruit seller let me talk her into allowing a photo of some of the produce.

I emerged from the bazaar with a renewed appreciation for how different Ukraine is from the US, and for the fact that just because I have established some routines and am comfortable in a handful of now-familiar places here, there is still a lot I do not know. Today reminded that I am in a foreign country, and as I walked back home I took a bit more note of my surroundings: the food kiosk that sells nothing but eggs; the woman distributing scraps of red meat to a pack of surprisingly patient stray dogs; the old men with their newsboy caps, canes, and cigarettes. Much of Ukraine feels like what I had thought was a bygone era.

And then I crossed another street, the sun finally peaked through the clouds, and the shiny, modern McDonald's with a long line of cars waiting in the drive-thru reminded me that I am in the 21st century. The old women sitting just out front, selling flowers and trinkets along the low stone walls, reminded me that I am in Ukraine.

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***necessary schpeel explaining that my blog reflects my views only, and not the views of the Peace Corps, the US government, or the government of Ukraine.