Althea sent me a great picture of one of the basket stalls on the market in Tanga. I just love the way in which the stall holder is lounging back and working out his profits for the day. It’s a shame he hasn’t got a mobile phone in his hand.
If you look at the left hand side stall, he is also selling conch and other types of shells. I actually bought half a kilo of cowrie shells – for no other reason than we used them as counters when I was at infant school.
The delicious noise of them clucking together takes me right back to St Bernard’s Infants – circa 1961 – gulp. I now have them in a pretty japanese dish – well what else could I do with them?
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June 3, 2007 at 6:20 am
Althea Stevens
Nice to see that photo again. The stall holder was probably counting up the profits from the dozen or so baskets I bought! I like the flat ones best – the first lot he showed me were full of little holes made by insects, so I wouldn’t buy them. He went away and came back several hours later with less holes! I still had to treat them with spray here – found little piles of debris, and didn’t want to have alien bugs here in the UK. Just wish I’d had more suitcases, or sent back a crate of stuff.
October 29, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Moondancer Drake
The thing about these kids of shells (cowrie shells in particular) are that for many generations in some of the African tribes and even now in some of the First Nation tribes here they are a sign of feminine power, witness the yoni (vulva) shape. 🙂