Parrots and Peanuts for Sale

These Polaroids were taken to document transactions in the markets of Kinshasa. The top is a type of hard shelled fruit, laid out on a rough wooden table from the region called Bandundu. The fruit, sold in packets, is counted out and laid out in neat piles.

The mundane looking wood has an interesting story. The bark is called "Ngola," which is from the tree that gives the red color, which has cultural significance. (The bark is ground into powder, mixed with palm oil, and molded into solid blocks of "red," to be smeared on bodies or artifacts). At the market where this photo was taken, petty thieves steal by chipping off bark pieces with machetes. The red shavings were sold to Malian women who used the color to make "fetishes," (magic).

The photo on the bottom right is a smiling woman with unshelled peanuts. She buys peanuts, transported from agricultural regions, a sack at a time. She sells raw peanuts, or she may grill and shell them for a higher price. Peanuts were a staple of palm oil based sauces for meat.

The final image was of two market sellers with a cage full of fledgling African grey parrots. The birds all had dark eyes of young birds. These birds came from near Mbandaka, a center on the Congo river. According to the middlemen, the parrot trapping season should have been closed during the two month nesting season, due to the high mortality.